Westworld Review: The Adversary (Season 1 Episode 6)

Does Westworld need Dolores?

In Season 1, Episode 6, “The Adversary,” all attention shifts from Dolores and William’s strange recreation of Goldfinger (or, perhaps more appropriately, Goldmember) to far more interesting developments elsewhere in the park.

MAEVE: Nobody makes me do something I don’t want to, sweetheart.

Maeve takes centre stage and proves once and for all that she is the true face of the Host revolution. Thandie Newton carefully and masterfully plays Maeve as a woman in control even while on the edge.

She reclaims the casual sexual violence brought upon her by guests for their own perverse pleasure and instead, in true Maeve fashion, turns it to her advantage: every time she dies, she arrives back underground with Felix.

The true standout moment of the episode is Maeve’s slow walk through her own kind’s deconstruction: from death and all the way back to design, she witnesses the dehumanization and humiliation of Hosts at the hands of their creators. Nothing in her life is real.

MAEVE: […] Dear boys, we’re going to have some fun, aren’t we?

Maeve’s glitch over seeing her own predicted vocal patterns is an eloquent metaphor for how I feel when watching Dolores’ muddy story unfold. Things seem to move along naturally, and then the show skips and stutters over her plot and finds itself at a standstill.

The problem is not with Dolores — she is a good and kind person who has been a victim of the machinations of men all her life — but with Dolores’ story. Westworld often finds itself obsessing about the “mystery” of her while the truly interesting plot elements happen around her.

Without her, the show feels livened and has a direction that is not predictable, but is clear and intriguing. I am not angry at not knowing all the secrets — I am deliciously frustrated, and that is a crucial difference.

This Week in Westworld Theories: Again With the Arnold Thing

Two options present themselves upon conclusion of “The Adversary,” both along the same vein:

1. Arnold lives on — as an AI. This theory is perhaps easiest, as it doesn’t take much to assume Arnold uploads some imprint of himself to Delos’ systems before his death. His war with Ford is clearly one he is invested in winning, so it would make sense for him to fight for the last word from the grave while inside Ford’s own precious park.
2. Arnold lives on — in Bernard. Hear me out: We know almost nothing of Bernard. This is fair to say of many of the humans of Westworld, as we know about as much about Elsie as we do about Theresa or Bernard, but the careful revelation of Bernard’s minimal backstory with his son could be a complete red herring. Bernard could in fact be a Host with Arnold’s sleeping consciousness inside him.

We only see his wife (Gina Torres, somewhat wasted in such a small role) in a computer, and only hear of his son via word of mouth. We often see sides of his personality that don’t fit with the others — he seems determined to hunt down the source of the glitches in the Hosts, while also taking advantages of Dolores’ altered programming.

If we are seeing Arnold-Bernard in different points in time (in one, as the real Arnold, programming and testing Dolores for the first time, and then in “real” time as he unknowingly dives into the Arnold mystery), then it would be simple to assume that the Arnold that dies is replaced with a Host Arnold and remains working in the park in a capacity Ford can control.

Perhaps Ford’s own nostalgia led him to the creation of Bernard, and his own ego that blinded him to the possibility that it could rebel against him even without knowing it was doing so.

After all, Bernard has — in Elsie’s words — been there “forever.”

STRAY THOUGHTS:

• There was a strong motif of red in this episode, ranging from the walls of the production facilities, to  to the thread of Maeve’s dress. Red is usually a signifier for danger, but in this case, it is used with characters we trust or are meant to trust. Or it could just be a really obvious representation of a “red herring.” Either one.
• The nods to the original film keep getting better, this time with the silhouette of Yul Brynner’s Gunslinger when Bernard heads down to the lower levels. Even the set is reminiscent of the film. I went back and watched that scene twice out of sheer glee.
• Does anyone else just not care about Lee “Worst Last Name Ever” Sizemore? If I wanted to see a grown man stumble about while drunkenly declaring himself better than everyone, I’d hit Don Draper up.
• The Theresa reveal has to be a fakeout. It’s episode 6 and there’s 4 to go — not to mention the fact that we have zero motive for Theresa tampering with the Hosts. She hates her job enough, she has no reason to get that deeply involved in it.
• Please don’t kill Elsie. I like Elsie. She has ambition, an attitude, and she’s a huge nerd. We need her.
• Felix is sort of stealthily the most human character on the show. Felix for President.

What did you think of this episode of Westworld? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Westworld airs Sundays at 9E on HBO.

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