So now that Game of Thrones is over, what’s next for fiction fans to look forward to? My wife and I used our short-lived Foxtel account to finish the Song of Ice and Fire, and took the opportunity to binge watch Westworld Season 2.
After a slow start, I have to say I loved it; great characters, good pacing that introduced us to the wider universe of Westworld and some great storytelling techniques that really left me hanging.
Season 2 of the show (no spoilers, promise!) picks up with Dolores, originally the hapless damsel of the first season, realizing her destiny to lead a small army of the theme park’s robotic hosts against the human visitors who have so casually tortured them. Meanwhile, Maeve has teamed up with her outlaw buddies and some of Westworld’s staff to try and locate Maeve’s daughter, but have to fight their way through the alternate Japanese-themed subset of the park. William, the Man in Black, is continuing to fight, relishing the chance for the stakes to be real and still thinking he can “complete” the game. Behind all this, the parks management scramble to safeguard their secrets and the Ghost Nation Indian tribe may know more about what is going on than anyone else…
Central to all of these intersecting plots is Arnold, the meek and dutiful programmer who has realized that he is in fact the robotic reincarnation of Arnold one of the park’s founders. His unique view – and the way that the story drip feeds it to us – is what really brings Season 2 together.
And Season 3? Again, no spoilers, but just as Season 2 looked at some of the wider settings of the park and the real reason why it was constructed, Season 3 steps out again to reveal even more of the world surrounding the park itself. Will the hosts wreak vengeance on the people who treated them so badly or will they show more humanity than the humans themselves?
I will admit humanity does not come off as the “good guys” in Season 2. While the whole robot uprising trope has been done more times than I can list here, it’s generally been reflective of robot’s use as slaves, with the stories echoing Spartacus’ gladiator rebellion or the French Revolution. I’ve always enjoyed stories that show the robot’s as having a completely alien set of values and desires or just trying to evolve to find their own place in the universe. Some examples include the “Legends of Dune” book series, the “Mass Effect” games (yes, I know the ending to the last game was terrible), and weirdly enough, the 90’s slash flick “Screamers.”
If the writers of Season 3 get lazy, we’ll see a bad rehash of “Battlestar Galactica” or “The Matrix.” However considering the great storytelling I’ve seen in Westworld Season 2, here’s hoping we get something truly memorable.
If you have a favorite robots vs humans story, please feel free to comment below!
Leave a Reply