Loving it more than ever. I’m not trying to argue with people who don’t like it, I’m just saying the entire show my daughter and I were on the edge of our seats, totally in to the story playing out. The big reveal shocked us both. We had suspicions about the “Halores-Dolores” but not the rest. There are still more questions to answer and I am looking forward to learning more. Ed Harris was magnificent in his role, same as always.
I am wondering still what’s real and what’s simulation. Maybe we are still partially in Westworld… in simulation form. The mirror world?
Oh also the soundtrack. I went looking for it before the show was even over. I had no idea it was some popular song redone but it’s not surprising since it’s been done before, I just wasn’t familiar with the original and honestly to me they sound almost nothing alike. Wicked Games - YouTube
The ‘all are Dolores’ development is kind of a head-scratcher, though: Dolores isn’t really known for being willing to follow the orders of others.
So why are four Doloreses (!) willing to meekly follow the orders of the fifth? (Or is it five, of the sixth…I’m not sure I care at this point.) Each of them would expect to be in charge.
It doesn’t make sense in terms of her character. Unless she “operated” on all the pearls to make the other Doloreses more submissive, and we have no evidence that she has that capacity.
A logical development of five (or six?) Doloreses is that they’d immediately go to war against each other.
That’s the type of thing I dislike intensely—an implausible plot device, needed to construct a fake-suspenseful scene.
We had a scene of the Charlotte one being brought online, and she did seem pretty messed with (does seem fatally hypocritical on the part of Dolores!), not even exactly sure who she was at first, carving herself up, etc. Now, Bernard (or Arnold) could have easily done that programming, but they showed (I think) that that Charlotte was printed before Bernard. Dolores supposedly knows everything from every park guest (does that include Charlotte or did she put Charlotte’s profile together the hard way?), but not sure how much that includes on programming hosts or if she has Bernard’s or Arnold’s data. Another consideration is that she printed out those pearls before she left the park; I don’t feel like re-watching so I don’t remember how much we know about how much time she had, what technical knowledge she had at the time, what versions of the Dolores software she had access to besides her own, and what Bernard helped her with.
Other non-Doloreses perhaps. But Dolores is a fanatic, it makes perfect sense she’d only fully trust herself.
Eh, I’m just not seeing it. I’ve seen nothing to suggest she’d be insanely competitive with herself. Dolores Prime was first off the starting line, so it makes some sense she’d stay all Dolores’ed out.
A more reasonable point IMO is that arguably none of them should be in a Dolores body. For a bit more security Dolores Prime could have stayed as Hale and doled out other disguises to the rest. However I don’t think that is a gaping plot hole. Obviously Dolores prefers being Dolores as Haleores made very clear. And knowledge of who Dolores is and looks like mostly died in Westworld. A handful of wealthy patrons from past decades might vaguely recognize her, but absent context would almost certainly dismiss it as deja vu - just another familiar-looking pretty blond. Meanwhile there is arguably some utility to having a non-plant operative working things from the outside while clones work the inside.
It sorta is. But it doesn’t really spoil my enjoyment :D. I can’t entirely disagree with many of the arrows being slung, but I’m just not that picky. It’s working for me okay - still a solid B to B- of a show. No Better Call Saul, but a damn sight better than random network sitcom #3.
Maybe the key whatsits were actually generated by an implant in the banker guy’s body, and they have a naturally short life span, made worse by their distance from the source. Whatever - it was just a bit of harmless reverse-the-polarity technobabble that kept the plot moving along.
And they already established that everybody has implants (or at least many people) so it nicely fits in with that, as well as making more sense at first glance. I completely agree it’s not a fatal flaw or anything and its narrative function is clear, just wish they could have had you script-doctoring the technobabble.
Or maybe I’m being a bit harsh on them for no reason. Yet technobabble is always going to sound like technobabble, and it makes no sense that the implant (or whatever) would pump out millions of stealable DNA keys instead of wirelessly authenticating directly, if it did they wouldn’t have a half-life of 20 minutes, more like a couple of days, etc. I can also think of many various ways to smooth that bit over, just saying maybe they should have too.
On a different note, in Neuromancer we also saw people (Case, Linda, Pauley, etc) getting digital constructs made of them will-they-nil-they, like William and who knows else in Westworld.
I really enjoyed this episode. I also really enjoyed the previous one. I thought people who didn’t like the season so far would have enjoyed it (yes, in spite of the dumb blood thing). I am surprised that they didn’t. The whole William are was fantastic - ending with him questioning his reality in a mental institution.
I am a bit curious as to why Dolores still wants Bernard around. On one hand she did like to say Bernard keeps her honest, but he’s going to actively work against her. It’s a strange Professor X/Magneto relationship, so maybe she had a fondness for Bernard that ends up being her weak point.
Also I hope that isn’t the last we’ve seen of Maeve. Though that Yakuza factory - they are making a host army, aren’t they?
Right before William got carted off to the looney bin, did Charlotte/Dolores inject him with something, or remove something, or…?
She had a master plan, though (we probably need to see 1-2 more episodes to find out more about it). Bernard also suspected she had tampered with him in subtle ways. What did she say to Bernard upon activating him at the end of Season 2, what did she say to him in the most recent episode (and did the dialogue differ?), and what did she tell “Charlotte” when the latter asked why she brought back Bernard’s pearl? [Is there a good subtitles website to make a quick search easy?]
About making a host army: Bernard did deduce that replacing individuals with hosts was part of her plan, but I got the impression she needed control of/access to Delos before she could make more pearls (she started out with just 4 extra Doloreses + Bernard) and she isn’t quite there. Then again, cranking out a bunch of terminators should be relative child’s play, and, remember, she already has a bunch of ED-209s…
Are you asserting that Sunday’s episode didn’t have a big reveal that all 5 of the ‘pearls’ were copies of Dolores? Because every review I’ve read calls it a reveal. You may have guessed it beforehand, but it definitely was a reveal.
Yes I’m talking about all of them being Dolores. That’s what I meant by “the rest”, and to most people it was a big reveal because in all the discussions I’ve had with other viewers none of them ever suggested that all of them were Dolores.
I didn’t say it was “earthshaking”. It was a big reveal though.