Warning: Spoilers for episode two ahead.
Westworld’s pilot episode set up a fascinating premise: a futuristic Wild West–themed amusement park where the rich can enact their own cowboy fantasies with hyperrealistic robots. Having shown us this world, Westworld now wants us to contemplate what it all means: What do the choices the “players” make say about their humanity, and what does it say about the park’s creators that they present us with these “violent delights”?
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Choose Your Own (Mis)Adventure
I used the word “players” because the park functions like a real-life “open world” game like Grand Theft Auto and World of Warcraft—whether you’re the hero or villain is your choice. Westworld’s second episode, “Chestnut,” opens with the arrival of two friends who embody those two paths: William (Jimmi Simpson) and Logan (Ben Barnes). The churlish Logan tells his brother-in-law William that the park “is the answer to the question you’ve been asking yourself.” “What question?,” William replies, to which Logan says, “Who you really are.”
Just like in a video game, the first choice Westworld presents its guests is how they will look; William’s taken to a changing room where “bespoke” rows of jeans, guns, belts, and vests are there for his choosing. He also has to make the symbolic choice of whether to wear a white or black hat; he chooses white and returns to meet Logan, wearing a black hat. They’ve made their choices.
Jimmi Simpson as William and Talulah Riley as Angela. Photo by John P. Johnson/courtesy of HBO
Non-Player Characters
Of course, moral choices only exist for those who can make them. The robot hosts don’t (currently) have that option. While Westworld‘s pilot focused on host Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood), this week’s episode centers on fellow host and madame Maeve (Thandie Newton), who starts to suffer from similar memory glitches after Dolores whispers into her ear: “These violent delights have violent ends.” This line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet seems to telegraph the arc of this season.
This phrase acts as a kind of triggering code, as Maeve begins to have flashbacks to the horrors her body has experienced—the center of town littered with the dead, her family butchered by face-painted warriors, the menacing Man in Black (Ed Harris) coming toward her with a knife.
These horrifying flashes throw her off her game, and she fails to seduce brothel guests at the proper rate. Facing decommissioning—few pimps are as cruel as corporate bean counters— Westworld‘s HQ dramatically boosts her aggression. When she goes through her seduction speech again, she practically smashes a bot-curious woman into a wall.
Maeve also features in the episode’s most thrilling sequence, as she awakens in the repair shop to the horror of two Geek Squad–esque surgeons. She flees through the cold, darkened halls until stumbling into more surgeons hosing down the dead bodies of her peers piled in a glass room before succumbing to a needle to the neck.
Don’t Hate the Game, Hate the Player
In any video game, there are always players who choose to play by their own rules—to find and exploit the errors and glitches. In Westworld, that’s the Man in Black. After the raping and scalping in last week’s episode, in “Chestnut,” the Man in Black is content to simply shoot a bunch of people while trying to get the criminal Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.) to help him find the “deepest level of this game.” He has only a map etched on a scalp as a guide—that is, until Lawrence’s daughter gives him mysterious directions to “the maze” while warning him that it isn’t meant for him.
The Man in Black’s violent rampage also finally catches the notice of HQ, but when an employee asks if he should “slow him down,” he’s told “that gentleman gets whatever he wants.” What does he want? “You don’t understand, Lawrence,” Harris’s character says at one point. “This time, I’m never going back.”
Jimmi Simpson as William and Ben Barnes as Logan. Photo by John P. Johnson/courtesy of HBO
OR—Hate the Game Designers
This episode also wants us to question the ethics behind the way the game itself is constructed. Is it really the fault of Grand Theft Auto players that they murder prostitutes and mow down police officers when the game was designed to let them do so?
Just as William and Logan represent the white- and black-hat options for players, Sizemore (Simon Quarterman) and Ford (Anthony Hopkins) represent two models of game creation. Sizemore is presenting his latest escapist gore-fest, a storyline so bloody it will make “Hieronymus Bosch look like he was doodling kittens!” He claims to offer the guests the ability to get to know themselves, but it’s clear he’s more interested in the bloody thrills he’s come up with—like self-cannibalism and something called “the whore-oborous.”
Ford—in a very metafictional speech that could echo critical opinions of HBO’s own slate of original programming—explains that great art is more than “cheap thrills.” The guests come back to Westworld for “the subtleties [and] the details,” which is why he’s been working on his own epic new storyline—which we don’t quite know about just yet.
Having Your Cake and Shooting It, Too
This strong second episode has plenty of meta-fictional resonance. Westworld is a dark, violent drama that comments on the dark, violent dramas that dominate TV. It shows us violent, thrilling action sequences—such as the Man in Black’s excellently executed shoot-up at the Mexican village—while still offering commentary on the violence at hand. It’s a bit of a balancing act, but so far, it’s working.
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