Put simply, HBO’s Westworld (the TV adaptation of Michael Crichton’s 1973 film of the same name) is a mind f***. In the best way.
But while the show started off on an incredibly strong note, many (including myself) thought that Season 2 didn’t deliver with the same impact that Season 1 did. We’ve all seen it happen before where a show starts epically, but sets the bar so high that its subsequent seasons inevitably decline in quality and subject matter. I sincerely hoped this wouldn’t be the fate of Westworld. Luckily, despite Season 2’s flaws, its finale was promising, and offered the possibility of a whole new type of show come Season 3. And thankfully, Season 3 managed to pull itself up by the bootstraps and save Westworld from an untimely demise.
Here’s my breakdown of each season’s comparative strengths and weaknesses, and why Season 3 ultimately exceeded my expectations.
Season 1
Westworld Season 1 is a visual and conceptual masterpiece. The narrative structure is one giant, impeccably created puzzle that brings mystery into the show just as much as it does sci-fi. Season 1 is so interlayered with details that every twist and turn hits you hard with its impact. It’s immaculately written, hardly ever missing a beat with its plot points. Its only weakness—and this is more of an overarching observation of the show—is that it sometimes goes so far into its conceptual aspects that it can be hard for viewers like myself (who aren’t very well-versed in the sci-fi world) to keep up. And though the first half of the season feels like a slow burn, the payoff is well worth the wait. Because when the pieces finally start to come together, it truly is one mind-blowing moment after the other. There are many big reveals in the show, but one of the biggest ones is when the audience finds out we’ve been seeing a nonlinear timeline that’s been posing as a linear timeline, which is perhaps one of the best executed twists I’ve ever seen. Needless to say, Westworld Season 1 was an extraordinarily strong pilot season. I knew Season 2 would be hard pressed to top Season 1. . . and I was right.
Season 2
I can only imagine that planning a second season to follow up such an epic first one is a massive feat in itself. Unfortunately, Season 2 was underwhelming to me in many regards, including its pacing, narrative, and characters. Though it definitely did have its highlights, 90% of its best material seems to happen in the last handful of episodes. Before that, it trudges along, becoming even more slow moving and with significantly less payoff than Season 1. The major reveals in Season 1—including Bernard being a host modelled off Arnold, the timeline reveal, Ford’s death, and Dolores being Wyatt—made it hard for Season 2’s plot points to surprise viewers with the same impact and without seeming derivative.
I also found Season 2 Dolores (who is admittedly more Wyatt in this season) to be so one-toned as a brutal extremist that it borderline made her an unsympathetic character, even though she is fighting for a sympathetic cause. In fact, a lot of the characters (see: Hosts) that I liked so much in Season 1 are not as likable in Season 2. One interesting point that someone brought up to me is that Season 2 feels like an inversion of Season 1: where S1 places the Hosts as the protagonists and the humans as antagonists, S2 positions the humans as the protagonists and the Hosts as the antagonists. Going deeper into it, S1 is focused on the AI trying to unravel what they are and what the nature of their sentience is. In S2, they try to flip it to show more human perspectives and turn it into an inherently human problem. And though this inversion may have been necessary to the larger narrative, I didn’t find it as gripping as S1’s structure, and it felt a bit dissonant in relation to Season 1.
Also, though I really did love to see the other parks outside of Westworld (especially Shogun World), they quickly became less interesting when viewers learned that the other parks were operating on the same storylines we saw all throughout S1. By the end of S2, I felt the narrative had exhausted its use of the parks, that they were too limited a locale for an entire show to take place. I do realize now that this was precisely the trajectory of the show—to build the Hosts up to take them beyond the simulated park worlds—but the journey to get to that point still felt slow.
However, I do have to call out a major highlight of Season 2, which is the episode “Kiksuya” (S2E8). Not only is this one of my favourite episodes of Westworld, but this is truly one of the finest pieces of television I’ve ever seen. The episode primarily focuses on an Indigenous host named Akecheta, played by Lakota actor Zahn McClarnon, who speaks in the Lakota dialect for most of the episode. “Kiksuya” was not only a key piece of the Westworld puzzle, but it was also a beautiful standalone narrative from beginning to end. It also made me yearn to see more Indigenous actors, representation, and stories in mainstream television/film.
Ultimately, Season 2 ended on a stronger note than it started on, but compared to Season 1’s deep dives it felt like it was merely treading water. Though it did lay a lot of important groundwork for Season 3, I still think the pacing could have been faster and the writing tighter.
Season 3
When Season 3 started, I immediately saw and felt the shift that I thought was so necessary when Season 2 ended. Bringing the Hosts and viewers into the human world represents a huge genre shift, transforming itself from a Sci-Fi Western into a full Dystopian series. And it’s precisely this radical change that refreshed the entire show.
Right off the bat, Dolores is a much more likable character, now showing us a more fully realized and nuanced version of herself. Instead of being just Dolores or just Wyatt, Dolores balances the two in an interesting way. Though she is still an extremist, she’s an extremist with a calculated plan this time, carrying more cunning and intelligence than ever.
The world outside the simulated parks is a highly futuristic one (though, one that doesn’t feel too far off from our current reality). With this futuristic “real world”, one that we had only seen subdued glimpses of in past seasons, comes a totally different entity. After being so immersed in Wild West and other historic settings, it’s pleasantly jarring to see a world that’s so sleek, mechanical, and ultramodern (even though it makes complete sense, given how high-tech the actual parks and hosts are). And as I said before, I respect Season 2 more after watching Season 3. Because though S2 felt slow and lacked in the same “pieces of the puzzle” structure that S1 had, it brought our characters further to edge of the park and finally, finally brought them out of it.
Westworld Season 3 upgraded itself from S2, literally and figuratively. It made me realize that there was a much bigger picture to Westworld than I could even fathom, which is of the show’s strongest abilities. Season 3 brings viewers on a whole new adventure, allowing us to see the Hosts interact with the human world in a vastly different way than ever before. I personally think that, in seeing these characters navigate through these obstacles and simultaneously discovering a new world, this is what saved the show from falling into a trap of cyclical narratives. Whether it was the new settings, new characters, and even the new musical style, everything about Season 3 felt like it had shed its former skin and progressed in a way that felt natural to the show.
Season 3 isn’t necessarily perfect, particularly with the convolution of Aaron Paul’s character becoming “the chosen one”, and the ending trips over itself a bit. However, its final moments (and final final moments) leave us on an intensely intriguing cliffhanger, leaving me incredibly excited for Season 4.
In Conclusion
Looking back on all three seasons, this is how the trajectory of the show appears to be going:
Season 1 explores the nature of consciousness in artificial beings, and shows us what happens when Westworld is relatively under control.
Season 2 inverts the concept by focusing on more of a juxtaposition between humans and Ais, and shows us what happens when Westworld is out of control
Season 3 shows us what happens when Westworld permeates into the real world
And with the way Season 3 ends, this presumably sets Season 4 up to show us what happens when Westworld becomes the world (ie. when AI take over).
When looking at the show at a glance like this, it does start to make more sense to me why Season 2 was the way it was. However, that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t pleasantly shocked at how radically and refreshingly different Season 3 was. So yes, the show exceeded my expectations with Season 3. And though I have my fair share of criticism about Season 2, Westworld is still one of the most conceptually brilliant shows I’ve ever watched.
~ Z ~
