Cthulhudrew

You'd think with all the time travel shenanigans he himself has pulled over the past three seasons, Barry wouldn't have such a hard time believing that the future he ended up in may just be a possible future, right? An alternate timeline? Is it just me?

I think Ford doesn't really care much about humans. It's been pretty evident since the pilot that people consider him odd because he spends all his time with the Hosts, and then in this episode he tells Dolores that the past 30 years of suffering was because he needed the Hosts to be prepared to face the "enemy." Given that, plus the fact that he has noted previously that if the Hosts were to become conscious, humans would never allow them to exist (or something to that effect), I think that speaks volumes about why Maeve's escape involved her recruiting two of Westworld's most notorious killers. Plus, I imagine he liked the symmetry of having Hector and Armistice play a similar role in the Real World as they do in Westworld- that of ushering in the end of the storyline with a chorus of violence and bloodshed.

You're probably right, but I'm just not really seeing what Ford would have had to gain by having Maeve (or any Host) escape from the park. Was it just to foment chaos? EDIT: And I'm starting to wonder if the samurai might be a part of a new park called EastWorld?

Very enjoyable. Shogunworld looks interesting, and has some interesting implications (Ford commenting that William owns the park, or at least "most of it"). Felix's comment that "it's a long story" in response to Maeve's questioning of it seemed a bit like Fourth-Wall breaking commentary, though. Loved Maeve's compliment to Felix that he makes a terrible human. Having just been to Paramount Ranch earlier this afternoon to wander the western town where parts of this episode was shot really made watching this a more visceral experience for me.

I think it was Sizemore, actually. He and Charlotte kept talking about his special project and sneaking out the information from the park- who better to have done that than Maeve? But Arnold and Ford's conditioning of her over the years, and her memories of her child/not child threw a wrench into that plan when she decided not to leave the park after all.

One other thing that kind of struck me as odd with the "Cisco Learns His Lesson" morality play in this episode (aside from providing mixed motives for the Dominators) was that it seemed to me that Cisco was implying that his saving the Dominator in the past is what led to them somehow coming back in the future to wipe out the Metas. Not only did this not seem consistent with Past-Dominator's assessment that it was the JSA that led them to originally attack the Earth (implying already had it in for the Metas), but it seems to fly in the face of every time travel rule we've seen in the show(s) so far. Okay, so they've pretty much broken the (1? 2?) actual rules they've ever established, but up until this point, the only changes we've ever seen to the timeline only occurred as a result of the heroes initiating the change to their present by travelling to the past and mucking around. This time, the implication is that the event that is occurring in their present was actually initiated by their future selves (post-Dominator invasion; albeit only a few days post-Dominator invasion). That's a very different way of showing Timey-Wimey muckery in any of these shows so far, and it really just opens a can of worms as to what- precisely- it should mean to try and stop "time aberrations" and protect the course of history. Whose history? Future Heroes' history? Present-day Heroes' history? Past Heroes' history? My head hurts. EDIT: Anyway, I guess my point really is that this was kind of a poorly thought out way to bring Cisco around, because his rationale of somehow being at fault for Present Dominators doesn't seem to fit the pieces narrative. "Dominators came to investigate JSA, got run off by humans, came back when Barry demonstrated the true danger of Metas via Flashpoint" fits much better than "Dominators came to investigate JSA, got run off by humans but saved by Metas, came back decades later to destroy the Meta threat- except for the guys who saved one of them."

I was also struck by what seemed inconsistent writing with the Dominator's motives in this episode. First we are told that it is Barry's messing around that brought them and they want him to surrender, then- as you point out- the one Dominator suggests instead that their goal is total metahuman elimination, but by the end of the episode it's all back to just "Barry give up" and no one points out the convo with Nate and Cisco. Kept waiting for someone to mention it, but I guess it would have diminished Barry's heroic sacrifice so it got shuffled offstage to die a quiet death. They couldn't get rid of the Nate/Cisco scene, though, because they needed that one to drive home (with extreme malice and lack of subtlety) Cisco's about-face on the whole time travel stuff. The two scenes could have used another pass in the writer's room, I think.

