Westworld Season 3 has been, by far (and so far), the best complete season of the futuristic adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel from the 1970s.
One of the key reasons for this is the season has eased away from leaning so hard into drawn-out puzzle box storylines. Mysteries are presented, and, after strong character work, smartly placed callbacks, and short-yet-effective storytelling, are resolved. However, the resolution, unlike previous seasons, does not leave us with broken expectations — instead the resolutions whisk us off to either another, grander puzzle box or a compelling new story.
A perfect example of this can be found in Episode 4, ‘The Mother of Exiles’ (which I apologize for a lack of review – real life responsibilities pulled me away from writing). We were presented with a unique premise — which hosts did Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood, The Ides of March) implant into the bodies of Hale (Tessa Thompson, Sorry to Bother You), and Connells (Tommy Flanagan, Sons of Anarchy)? The answer came in a wonderfully crafted moment, when Hale reveals to a half-crazed, highly suspicious William (Ed Harris, The Truman Show) that she is in fact “his oldest friend.” Hit the “dun dun dunnnn” and realize that Hale, Connells, and a re-introduced Musashi (Hiroyuki Sanada, 47 Ronin) are Dolores “clones.” This leaves us with William being committed to an asylum, and us all wondering, “Whoa, what are Dolores’ intentions? Can we trust her? Is she the villain? Is she the hero?”
With that, we enter Westworld Season 3 Episode 5, ‘Genre.’ While the episode doesn’t have the ‘excuse me as I pick my jaw off the damn floor’ reveal like Episode 4, it still packs an absolute dramatic wallop, while continuing to reveal puzzles and mysteries. This continues our questioning of our lead, Dolores; this time through the eyes of Caleb (Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad).
As an episode, ‘Genre’ does more work playing with music, effects, and cinematography than any other episode in series history. Caleb is dosed by Liam (John Gallagher, Jr., The Newsroom) with the party drug “genre” which alters a user’s world by altering their vision and sound to reflect 20th Century film genres. Caleb, with at times brilliantly comedic flare, goes through the genres of film noir, romantic comedy, and a war epic. Watching Caleb go all doe-eyed over Dolores as a romantic score swells in the background and the two blast gunmen with high powered machine guns is a nice bit of levity in a series often devoid of it. However, it’s not all for laughs. The genre scenes help underscore the paranoia of moments where Dolores’ unit is potentially being hunted down, while the use of “Ride of the Valkyries” is almost too perfect for the big car chase and gun battle.
However “Genre” isn’t all about clever audio-visual cues. It reveals the central plot of the entire season — control. The episode does a really terrific job of establishing the motives of Serac (Vincent Cassel, Black Swan). Serac’s backstory is one of the better backstories of the corporate types in this series. With both Ford (Anthony Hopkins, Noah) and William it was a long, protracted path into discovering their motives, and even to this day William’s motives are still a bit hazy (because is he a host…because we never got that resolved).
With Serac, we see a man’s motivations born out of tragedy (the apparent nuclear holocaust in his hometown of Paris, France), and how he and his brother’s goal was to create Rehoboam in order to save the human race from ecological, militaristic, and/or economic annihilation. And his goal was to be realized even if it meant both removing free will from humanity and eliminating those who could not adhere to Rehoboam’s algorithm including his own brother.
Outside of a wonderful performance from Vincent Cassel, we’re also treated to the revelation that the graphic interstitials the series itself has used to designate a change in settings is actually the read out from Rehoboam. Once Dolores releases Rehoboam’s control over the human race, we see this graphic go absolutely bonkers. While this isn’t a staggering revelation, kudos to the writers for a nice little detail.
However, the big thing we’re left with is this — who’s right in all of this world, and who’s wrong? Is Dolores the great emancipator, or is she a harbinger of death? This question is definitely one festering in the soul of Caleb, which Aaron Paul masterfully portrays through his eyes. Is this person, who literally walked in front of bullets for him earlier, really about liberation or is there something more sinister here? Has she duped him, and in essence, us as well?
And if Dolores isn’t purely a righteous liberator, is Serac on the right side of things? Had his plan not been enacted the earth may well have ceased to exist. Is giving up free will, and not being in control of your destiny in exchange for the survival of the world an acceptable tradeoff? Or is having the ability to be free, and live life the way you see fit the best for you, and for humanity in general?
We see how the reveal of the managed fate impacts literally everyone (with Caleb’s genre of “horror” overtaking him), and it manifests itself in violence, exemplified by Lena Waithe’s Ash, who executes Liam to prove what free will is all about.
As an audience, we are going to have to choose a side. Are we Team Dolores, or are we Team Serac (which will be Team Maeve by next episode)? It’s a moral question that the series has proposed before, almost as a beta test, with the hosts in previous seasons. But now that it’s impacting the human race, despite the fact we’re watching a fictionalized series, the audience now has to make a choice which impacts actual humans beings and not just humanlike hosts.
Westworld Season 3 Episode 5 is the kind of philosophically challenging episode that the series has desperately tried to produce since Day 1 and has been unsuccessful in executing effectively thus far. This may be because the path to this question has never been asked as straightforwardly as it was this week. There’s no gimmicks, hard lefts or zabba da here to detract from the moral question, and the series is absolutely benefitting from it.
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