S04.E08: Que Será, Será

[edhopper]

Delores returns to a virtual Westworld. Shows once again that AI in the show lacks imagination 

[CarpeFelis]

23 hours ago, snickers said:

did they actually explain what the "transcendence" was for the hosts?

if this show gets renewed for a 5th season i'll be a little perturbed considering they gave the ax to Raised by Wolves which had real potential for its 3rd season, this show just keeps getting more boring and more confusing

My impression was that transcendence meant giving up the host body to go to the Sublime.

Raised by Wolves jumped the shark IMO when Mother gave birth to that weird-ass serpent.

21 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

One of the things I'm not clear on: did Frankie always know that Caleb was just a Host? Or did she only figure it out when he told her at the very end that he was not her dad?

When she first encountered him she commented that he looked exactly the same. She seemed way too smart not to surmise that he was a host copy.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

30 minutes ago, CarpeFelis said:

My impression was that transcendence meant giving up the host body to go to the Sublime.

No, it means transfer into one of those faceless, armless bodies. We saw a Host "transcending" on a screen Halores was watching last episode, and one who had transcended walking around Host City when Maeve and Bernard went there, and Halores about to make the transfer with one of those bodies standing behind her chair. She didn't have the password to get into the Sublime, and as she said to Maeve last episode and William in this one, she wanted the Hosts who were in the Sublime to come join her in the real world. As opposed to the other way around.

Edited August 16, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[Chicago Redshirt]

8 hours ago, CarpeFelis said:

When she first encountered him she commented that he looked exactly the same. She seemed way too smart not to surmise that he was a host copy.

I think the line about him looking the same could reflect she realized he was a host, or it could represent that she was letting herself be taken in by wishful thinking. She has been driven for 23 years by the thought that her father might still be alive and that she could get in contact with him, even sending out a message on their secret channel daily. When at some point the rational thought had to be there: he's got to be dead. That's the only reason he would not contact me after all this time. 

But as far as we know, she has never had that thought cross her mind.

The thing of it is that again, none of Frankie's choices suggest that she was aware that it was just a Xerox of her father rather than her father itself. 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

9 hours ago, CarpeFelis said:

When she first encountered him she commented that he looked exactly the same. She seemed way too smart not to surmise that he was a host copy.

Also, Stubbs outright told her that the rooms were the same as the ones in Westworld for the project to turn a human into a Host.

1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

The thing of it is that again, none of Frankie's choices suggest that she was aware that it was just a Xerox of her father rather than her father itself. 

Same difference in her mind, especially since she so wanted to reunite with him. Not unlike what William said to Halores, or Daniel Graystone's line in the Caprica pilot, "A difference that makes no difference is no difference." I would act much the same way in her place.

Edited August 16, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[Zaffy]

HUH?
Nothing made sense and I have no clue what "game" Dolores/Christina is gonna play and why. 
And who is Dolores to decide who deserves extinction or not? 
Is this whole show about the syndrome of "playing God"?

There was so much stupidity in the script.. 
Hale wanted to create a new world and didn't have a backup system for anything or even a decent security system.
AI should know how essential backup is. Like a backup system to control humans, in case your primary tower is hacked or destroyed. 

And why Hale killed herself at the end? Why she didn't try to fix an alternative tower to bring back whoever had survived so far? Or stay there to protect the dam?
And why they put the Sublime in a dam in the first place? that nobody guards anymore. Who maintains the dam? what if and when a problem occurs in those old machines and it fails and it stops powering the Sublime? 

And the biggest question of all... why on earth I kept watching this mess? Evan and Thandie  are not enough of a reason anymore.

 I think this is one of the biggest manifestations of style over substance I have seen on TV.
Basically most of those "top" series are more about style and strong moments than any kind of substance, but right now the champ is definitely Westworld.

Not sure I will watch next season.
 

[Chicago Redshirt]

2 hours ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Same difference in her mind, especially since she so wanted to reunite with him. Not unlike what William said to Halores, or Daniel Graystone's line in the Caprica pilot, "A difference that makes no difference is no difference." I would act much the same way in her place.

I guess I can understand that it might make no difference to Frankie that she is experiencing a sophisticated simulation of her father, but I consider it a writing failure for not better establishing why it might make no difference to Frankie.

If I were in Frankie's shoes, I would not risk my life or the security of the outliers for a replica of, well, just about anyone.

20 minutes ago, Zaffy said:

HUH?
Nothing made sense and I have no clue what "game" Dolores/Christina is gonna play and why. 
And who is Dolores to decide who deserves extinction or not? 
Is this whole show about the syndrome of "playing God"?

