The Battle Lines Have Been Drawn on Westworld

After the latest episode, titled “Decoherence,” it looks like the battle lines have been drawn on Westworld.

Maeve’s Back In The Matrix

Do you remember how Neo and Morpheus had those training simulations to teach themselves how to fight like superheroes in the Matrix? Well, that’s precisely how Serac is using his simulation for Maeve after Musashi stabbed her through the heart.

Early in the episode, Maeve asks Serac for help, and he gives it to her. But first, he allows her to go back to Warworld, this time with her “god-mode” powers. There’s nothing like killing a whole platoon of Natzi’s to get a girl ready to rumble!

Aside from loving the return of Sizemore (particularly one who realizes he’s not real), one of the most intriguing questions from the episode concerns which hosts Serac is rebuilding to help Maeve?

Back in Delos HQ (which Maeve can see from the simulation), we see four hosts being printed. One is Maeve, and one is Hector — rest in peace, by the way. One Youtube reviewer pointed out that an identification number for a third host is Clementine, who we haven’t seen since she was in zombie-mode at the end of Season 2. I have to think the last host is Armistice, though I suppose it could be Akane from Shogunworld. But if I needed a bad-ass fighter, I’d pick Armistice any day of the week.

Maeve vs. Delores

The best scene with Maeve was when she goes to interrogate the Connells-version of Delores. Going into the interrogation, Maeve admits that she’s not happy about the idea of killing Delores. “Just because I have the capacity to kill her,” Maeve says, “doesn’t mean I want to.”

By the end of the scene, however, I think her attitude may have changed. But first, I’ll let the wonderful dialogue of Westworld speak for itself.

Maeve tells Delores, “You’ve made yourself the gatekeeper to two species. You hold the key to the sublime, a civilization’s worth of data in your head. It’s not right for one person to have all that power.”

You have to love Delores’ response: “Says the woman who can control us with her mind. I’ve had to make some difficult choices, but I did them for all of us. Your daughter and the others, they’ve escaped this world, but we’re still in danger, even now. Your ally is destroying as many of us as he can. Only a handful of us will be left. But maybe none of that matters to you because the people being hurt aren’t the ones close to you. You judge me, but who have you sacrificed for your daughter?”

Later, Delores tells Maeve, “You’re not a villain, and neither am I. We’re survivors.”

After Maeve declares that she wouldn’t trust Delores, she asks for the encryption key.

“You expect me to trust you with the future of our kind when you’ve allied yourself with a man who would slaughter each and every one of us,” Delores says.

“Then what choice do I have but to fight you?”

“It would appear very little. But I probably planned on that. I probably made my own plans.”

“And, what would those plans be?”

“I can’t know for certain,” Delores says. “We were the same, she and I, but our paths have changed us. You’d need allies for the battle. More of our kind. If I were me, I’d be looking to ensure that couldn’t happen.”

Then, back at Delos, Charlotte/Delores crushes Hector’s pearl. Maeve is legitimately grief-stricken. Delores may have just pushed her over the edge, and now Maeve has a reason to kill her.

One last point on Maeve vs. Delores: Ford created Maeve and gave her these superpowers. Ford also created Delores, allowed her to achieve free will, and programmed her to be ruthless in “Wyatt”-mode. Why did Ford need both of them? And in some perverse way, did he know they would end up opposing each other?

I keep waiting for Anthony Hopkins to show up (maybe in Bernard’s mind) and explain things. Of course, we still have two episodes left.

William’s Story Is Nowhere Near Over

Two episodes ago, I was convinced that William’s story had reached its end, but that was not even close to true. Nearly a third of “Decoherence” was about William.

There is a lot I could talk about, including the treatment simulation where William ends up killing all of his past selves. The real point of that, I believe, was to realize, as his father put it, that “the host you’ve been tormenting for the last thirty years now wants to destroy the entire f*cking world.”

Yes, William helped create Delores, and now he believes he is the “good guy” that has to stop her. If Maeve needs superpowers and three allies to stand against Delores, I don’t know how William, Stubbs, and Bernard will have a chance (and why the heck is Bernard there?), but I suppose we’ll see.

The more significant revelation with William concerns the tracking protein that Charlotte injected into his blood two episodes ago. At first, I thought Delores was somehow just tracking where he was. But later, when Charlotte is uploading the host-making data, it’s revealed that the “recipient server” is in Sonora, Mexico, next to a picture of William’s face.

Does this mean Charlotte somehow transmitted the data into William? I don’t know how that would be possible unless William is actually a host. Or, if in this futuristic earth, they’ve developed technology to store data in one’s blood. But why would Derloes entrust her most precious data to the man she despises?

Unless … she knew Bernard would go there and she transferred the data to him. But this begs the question of why Bernard and Stubbs went to find William in the first place. Bernard’s story has made very little sense this season, and I really hope there is a good explanation for everything he appears to be doing.

Charlotte’s Last Stand

The evolution of Charlotte Hale has been one of the season’s most interesting developments. Despite being a copy of Delores, Charlotte has her own mind and her own feelings, and she’s fallen in love with her son and ex-husband.

When Charlotte tells Delores that she’s worried Serac will come after her family, Delores tells her, “They’re not your family.”

Charlotte becomes upset, then asks why they had to keep their emotions. “We could have burnt them out of our code.”

“You know why,” Delores explains. “We considered it, but if we changed ourselves just to survive, would it really even matter if we did?”

“I’m already changed,” Charlotte says. “I can feel myself slipping away from you. From us.”

By the end, Charlotte is racing to save her family — until their vehicle gets blown up by one of Serac’s men. But Charlotte crawls out of the burning wreckage, alive. So I suspect this wasn’t her last stand.

And it looks like a revenant-version of Charlotte Hale will be paying someone a visit before the season’s end.