It’s not totally clear what transcendence is, nevertheless it appears to be one thing Hale thinks the typical Host ought to love, solely to find that the Hosts would reasonably wallow within the pleasures of the flesh by cavorting with people and benefiting from her walled backyard for eternity. William, who understands higher than most the attraction of enjoying video games each in the actual world and in Delos parks, says that after just a few centuries of enjoying round with the people, they’ll lose their attraction. What else to count on after a bunch of beings created within the picture of their hedonistic, violent, petty creators? True transcendence would imply giving up the everlasting get together, and who desires that?
Any episode of Westworld that bookends with scenes of Ed Harris speaking to individuals concerning the nature of actuality and free will might be going to be a very good one. He’s capable of make any dialog sound good along with his sonorous, dry voice and droll, vaguely amused supply. It’s completely completed when he’s antagonizing the 2 people he sits all the way down to dinner with; he’s a cat enjoying with mice too dumb to know they’re mice within the presence of a cat. It’s even higher on the finish of the episode, when he’s speaking to his freeze-pop human self about the great thing about order on this planet, and the way Hale and her type have labored arduous to make sure the world is gorgeous, orderly, and completely good.
It’s no surprise he’d query his place on this world, significantly after spending a lot of the episode pondering on free will and whether or not or not he’s simply the sum of his code. William the Host is misplaced, adrift, looking for one thing to clue him in on whether or not or not he’s as free in Hale’s world as he thinks he’s; William the Human is simply having fun with watching himself undergo on the horns of a dilemma, relishing the considered probably turning one of many guards of his jail in opposition to the warden holding all of the keys.
The script from Wes Humphrey and Lisa Pleasure doubles down on all that deliciously philosophical Westworld stuff. The entire present has been concerning the seek for which means, about being a sq. peg in a spherical gap world, and nowhere is that mirrored extra when Ed Harris is speaking to Ed Harris about whether or not or not the Host William is as actual of an individual because the Human William is. As Human William says, that’s the middle of the maze, isn’t it? That journey from being only a Host into being a really clever synthetic being able to rising above programming and discovering true sentience, no matter which means? That’s the journey Dolores and Maeve took, and so they discovered wildly completely different solutions about what it means to be human.
For all of the enjoyable of a number of Ed Harrises (there’s a motive “Decoherence” was in all probability my favourite episode of Westworld season 3), the head-screwing was additionally on show through the Christina/Teddy portion of the present. It’s not fairly as dramatic as William’s awakening, or the awakening of Hope (Nicole Pacent) from the start of the episode, nevertheless it’s becoming. Dolores tried all the pieces to awaken Teddy to the reality, solely to should reprogram him to serve a objective reasonably than be part of her in sentience. Now, 30-something years later, he’s the one to carry her into information of the broader world, and he or she’s the one struggling to just accept the knowledge given to her. The chemistry between James Marsden and Evan Rachel Wooden is so good, even after they’re at odds with each other, and Wooden’s face is good as she sells first disbelief, then shock, on the discoveries Teddy guides her to. It’s a stunning, happier parallel to their unhappy finish in “Vanishing Level” and Craig William Macneill does a stable job of enjoying up our historical past with these two characters all through the episode by weaving in acquainted little moments between the 2 of them.
Everyone seems to be discovering all kinds of issues that they shouldn’t as Stubbs and the desert rebels sneak round New York Metropolis searching for the exact same outlier that William has been despatched to kill. Any time the Hosts use their management to cease everybody of their tracks, just like the police investigating the bloodbath at first of the episode, Charlotte Hale’s bored dance routine within the center, or the scene wherein all of the people flip to assault the rebels trying to trace down the outlier? These scenes hit arduous for me, and Macneill makes certain they’re successfully creepy by displaying little touches just like the piano participant’s ragged, bloody fingertips or the best way everybody strikes or freezes in unison underneath the management of the Hosts.