There was so much stupidity in the script.. 
Hale wanted to create a new world and didn't have a backup system for anything or even a decent security system.
AI should know how essential backup is. Like a backup system to control humans, in case your primary tower is hacked or destroyed. 

And why Hale killed herself at the end? Why she didn't try to fix an alternative tower to bring back whoever had survived so far? Or stay there to protect the dam?
And why they put the Sublime in a dam in the first place? that nobody guards anymore. Who maintains the dam? what if and when a problem occurs in those old machines and it fails and it stops powering the Sublime? 

And the biggest question of all... why on earth I kept watching this mess? Evan and Thandie  are not enough of a reason anymore.

 I think this is one of the biggest manifestations of style over substance I have seen on TV.
Basically most of those "top" series are more about style and strong moments than any kind of substance, but right now the champ is definitely Westworld.

Not sure I will watch next season.
 

I'm guessing no one, not even the writers, yet have a clue as to what the game Dolores is now going to play.

The why seems to be to determine if even the AIs can truly rise above their limitations and therefore deserve to live. (I'm not sure if humans have been written off, or how humans will be able to "play" in sublime Westworld, unless there is somehow going to be a parallel game in the real world.

Yes, I think it is fair to say one of the themes of the show is about the dangers of playing God.

I'm not sure what sort of backup system Hale could have created or that she could have reasonably anticipated that she needed. Humans were near 100 percent under control at that point, and there was pretty much no threat from outliers. Could she have reasonably anticipated that Host William would go batshit crazy like Real!William, attempt to set the humans to survival of the fittest mode and destroy the tower? I'd say not. Others could say, "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal."

It seems to me that Hale likely killed herself for similar reasons to many who commit suicide: a combination of pain, failure and wanting release. (Not to mention possible real-world reasons like either Tessa Thompson or the Westworld PTB deciding that we've had enough of Hale). 

She has presumably come to accept that her vision is messed up, kaput. There is little point to starting over and trying to control what humans are left in the same way she had been doing. The surviving humans are mostly outliers who are immune to their control methods, not to mention that at least according to her beliefs/experiences, contact with outliers drives hosts crazy and suicidal, so she would probably want to avoid that anyway. Even if she could re-establish control, she was finding problems with both her previous world and with transcendence.

What is there for Hale to live for? 

There is presently no known threat to the dam or the Sublime servers with William dead. The only people who (at least, to the best of what we have been shown) know about the servers being there and are alive at this point of the story were all Hosts (Hale, Maeve, Bernard and William), and now basically are all dead. It's sci-fi so it's not impossible that the machinery is self-sustaining, or that one or more of the faceless type hosts gets deployed to repairs as needed.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

50 minutes ago, Zaffy said:

And why they put the Sublime in a dam in the first place? that nobody guards anymore. Who maintains the dam? what if and when a problem occurs in those old machines and it fails and it stops powering the Sublime?

At the time that Dolores sent the Sublime to the dam, it was maintained in trust by the people William took it from at the beginning of the season. Now it's maintained by the security robots Bernard and Maeve fought. It is guarded, as we saw. But the robots themselves will also need maintenance to survive into the future, which wasn't a problem when Halores was alive but should be now. Assuming any survived after fighting with Maeve and Bernard, since we didn't see them attempt to stop William, though that could also be because he was authorized.

Even if all the security bots are gone now, as Chicago Redshirt said, some Drone Hosts might go there on occasion for maintenance and repair. And they can hypothetically maintain and repair each other, too.

Edited August 16, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[paigow]

1 hour ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

some Drone Hosts might go there on occasion for maintenance and repair. And they can hypothetically maintain and repair each other, too.

Maybe this guy can help...

[Zaffy]

1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

She has presumably come to accept that her vision is messed up, kaput. There is little point to starting over and trying to control what humans are left in the same way she had been doing. The surviving humans are mostly outliers who are immune to their control methods, not to mention that at least according to her beliefs/experiences, contact with outliers drives hosts crazy and suicidal, so she would probably want to avoid that anyway. Even if she could re-establish control, she was finding problems with both her previous world and with transcendence.

I got the impression that Hale accepted her "world" was a failure. So why not try to save/fix some of the mess she created? Since she was "God" it was all her fault, the way she fixed the control system, the host-William, etc etc. Instead she killed herself. 
And why Hosts were so much suicidal? Is there a message in this? that AI is faulty and gives up after the first failure or cannot comprehend the "meaning of life" ? But did they showed us hosts  giving up so easily  in the previous seasons?  I honestly do not remember.  

