![]() ![]() They kill each other and cancel each other out. A woman in black is the ultimate anti-hero. Season 4? Narrative symbolism now equates to: woman in red is fierce and villainous, with guards in apparent white bleeding bright red (to signify their humanity and to highlight the violence that results in her dream). In the beginning, it was aware of major issues in our world and had intriguing ways to help us reflect on those issues without cramming down our throats a simplified narrative full of bludgeoning symbolism. They need to reclaim what made Westworld good. This review, consequently, focuses on Season 4. What a mixed bag of potential slowly rotting away. Season 1 was 9/10 Season 2 was 8/10 Season 3 was 6/10 and Season 4 was 3/10. I wish I could give Westworld a higher rating. It seems like Ed Harris will finally get his chance to reprise the Man in Black. For all it mattered, they could have ended the series here, but Abrams is determined to squeeze all the juice out of the series for one more season, and gives us an ending pretty much the same as Season Two, only now with Charlotte calling the shots. Ultimately, this is a catfight between Dolores and Maeve played out to the bitter end. Maeve tries to bring back Hector but to no avail. Charlotte falls in love with her family, which I erroneously thought was the sympathetic Teddy inside her. Everything else is secondary and makes virtually no sense at all. He has given Maeve a new body to bring Dolores to him, as she apparently holds the missing link inside her beautiful head. This would allow him to be rid of these pesky outliers once and for all. ![]() Apparently, Rehoboam still has some gaps. It turns out Dolores wants to use Caleb to bring the whole world down around Serac, who has silently staged a takeover of Delos from William so that he can have access to the vast data bank the company has compiled at Westworld. But, as it turns out she only made copies of herself, except maybe Bernard, who moves along the edges of the action, never quite getting into the middle of it. I had assumed one of them was Teddy and thought she might have planted this one in the host of Charlotte Hale, given how lovey/dovey they got at one point. Dolores escaped with five pearls from Westworld. Unfortunately, there are still a few "outliers" like Caleb, which Dolores taps into in order fulfill her vision of a new world set free of this tyrannical hold. He has been able to control the world through his algorithms and a giant data base known as Rehoboam, Biblically named of course. free will as played out by Dolores and Maeve, which Serac lords over like an angry Old Testament God, whose **** is becoming increasingly dark. Instead, Abrams has coaxed Nolan and Joy into turning Westworld into a new battle of fate v. He spends most of the time in a mental ward confronting demons of himself, only to be used in the last episode as some sort of bridge to a new season, for anyone still interested. That might have been OK if William had any real impact on the new season, but sadly he doesn't. For some reason, Nolan and Joy decided to drop that in Season Three and make William real again, as if this was only a copy of him existing in Westworld. This was the case with the Man in Black at the end of the Season Two, when he was finally confronted with the fact that he was a host. They were more concerned with the existential dilemma that comes when you realize you are not real and that your emotions and actions are programmed. The theme existed in the series from the beginning but Nolan and Joy were much more subtle about it. Abrams clearly got wrapped up with this notion of fate v. ![]() This seems to be the case with Westworld too, as its viewing audience began to sag in Season Two. A large part of it was that Lost had grabbed Evangelicals, and Abrams felt he could tap into a new audience. This is what killed Lost, as Abrams became more obsessed with the theological aspect of the series, as played out by Jacob and Esau, than he was the science fiction and metaphysical underpinnings that had propelled the show for several seasons. It sounds like the kind of pretentious name he would give himself. I almost wonder if he projected himself as Engerraund Serac. Abrams pretty much let Nolan and Joy have their way in Season Two, so there wasn't a big drop off, but once this series moved outside the confines of the theme park, Abrams clearly wanted to have a larger role in shaping the story, and so we get this whole "God" thing, which was hinted at the end of Season Two. There are so many things wrong with this season that it would take 50,000 and not 5000 characters to note them, but I will do my best. I give it five stars because the first five episodes had me going, but the last three were awful and show just how much an impact J.J. Well, that was a thorough disappointment. This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
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