This was a very well done scene. It even had me wondering for a minute if this episode was actually going to be Willa's swan song and the show was writing Thea out. I quickly discarded that notion, and figured that she would end up joining back up with everyone else, but it was so well done by both of them, that I was almost hoping that the show creators would have been ballsy enough to do it that way. Then again, Willa is one of the real highlights of Arrow these days that it would have been a shame. She has grown leaps and bounds from season 1 as an actress and gets some of the best- and most consistent- writing on the show.

I thought I heard her saying that, but didn't feel like rewinding to double check. Cool. Overall, pretty underwhelmed by the entire crossover. There were definitely some good moments in each episode, but the whole really lacked in getting across the idea that this even needed to be a crossover in the first place. Major characters underutilized; the bad guys a non-existent or absent threat for much of the time; a quick and not terribly satisfying wrap-up to it all. I did enjoy Firestorm getting to transmute something and being the Big Damn Hero. Mick, as always is great (still miss Snart though!). Rather than have this entire invasion fleet that didn't apparently invade and only made one metahuman-bomb (what's keeping them from making another?), maybe it would have been better to focus on a smaller group of aliens instead, give a couple of them some personalities and names, and make them a more personal threat to the heroes as a result? (And ditch the CGI and make them more practical so you can get some good actors in for them instead.)

If someone told me I had a relative that I never knew about because they'd accidentally erased them from time, I'd think they were absolutely nuts, and not care too much. ... Unless I lived in a world where people could fly, cast magic spells, and run fast enough that they could actually travel through time, and I'd actually seen those things happen. Then I suspect I'd be a bit peeved to know that my life had been altered beyond my control- and wonder what else might have changed and why- even if I didn't actually have any memory of it myself. And I'm not even a parent, so who knows how I'd react to that news? (Especially if the person responsible was someone I liked and admired and- up until this point- didn't really have any particular reason to mistrust their judgment.) Agreed. More and more I think that's the "Betrayed By Someone We Trust!" swerve the show is doing this season. (They do it every season.) They're trying to convince us it's going to be Caitlin, and even show us that she doesn't trust herself, but it's really going to be Cisco pulling a Dark Willow.

I assume the reason they went this route with Cisco this season was because they felt they needed to have some conflict between the characters, and not have everyone be friends- because network tv shows need drama to be overt all the time, or else they feel like the audiences just aren't going to get the subtleties or something. But it's not like there hadn't been conflicts between Cisco and Barry, or Cisco and the others in previous seasons. It's just that they didn't drag it out and beat it to death. And it was fine and worked really, really well, to the point that Cisco became one of the most beloved characters on the show (I know I didn't really "vibe" to him at first myself). So, I think they definitely overreached on this one.

That's got to be really rough for Dig. The anger he must feel about Barry erasing the daughter he now never knew, and the guilt of feeling that way knowing that he has a son he really loves now. I hope they give David Ramsey a chance to really play up the full depth of all of that, and don't just take the path of least resistance. Agreed. It's like they decided making Barry all emo in season 2 wasn't enough, and they sent Cisco down that same well. And as much as I agreed with Jax that they should let everyone know, I also think Oliver was absolutely right and that it should wait until crisis #1 was averted. No wrong or easy position to take on the secret keeping. This time.

It was fun. A bit uneven, and I absolutely loathe hero vs. hero stories (why do they crop up with such regularity in fiction? Am I the outlier?), but overall pretty good. I do wish get tired of CGI aliens all the time. Is it less or more expensive than practical effects? (I'd guess the latter, given how many different programmers you'd have to employ, but it's probably quicker.) Sara mentioned it early on, said they were back with the ship ("Newbies"). I would suspect it probably had something to do with the timing of when they shot the episode (possibly before LoT began shooting, but early enough that they had the concepts of the characters down? Dunno.)