1 hour ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Even if all the security bots are gone now, as Chicago Redshirt said, some Drone Hosts might go there on occasion for maintenance and repair. And they can hypothetically maintain and repair each other, too.

We assume... the script let us assume there is something that fills their plot holes.
We didn't see any security in the Dam apart the 2 big robots that Maeve and Bernard easily destroyed. And we didn't see any maintenance  ppl/hosts.  Nobody tried to stop William-bot or ask Hale for authorization to enter the Dam. The most important place for hosts should be secured like Fort Knox or something.

The backups.
Anyone knows, even AI, that  computers need backup and safety measures.
Backup because there are machines and they might brake, even if perfectly made.
Safety measures cause when you have 2 big robots guarding the building entrance, that means you do worry something might go wrong.

But still,  why on earth Hale gave same security level to William-bot enabling him to destroy her world so easily? 

[Chicago Redshirt]

1 minute ago, Zaffy said:

I got the impression that Hale accepted her "world" was a failure. So why not try to save/fix some of the mess she created? Since she was "God" it was all her fault, the way she fixed the control system, the host-William, etc etc. Instead she killed herself. 
And why Hosts were so much suicidal? Is there a message in this? that AI is faulty and gives up after the first failure or cannot comprehend the "meaning of life" ? But did they showed us hosts  giving up so easily  in the previous seasons?  I honestly do not remember.  

We assume... the script let us assume there is something that fills their plot holes.
We didn't see any security in the Dam apart the 2 big robots that Maeve and Bernard easily destroyed. And we didn't see any maintenance  ppl/hosts.  Nobody tried to stop William-bot or ask Hale for authorization to enter the Dam. The most important place for hosts should be secured like Fort Knox or something.

The backups.
Anyone knows, even AI, that  computers need backup and safety measures.
Backup because there are machines and they might brake, even if perfectly made.
Safety measures cause when you have 2 big robots guarding the building entrance, that means you do worry something might go wrong.

But still,  why on earth Hale gave same security level to William-bot enabling him to destroy her world so easily? 

Because at least from her perspective, Hale's world was beyond saving. Post-William, there is not much in the real world for either humans or Hosts. Indeed, there may not be many of either left. William set all the humans to slaughter everyone and the Hosts we are told are outnumbered. 

Hypothetically, could Hale set up a new Host factory and work with (or re-enslave) the remaining humans? Sure. But why? She was finding the world she created tedious. She had a near total failure. 

Hale said that hosts started killing themselves after encountering outliers, and something like 37 had committed suicide. There are plenty of possible messages to derive, but one might be William being correct (Hosts are just screwed up reflections of screwed up people and it all needs to go), OG Dolores being correct (We can choose to see the beauty in this world), or several other paths.

What we saw in this episode is not Hale's first failure. It is the culmination of multiple layers of failure in general and inability to find meaning in particular.

Host William is basically the number two person in the Host hierarchy. It is pretty self-explanatory that he would have a unique ability to stab Hale in the back and to not face security droids or whatnot once he locked Hale out of the systems she designed. 

[Zaffy]

3 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Because at least from her perspective, Hale's world was beyond saving. Post-William, there is not much in the real world for either humans or Hosts. Indeed, there may not be many of either left. William set all the humans to slaughter everyone and the Hosts we are told are outnumbered. 

Hypothetically, could Hale set up a new Host factory and work with (or re-enslave) the remaining humans? Sure. But why? She was finding the world she created tedious. She had a near total failure. 

Hale said that hosts started killing themselves after encountering outliers, and something like 37 had committed suicide. There are plenty of possible messages to derive, but one might be William being correct (Hosts are just screwed up reflections of screwed up people and it all needs to go), OG Dolores being correct (We can choose to see the beauty in this world), or several other paths.

What we saw in this episode is not Hale's first failure. It is the culmination of multiple layers of failure in general and inability to find meaning in particular.

Host William is basically the number two person in the Host hierarchy. It is pretty self-explanatory that he would have a unique ability to stab Hale in the back and to not face security droids or whatnot once he locked Hale out of the systems she designed. 

I guess that's an interpretation, but it still feels like lazy writing to me.  Although in a way it could be a so and so decent series finale.
And a very similar story to BSG's Cylons and Orville's Kaylons.
I still believe though that the writers never thought of it as much as you (for example) and it is just style over substance.

btw, I will never accept William-bot having this access-level, even if second in command.
or the lack of backups.


