HBO
The latest episode of Westworld is called ‘Fidelity’ which is naturally another example of the infinite copy issue, here shown with a Caleb host repeating his efforts over and over. We don’t see anything from the Christina storyline at all, but we do see two storylines that seem to be happening at the same time.
While Bernard and ‘C’ (the adult Frankie) are working to restore Maeve, he warns her about his friends potentially betraying her — the funniest (and only funny) moment of the episode is saying that Stubbs is sometimes the traitor and the dude is offended by the idea. He reveals that the new way to scan people is using mirrors to scan people instead of hats, and it’s unclear how much C is buying it at the time.
At the same time, we see Caleb wake up and be interrogated by Host-Hale to figure out why these outliers keep happening since he did mention something about it as the original human Caleb. Caleb starts to follow the path of other Calebs before him, in a way that should’ve obviously seen like a trap yet he still pushes forward — perhaps the needing ‘time’ is a real warning from the original Caleb after all.
We see Hale ask Clementine if she’s in danger of being infected, of letting the outliers ‘get under her skin’ (certainly a horrifying reminder of the flies). But Clem insists she’s more interested in the ‘sheep’ which is also horrifying if more entertainingly creepy. Caleb’s final message to Frankie is an apology and an assurance that his daughter will win in the effort without him, and when Hale reveals the obvious trap, he merely spits that the suicidal hosts are just trying to get away from her.
Frankie does hear that message, shown as something she’s been doing since she was a little kid. There’s a lot of mirroring in the episode, with Caleb seeing visions of his wife and daughter, while C mentions to Bernard that his care of Maeve reminds her of taking care of her own aging and deteriorating mother. Whether or not the message has actually helped or not remains to be seen, but clearly C has believed Bernard enough that she was fine letting Maeve save the day.
HBO
The resurrected warrior now mentions that they must finish what they started, certainly a continuation from Caleb’s message. The episode then ends with Hale rebuilding a new Caleb with a complex look on her face — exactly how she’s planning to deal with the new one must be revealed for a later episode, I suppose. It’s a cool acting and VFX job to see Aaron Paul repeat himself so many times, he does a great job here.
Although the episode was quite straightforward plotwise, I did feel like it was a bit slower paced in terms of actual plot happening. The repeated Caleb flashbacks and extended escape sequence that was also fairly repetitive wasn’t so interesting — I feel like watching Bernard is the most interesting part, and the idea of C figuring out who the traitor is could’ve been a much longer story.
Still, the episode felt thematically well structured enough, even if it’s probably the weakest of the season so far. It’s a sign of how strong the season has been that this weaker one doesn’t really make a big difference in terms of general enjoyment of the show this season.
New episodes of Westworld air Sundays on HBO and stream on HBO Max.
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