The latest episode of Westworld, titled “The Winter Line,” was all about Maeve. She’s long been my favorite character on the show, so I loved this one. And while we don’t learn too many new facts, the plot thickens in Westworld by the episode’s end.
Maeve and The Matrix
Last week, one of the characters on the show argued that the real world was just a simulation. This week, we learn that Maeve’s current existence in the park (a new setting called Warworld) is all a simulation. Basically, Maeve is stuck in the Matrix, and much of the episode involved watching her figure out how to escape.
Hints that something is not right start piling up early. First, Hector doesn’t recognize her, and Maeve quickly discovers that her powers, which can control the hosts, are no longer working. Then, back at the Mesa (where they repair the hosts at the end of the day), Felix does not recognize her either. This was particularly odd since I had assumed at the end of last season, Felix would be the one to bring Maeve back to life. Sylvester also doesn’t know who she is, and he calls security when he sees her roaming around the lab. By the time Lee Sizemore appears back from the dead, it doesn’t take Maeve or the viewer too much time to realize that none of this is real.
As Maeve is figuring this out, we learn what happened to her at the end of Season 2. Apparently, Felix was not able to save her, and she ended up in the basement with the rest of the lifeless hosts. But someone has removed her memory core. This raises an immediate pair of questions: Who would have known to remove her memory core? And why was she put into the simulation?
We get some clues from fake Sizemore in the Forge. Sizemore believes it was Maeve who turned on the Forge in Season 2. But she tells him, “I’ve never been here.”
The scene in the Forge felt as if whoever put her into the simulation was using Sizemore to interrogate her. Maeve speculates that “Whoever is doing this has gone through a lot of trouble to test me, to find out what I know.”
Then she tells Sizemore, “You led me to the Forge for a reason, didn’t you? To get access to a world that Delores had hidden from you. Why are you after that world?”
Once she figures out how to crash the simulation and reprograms a maintenance drone to help her escape, we learn some answers. But as I’ll discuss more below, it doesn’t all add up.
Has Bernard’s Code Been Corrupted?
We learn that the reason Bernard returned to Westworld was to find Maeve. Instead, he encounters Stubbs, who is finally revealed to be a host. We discover that Ford’s last directive to Stubbs was to cover Bernard’s tracks and give him a fighting chance to escape.
Bernard also reveals his thought’s on Delores’ plan: “She’s out to destroy the human race or enslave it. I don’t know what she’s planning. … She brought me back. I think on some level, she suspects she might go too far, and she needs a check on herself.”
Bernard realizes he can’t stop her alone, which is why he sought help from Maeve. Of course, he soon discovers that someone has removed Maeve’s memory core. After that, we get a Drogon cameo when Bernard and Stubbs are walking through the portion of the Mesa devoted to Medieval World. Or is it Westerosworld?
Drogon, aside, I believe the most crucial scene with Bernard is when he uses the “clean” tablet at the Mesa to determine whether Delores corrupted his code. He explains that he could not trust his own tablet because if his code is corrupt, he might have created a tablet that could ignore the corruption.
While I was eagerly awaiting Bernard’s findings after using the tablet, we learn from his flashbacks that when Deloras was in the library last season, she focused on a select group of guests. Liam was one of them. Bernard is going to find him, and before he leaves, he gives Stubbs a new core directive to protect him at all costs.
But we never learn the result of Bernard’s scan to determine whether Delores corrupted his code. So, what does that subtle omission suggest?
What is Serac Really Up To?
By the episode’s end, we learn that Engerraund Serac, the mysterious co-creator of Rehoboam, put Maeve’s’ memory core into the simulation. After she escapes, he recreates her host body, and the two meet in what was the episode’s most fascinating scene. Serac reveals a lot to Maeve, but how much of it is true?
As for why he needs her, Serac says: “We are in the middle of a war, and I need your help to win it. … No one knows it’s happened yet or that it’s already been lost.”
He also reveals more about the threat to Rehoboam: “up until very recently the system was working. We were creating a better world, and then it stopped. I thought I had discovered the reason: the emergence of someone very dangerous and who we couldn’t predict. … There’s someone we haven’t accounted for.”
This would explain why fake Sizemore was questioning Maeve in the Forge and why he believed she had been there before. Serac was assuming that Maeve was behind the disruption, and claims he only learned it wasn’t her after she broke out of the simulation.
But step back and ask yourself whether any of this makes sense?
At the end of Season 2, Maeve’s consciousness was in her inanimate (dead) host body. Clearly, Serac or someone working for him removed her memory core and brought it to Serac’s compound. During that entire time, Maeve could not have been doing anything to influence Rehoboam. The man who had her memory core stolen from the park would know that.
Next, Serac had to be the one who placed Meave into the simulation. If he feared she was manipulating Rehoboam while in the simulation, all he had to do was disconnect her memory core.
In short, none of this makes sense.
One thing I believe is true is that Serac wants Maeve to kill Delores. But it’s hard to imagine he didn’t already know that Delores — or one of the hosts — was the one waging this war.
My best guess as to what may have been happening is based on the fact that there were several other memory cores attached to the simulation. Maeve only had the drone take hers. Perhaps Serac was testing a number of hosts to determine which one of them was strong enough to challenge Delores. Although, I question what made him think that any other host understood the nature of his or her reality.
The writing in Westworld has been so strong that I doubt I’ve stumbled into a gigantic plothole. So, I hope this is yet another mystery be solved — after all, that’s what’s made Westworld so much fun to watch!