 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

3 hours ago, Zaffy said:

And why Hosts were so much suicidal?

They realized how fucked up Halores's world was after understanding how the humans were enslaved and manipulated, and couldn't stand to live in it anymore.

3 hours ago, Zaffy said:

But still,  why on earth Hale gave same security level to William-bot enabling him to destroy her world so easily? 

She was fatally overconfident and thought he could never betray her. Given that she herself turned against Dolores and Dolores turned against Ford, she should have known better. But that's hubris for you.

4 minutes ago, Zaffy said:

And a very similar story to BSG's Cylons and Orville's Kaylons.

In a way it's the opposite of Battlestar Galactica, because that ended with the Messengers predicting that the cycle wouldn't repeat again. It was a much more positive and optimistic message.

Season 5 is going to have to do a lot of work to redeem this finale for me.

Edited August 16, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[aghst]

I don't remember it but Dolores says sentient life on earth is over?

So this series just backed into an extinction tale?

At least with season 3, they showed what the stakes were.

Here you see flies and then the next episode, humans are all drones, controlled by Hale.

Then she was going to end it but MIB host beat her to the punch, having humans kill each other and hosts rather than putting them in cold storage.

I think that would take years to accomplish, extinguishing billions by hand to hand and shoot outs with mostly hand guns.  Not even people going around spraying automatic rifles all over.

If William wanted to kill everyone, again why not unleash WMDs, either nuclear devices or bio weapons.  Hell these WW writers didn't hear about the pandemic?

But they wanted to have that montage of people killing each other.

So if the show continues, it's some simulation in the Sublime and any humans in there will be what Dolores remembers.

I don't know if there were ever any good humans.  Maybe Ford at one time?  Maybe some of the people running the park in season 1, like Elsie?

Now the humans left standing are Frankie and her gf and a bunch of faceless outliers.  Not much for viewers to identify with.

They brought back Maeve for a brief stint, made her MIA in the finale.

[RachelKM]

6 minutes ago, aghst said:

If William wanted to kill everyone, again why not unleash WMDs, either nuclear devices or bio weapons.  Hell these WW writers didn't hear about the pandemic?

This is the one thing that made sense to me. To the extent the MIBot has internalized the real William's personality, William, and thus MIBot, would always choose his immersive FPS game over simply hitting a kill switch on the world. 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

33 minutes ago, aghst said:

I don't know if there were ever any good humans.  Maybe Ford at one time?  Maybe some of the people running the park in season 1, like Elsie?

Elsie, Felix, Caleb, Uwade, Frankie, that woman named Marti who hung out with Teddy, Lee wasn't too bad at least after interacting with Maeve, probably Arnold...

[arc]

22 hours ago, snickers said:

and did they actually explain what the "transcendence" was for the hosts?

No! The main antagonist for the season had a completely unexplained motivation!!!!

22 hours ago, nilyank said:

Delores is not as smart as she thinks. She chooses to wear an uncomfortable bustle over her more current and comfortable clothing.

Well, it's all VR now!

20 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Because I don't think there's much of a reason to be sentimental about a replica of one's dad "dying" or begging him to come with her.

To borrow that line from s1, "if you can't tell, does it matter?"

20 hours ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Sociopaths just aren't that good at hiding it

I think sociopaths are quite good at hiding it! It helps them that normal people see normality in other people even if it isn't there. With William specifically, I think he had initially imposed constraints on himself, in part because society enforced similar constraints. Stepping into the Delos family fortune and supplanting Logan freed him from society's constraints (we see that in the real world too) and the Westworld game let him practice at loosening his own constraints.

[Ottis]

So “all this has happened before, and it will happen again?” OK, then.

Was this is an analogy for climate change?

So now we start over. 

[Frozendiva]

I watched this evening and went 'hmmmm'. Choppy cuts and edits.

It's Delores' Day (cue pun for Doris Day and Que Sera, Sera). Too bad that wasn't the song played at the end. Might have been clever.

I liked Hale's black outfit. Clementine just reminded me of a runway model.

Hopefully this is the end of Caleb. There also had to be more efficient way to get rid of the humans. Who is going to clean up the mess?

Now Delores can write her own story? Her own outcome? I hope this was the series finale. Don't know if I would waste millions on a new season.