From your lips to Braniac's ears.

It does play really awkwardly so far on the show. In my head, I have it that Hank considers himself a "Super Man" in a Nietzschean context, and is trying to rehabilitate the term to take some agency back for humanity from the aliens he hates. He appends the "Cyborg" part to it to distinguish himself from Kal-El (and because it accurately reflects his super origins).

He definitely was pretending, just like he was pretending not to understand what Kara was going on about earlier in the episode with crushes. It seemed a weird swerve for the character, though; acting coy is definitely not a trait Mon-El has demonstrated up to this point. I liked the last scene with Alex and Maggie (and adored how tactile Alex was with Maggie; Chyler Leigh is so good), but their little kerfluffle seemed to be pretty well glossed over. Wasn't Alex on bad terms (or at least not terribly friendly terms) when we last saw them?

"These violent delights have violent ends." - Dolores to Maeve, episode 2.

I feel like Ford is in his own loop; one which involves him working endlessly to try and keep the Hosts in their own loops and refrain from attaining the consciousness that Arnold so hoped to (and seemingly succeeded at) engendering in them.

Echoing the "why'd they go with the sudden turn in Caitlin's personality" crowd. And I don't think laying a bit of groundwork over three episodes cuts it. I think there were ample reasons for Caitlin to actually go evil- if only briefly. Things that had been set well in motion over three seasons- losing Ronnie twice; her issues with her parents; fears of what she'd seen in her doppelganger; anger over Barry's stupidity. I even think there was something they could have done with perhaps unrequited feelings towards Barry (early in season one it looked like she had a thing for him- and frankly, I thought they had better chemistry than he and Iris); the latter could certainly have motivated that "killer" kiss. Even some of the dialogue they gave her showed that they had a sense of her growing resentment underneath- but they tried to cram it all in and resolve it so abruptly, and write it off as "the powers made/make her evil." So nope. Not going to give them a pass. It's kind of a shame to me that they didn't really capitalize on their own efforts up to this point with a copout. (I also thought Cisco already knew about Dante; didn't he and Barry have this whole "his death is your fault" in episode 2 or 3? Or was that just Cisco upset that Barry wouldn't fix Dante's death?) I'm also really, really tired of them constantly going into the speedster well the way they do. Now this guy! He's the fastest one there is! Gah. On another note, I really am enjoying this new iteration of Wells. Tom Cavanagh is just such a delight to watch in all of his incarnations. How cool for him that he kind of gets to reinvent himself each season? They should do an entire episode of just the various Wells characters. "Crisis of Infinite Wells!"

I can totally hear Dominic Purcell's grinning, gravelly Heatwave voice: "Who's up for a little barbecue?"

That's how it appeared to us, the viewer, chronologically. But we've already seen that there are issues with scenes from Bernard's perspective (the door last ep), and it does seem as if the writers are playing with timelines. I'm now thinking it's possible that the phone conversation with Bernard and Elsie happened, but might have taken place prior to him meeting with Theresa. Ford (for some reason) sent him to kill Elsie, then as part of his cleanup (that Ford notes he does so well), he arranged for that phone call to be replayed to his memory-wiped self so that he'd recall it having taken place but also that he could not have been near when she was abducted/killed. But then, maybe that's too elaborate a theory for it. I think that he said that to Lawrence, but yes, I think that is more or less verbatim.

EDIT: Had issues w/multiquote.

Did MiB mention that he was a surgeon in an early episode? I can't recall for certain. In any event, I'm wondering if the mysterious purpose Delos has for the Hosts is to use the process Ford has created to create artificial replacement parts for human bodies.

I don't think he's just any old schlub; I think he is some high level manager or director or something that actually earned his position through merit, while Logan just happens to outrank him due to nepotism, and William is now marrying into the family biz.