By TJ GIBSON
Staff Writer
This story contains spoilers for the season two premiere of HBO’s “Westworld,” as well as spoilers for the show’s entire first season.
Saddle up partners, for the fan-fueled wagon train of philosophical musings and impressively investigative Reddit theories that is “Westworld” has officially arrived back at the station. Returning last week with second season opener “Journey Into Night,” Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s hit HBO drama about a robot-filled theme park gone wrong boasts a fresh coat of shine and a newly-acquired taste for sweet sci-fi vengeance, making it look, feel, and flow better than it ever has before. These attributes, among others, render the episode quite ripe for a good discussion.
But first, a quick summary of the premiere’s happenings: after the events of the season one finale — primarily the death of park co-creator Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) and the ensuing AI-host revolt — we find our characters on new paths with new goals. Central AI characters Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve (Thandie Newton) embrace their new independence and embark on new missions (kill the humans and find my “daughter,” respectively). Main “human” characters Lee (Simon Quarterman), Charlotte (Tessa Thompson), the “Man in Black”/William (Ed Harris/Jimmi Simpson), and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright, who is actually a robot, though no one else knows that) fight to survive the carnage, and Westworld corporate gets up to some pretty shady stuff. It’s a packed, multiple-step episode, but one that takes its steps in the right direction.
With the focus seemingly shifted somewhat away from the J.J. Abrams-esque “mystery box” that was much of the first season, the second season so far has aimed to instead focus slightly more on character, whether it be their motivations, their desires, or simply where they fit into this new world order. Because of this, the audience can more thoroughly understand why both the human (aka guest) and nonhuman (aka host) characters alike behave the way they do, and thus either sympathize with or vehemently oppose them far more intimately.
Two cases in point: the rancher’s daughter gone gun-toting psychopath Dolores Abernathy and the secretly-a-robot park head of programming Bernard Lowe. As both characters have begun to understand and subsequently grapple with the nature of their reality in the revolutionary fallout of season one, they are now seen taking the next logical steps in the (seemingly?) newly-autonomous paths that they have been placed upon.
For Dolores, this means waging an all-out war on the guests and park employees alike in a concerted effort to not only get to the bottom of who she truly is, but also overthrow those who have oppressed and abused her kind. This is engaging because it perpetuates two key character elements that much of the otherwise-excellent first season was sorely lacking: motivation and development.
Bernard, likewise, is also seen (in two different non-linear timelines spaced eleven days apart) figuring out his path as he tries to survive the initial revolt, piece together exactly what is happening to his injured and now-malfunctioning brain, and help Westworld brass figure out what the hell is going on with the hosts. Again, motivation and development are present, but so is deep intrigue, as the show’s clever noodling with the timeline leaves the audience constantly wondering what version of Bernard we’re currently seeing (or if it’s even Arnold Weber, the long-dead human co-creator of the park that Bernard is based on), and how that version progresses from one point on his flashback-laden journey to the next. While “Westworld” has always been strong on inspiring intrigue in the form of mysteries and misdirection, this is a different kind of intrigue that it should really keep leaning into.
Furthermore, the action is also fantastically utilized in the premiere. Though it was definitely executed phenomenally in the first season from a technical standpoint, the action this go around is far more purposeful and engaging now that there are real stakes and real consequences — that is, that humans can actually be killed now. William (aka the Man in Black), for example, seems to benefit gloriously from this, both as a character in the show and a player in the park. As his claims that he’s been waiting thirty years for a real challenge and his sly, sinister smile when he finally gets one suggest, the real game (as also hinted by the Ford-based host that approaches him with an actual game invitation) has just begun for William. Ultimately, it means for an even more compelling reason to watch him do his thing. These stakes also mean a more compelling engagement with the plight of the other humans left in the park; which manifests in a much more horror-drenched narrative as we wonder if they’ll die while, of course, hoping that they won’t. Again, as this wasn’t a worry last time, it’s a refreshing change for the show’s dynamic.
That all being said, though, the show does still leave enough of its mystery-based DNA intact to maintain its fan theory appeal. Like I already mentioned, “Westworld” has both continued its streak of playing around with timelines and continuity (now in the form of Bernard’s disjointed storyline), as well as amped up its “what is the Man in Black’s endgame?” subplot. Both of these elements were a massively significant part of the first season’s appeal — and ultimately the wide success that it would enjoy — in their boosting of the show’s ability to maintain interest (and thus fuel discussion).
This is something that “Westworld” needs to continue doing through its sophomore run, as the real experience of the show — the allegorical game-within-agame reflecting the program itself — is not so much in the actual surface-level viewing of it as it is in the subsequent dissection and discussion of it, as evidenced by any quick Google search of the show. So while it’s nice that “Westworld” has slightly lessened this angle to make room for needed improvements on other key elements, it’s also reassuring that it certainly hasn’t abandoned it. Hopefully, this will remain the case for the show’s foreseeable future.
Ultimately, second season premiere “Journey Into Night” is a promising new direction for the premium cable hit — one which does the best thing a sophomore season can do: maintain the prior season’s strengths while endeavoring to improve on its weaknesses. Indeed, “Westworld” leaves much to come back for in this episode’s resetting of the chessboard and the implications that the new arrangement of the pawns sets in place, whether that be a reinforced interest in the characters or a more-compelling- than-ever set of questions to hopefully be answered in the coming weeks.
So stay tuned, friends, for these violent delights are sure to have fittingly violent ends.