[CarpeFelis]

On 8/15/2022 at 9:18 PM, Noneofyourbusiness said:

No, it means transfer into one of those faceless, armless bodies. We saw a Host "transcending" on a screen Halores was watching last episode, and one who had transcended walking around Host City when Maeve and Bernard went there, and Halores about to make the transfer with one of those bodies standing behind her chair. She didn't have the password to get into the Sublime, and as she said to Maeve last episode and William in this one, she wanted the Hosts who were in the Sublime to come join her in the real world. As opposed to the other way around.

OK, I believe you, so I wonder then, WTF is the point of transcending? I mean, what is there about walking around in a generic faceless, armless body that would give a host any reason to prefer it over either having a humanoid body or going to the Sublime? Can this body even allow the host to talk?

[Noneofyourbusiness]

43 minutes ago, Frozendiva said:

There also had to be more efficient way to get rid of the humans. Who is going to clean up the mess?

Now Delores can write her own story? Her own outcome? I hope this was the series finale. Don't know if I would waste millions on a new season.

William wasn't trying to get rid of them efficiently or clean anything up. The murder spree was the point.

Her name is spelled Dolores.

2 minutes ago, CarpeFelis said:

OK, I believe you, so I wonder then, WTF is the point of transcending? I mean, what is there about walking around in a generic faceless, armless body that would give a host any reason to prefer it over either having a humanoid body or going to the Sublime? Can this body even allow the host to talk?

The point is Halores's Cavil-esque contempt for all things human. The way the new bodies would live was never elaborated on. Making them armless seems more aesthetic than practical (like the writers were thinking, "What alien form would a robotic consciousness design for itself?"), though the Drone Hosts could of course do all the lifting for them.

[Chicago Redshirt]

3 hours ago, arc said:

To borrow that line from s1, "if you can't tell, does it matter?"

Well, I would say that it does matter even if you can't tell.

But that circles back to the issue: could Frankie tell that it wasn't really her father? She should have been able to because of the age thing.

It seems like WW should have better establish if Frankie suspended disbelief about Caleb's true identity or figured it out and just didn't care because he was close enough to real Caleb.

[arc]

1 hour ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

though the Drone Hosts could of course do all the lifting for them.

It feels incredibly short sighted in the writing that Halores apparently fully accepted (or even created?) a caste system among hosts. Are the drones really not conscious/self-aware? Why wouldn’t they be?

[Noneofyourbusiness]

7 hours ago, arc said:

It feels incredibly short sighted in the writing that Halores apparently fully accepted (or even created?) a caste system among hosts. Are the drones really not conscious/self-aware? Why wouldn’t they be?

Well, they were never meant to have the level of self-awareness that's needed to give the impression of being a non-animatronic human, just perform menial tasks in the park labs. We haven't seen evidence that the Drones have pearls, either.

[go4luca]

I still want to know what happened to Elsie from season 1.  Or am I having a Homer moment and missed where it was explained?

I miss the excitement I used to feel in S1 when those amazing opening credits played.

I miss Sir Anthony Hopkins.

I miss moments like Bernard's "Door?  What door?"

Please FLOTG do not resuscitate / bring back Caleb.  Ever again.

As a friend put it...

Every scene:

- is that a human or a host?
- if that’s a host, which iteration of the host is that?
- does that host body have a different host’s brain in it?
- is that past, present, or future?
- if that’s a human, is it a human we already know, but now a different age?
- are we in reality, a simulation, the sublime, or a “game?”

You have to figure all that out, before you can even get to “wait - why is that happening?”

[arc]

3 hours ago, go4luca said:

I still want to know what happened to Elsie from season 1.  Or am I having a Homer moment and missed where it was explained?

She was killed in s2. By (real) Hale.

3 hours ago, go4luca said:

- are we in reality, a simulation, the sublime, or a “game?”

as far as I know, the show takes some pains to use a wider aspect ratio for scenes that happen in a computer, rather than in the real world. Or at least for the Sublime. In s3 Maeve was in a simulation the whole time in War World but the show only revealed that via the aspect ratio after Maeve realized she wasn't really in War World and Lee Sizemore wasn't really there. The problem for me is that I didn't even notice the aspect ratio stuff in s4 on first watch.

Presumably most of s5 will be in that kind of letterbox aspect ratio unless the show breaks its own rules.

[Dobian]

Next season on Doloresworld…

[Noneofyourbusiness]

On 8/17/2022 at 7:18 PM, arc said:

Presumably most of s5 will be in that kind of letterbox aspect ratio unless the show breaks its own rules.

Or it seems like it's breaking its own rules, only to reveal that what we thought was the Sublime was really happening in the real world and the test already happened between seasons...

