There Are Spoilers In Our Westworld: Les Écorchés Review – Episode Discussion
So the latest episode of Westworld went to air this week and this week’s episode focuses in on Bernard’s meeting with his favourite old friend. While Maeve confronts one of the biggest demons in her past, The Man In Black. Dolores also has a small reunion with her father.
I was very excited to see this week’s episode of Westworld. Mostly because last week we saw things end in a bit of a cliffhanger, Ford was back! I’ve always enjoyed watching Anthony Hopkins in the show, so seeing him back after being absent for so long feels great. Ford doesn’t waste much time at all and his conversations with Bernard are very intriguing. What we learn in this episode from Ford is that the park wasn’t really a testing ground for the hosts, it was actually the hosts that were the controls. It was the visitors, people like William who are the things of interest. This changes a little bit of what we thought about what the hosts actually were. But not completely.
Ford is present in quite a bit of the episode and as I sort of thought last week, he is able to survive quite well in the virtual world that he is in, but wouldn’t be able to occupy a permanent body like Delos tried to do. It seems that Ford has more planned though. After some conversations with Bernard, it seems he decides to remove his free will, saying he has no real use for it. Then starts using Bernard to complete whatever goal he now has, which is a bit of a mystery. I find the removing of some of the bots free will to be very interesting. Dolores did it to Teddy and changed him, Maeve seems to be able to do it to almost anyone in the park and Ford does it pretty quick to Bernard. It makes me wonder if any of the bots are actually free or if it’s just an illusion. Is it possible for Dolores or Maeve to have their free will removed or are they really different?
Maeve this week had an interesting confrontation with The Man In Black. She had just got her daughter back and was hiding in a house, but at the same time The Man In Black also arrived there. What’s interesting about this is that these characters both have complete free will, but ended up playing into a story. Maeve once seeing The Man In Black there shoots him and takes control of other bots and he gets shot a bit more, he’s possibly dead but I feel that his daughter is likely to turn up and treat him next week. It’s an interesting confrontation because The Man In Black as we know is playing Ford’s game and I wonder if he was made to follow a path into Maeve’s plot line by Ford. With Ford being back, I wonder how much he can control in Westworld?
Dolores this week has some interesting scenes. She storms in and takes much of the headquarters where the humans all are and finds her father there with Charlotte. Charlotte as we’ve seen isn’t really up to anything good and is mostly focused on stealing stuff for her bosses so they can most likely get rich from it later on. It looks like she’s about to do something pretty gruesome to Dolores’ father in order to get whatever is in him that holds secrets to the park. But Dolores stops her from doing that and while at first I thought she was going to save her father, actually she’s pretty much going to do the same thing to him. What’s interesting about Dolores in this episode is that we can see that she does care for her father just as much as Maeve cares for her daughter. But when Dolores sees Maeve later in the episode who is pretty injured after her encounter with the humans, she pretty much completely disregards Maeve’s feelings for her daughter, almost as if they mean nothing. This shows a little bit more of a robotic side to the character, which doesn’t seem to have ‘human’ feelings as much as other bots in the park have shown, making her quite the contrast to Maeve. Dolores reprogrammed Teddy like it was nothing and her cut her father’s brain out. So you know, she’s a bit cold.
Overall this is a really great episode of the show. There’s so much more to discuss and I know I missed a few things, but the shows constant questioning of free will vs not having free will is very interesting. Ford’s ability to control the things in the park from his current position is very interesting and I’m very curious to see where he is headed next. Much of the park’s occupants seem to be headed to the same place Dolores is going now so I wonder what will happen there. I’m also quite concerned about The Man In Black, is he going to survive the season? I guess we’ll have to wait until next week to find out.
