Another week, another fantastic episode of Westworld season 4 on HBO, which is something I absolutely did not think I would be saying this year, as the series totally fell off my radar after a baffling third season. But even though the park and the cowboys are gone, and we are continuing with the “modern day” storyline, what the show is doing now is nothing short of incredible.
Spoilers through last night follow.
While I’ve said season 4 of Westworld was good before this, now things have moved into new territory, as the full scope of what’s going on this season has become clear. And the reality of the “present day” storyline represents a world that has been almost entirely taken over by hosts, subjugating humans the way hosts themselves used to be controlled. The prime example is a “playground” New York City where all humans are controlled by a giant sound-emitting tower they have been conditioned not to see.
The hosts are now “gods” in the city, and it’s implied that cities like these exist all around the world, where they can come in, mess with the humans, murder them, do nearly whatever they want. All of this has been orchestrated by Hale, a vengeful copy of Dolores who has spawned a generation of new hosts built on her code. Dolores herself exists in the city, and this week we learned that she’s the one who has written the “narrative” for every human loop in the entire place. Possibly even the whole world.
All of this has very much echoes of The Matrix, which was not true in until this past week when we figured out what was going on. Before this, it seemed like we were in a race against the clock to prevent Hale from executing her vision to enslave the human race, only to have the rug pulled out from under us when we see that she’s already pulled it off, and has for decades.
Like The Matrix, Hale is battling with some sort of virus that appears to be infecting her perfect world through human “outliers.” Because this is not a virtual space, no one is dodging bullets or flying around, but it’s a similar conflict inside a very similar dystopia, and it’s pulling it off in ways that The Matrix’s sequels, including the recent Resurrection, never did. It’s probably the best “machines conquer the world” sci-fi storyline I’ve seen since the original Matrix itself, and we’re still in the middle of the season getting absolutely stellar episodes each and every week.
Right now, there appear to be two main forces pushing back against Hale. There are the last remaining humans who are not under the control over the sound-emitters and as such, try to rescue outliers and disrupt her plans through guerrilla warfare. And then aiding them appear to be a cache of “original” hosts that were not converted to Hale code. This includes Bernard, Stubbs and likely Maeve, once she’s back online. Teddy, who causes Dolores to wake from her dream in the city, also appears to be “original Teddy” retaining all his park memories. One X factor here is Caleb, who died 20 years ago but now appears to be an experiment for Hale as she runs him through fail loops over and over for…some reason which remains unclear.
All of this paints a picture of a fascinating dystopia which has evolved from “mistreated robots rebel in a theme park” to “mistreated robots conquer the planet and enslave the human race” in a way that somehow feels very believable. I would start watching again if I were you.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.