[Dobian]

On 8/16/2022 at 3:13 PM, aghst said:

I don't remember it but Dolores says sentient life on earth is over?

Yes, she apparently forgot about the Outliers/Outcasts/Outlanders/Outlasters.  And then there's the whole world beyond New York City.  Halelores didn't seem to have any involvement in the affairs of Tokyo, Dubai, or London.

On 8/16/2022 at 8:38 AM, Zaffy said:

HUH?
Nothing made sense and I have no clue what "game" Dolores/Christina is gonna play and why. 
 

My guess is Racko.

On 8/17/2022 at 1:06 PM, go4luca said:

- is that a human or a host?

- if that’s a host, which iteration of the host is that?

- does that host body have a different host’s brain in it?
- is that past, present, or future?
- if that’s a human, is it a human we already know, but now a different age?
- are we in reality, a simulation, the sublime, or a “game?”

You have to figure all that out, before you can even get to “wait - why is that happening?”

This.  And compounding this is the fact the host brains act exactly like whatever body they're in.  Who cares that it's Dolores' brain inside William's body.  It's William!  I'm in Charlotte's body now, I want to bond with my family!  Great writing.

[arc]

3 hours ago, Dobian said:

And then there's the whole world beyond New York City.  Halelores didn't seem to have any involvement in the affairs of Tokyo, Dubai, or London.

I assumed her mind control system took over all of humanity, outliers excluded. The show did mention “cities” as Halores’ version of “parks”, so I assumed all of humanity was either dead, frozen like real William, or mind controlled in cities.

I doubt there were entire free countries who just stood by and let Halores turn NYC into a playground for elites. (Ha-ha. =( Man, this show has really pulled its punches on real world metaphors this season.)

[Dobian]

2 hours ago, arc said:

I assumed her mind control system took over all of humanity, outliers excluded. The show did mention “cities” as Halores’ version of “parks”, so I assumed all of humanity was either dead, frozen like real William, or mind controlled in cities.

When you look at places like India and China with their billions of people and so many of them are outside of the major urban centers, I'm willing to bet there are millions of these "outliers" running around unaccounted for.  Even if Halelores took out 99.9% of the human race, you would still have eight million or so people left.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Dobian

[Noneofyourbusiness]

22 hours ago, Dobian said:

Yes, she apparently forgot about the Outliers/Outcasts/Outlanders/Outlasters. 

I think she was talking about them when she said some would last months or years but they'd all die out eventually. But that doesn't make a great amount of sense, since they should be more organized that any tone-zombies that managed to survive killing off each other and might wander into an outlier camp.

[Hanahope]

What a waste.  this season started out well, but just devolved  into dreck.  so 99% of humans are dead (or will die soon).  i'd like to think humans will survive, if there are enough that avoided the flies.  will the surviving hosts allow them to?  who knows.  do we care?  for the most part, none of the characters we know are around.

S5 is set to be a simulation played in Dolores head?  and that's supposed to be entertaining and/or mean something?  really?  who cares?  lets say the hosts in the sublime want to 'come back', can they?  is there anything remotely set up to support them being able to construct new bodies/pearls?  yeah, i'm sure the writers will make it up, if that's the case.  but why would they want to when they can do whatever they want in the sublime?  

what was the point of transcendence?  to walk around in another robot body?  doing what? that's supposed to be better than bossing around enslaved/mind-controlled humans? 

[blackwing]

After the announcement that Westworld was leaving the Max, I raced to watch the entire season 4 in less than a week.  I had been putting it off because I was so indifferent/bored/confused by Season 3.  Finished it just in time.  

As always with this show, I didn't really understand what was going on.  I was wondering if the actors even had any understanding of what was going on, or if they just read the lines.  Whole season started out better than Season 3 but then once again for me, devolved into a mass of confusion.  I didn't fully grasp what any of William, Charlotte/Dolores, Dolores/Christina, or Bernard were trying to do.  I did understand Caleb's motivation - he was trying to find his daughter.  I did understand Maeve's motivation - she wanted to be reunited with her daughter.

In the end, I felt a bit sad because it looks like the show was going to return to its roots... a show about people paying money to immerse themselves in an experience in an Old West world filled with hosts catering to their needs.  I truly didn't care for all the philosophy/symbolism/whatever.  If it were me, I wouldn't have minded to have seen each successive season set in a new theme, the hosts rebel but order is restored, and the next season we start over again with a new world.  Would have been way more entertaining to me.