Crosstalk: How did the Westworld Season 1 compare to Game of Thrones Season 1?

On Sunday night, HBO’s smash hit Westworld closed out a very successful first season with a 90-minute finale. Being on HBO, many made comparisons between Westworld and Game of Thrones—A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin even got in on the fun. After Sunday night’s season finale, do we feel that the two are more alike than ever before, or is Westworld heading down its own path? Join us as we discuss.

Warning: SPOILERS for the Westworld Season 1 finale below

RAZOR: Westworld has been excellent all season long. And while I understand the need to call every new hit show the “next Game of Thrones,” I think it’s a bit unfair to do that to Westworld, a show so totally and completely unlike HBO’s ongoing megahit. That being said, it’s hard not to draw comparisons between some of the big events from Westworld’s first season and Game of Thrones’ first season. The one that sticks out is Sean Bean dying in the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones Season 1 and Anthony Hopkins dying in Westworld‘s Season 1 finale.

If you were following Westworld this season, you probably saw Anthony Hopkins’ character, Robert Ford, as an Old Testament God-like character. At least I did. He did what he wished when he wished, and he had full control over each and every Host. He even went so far as to create Host versions of real people, like Benard, who was a Host version of his former partner Arnold. The longer the show went on, the more Ford seemed to be out of touch with humanity and unwilling to relinquish his power. But all that changed in the finale, when it’s revealed that Ford had been setting up the maze and providing the Hosts with a path to freedom this whole time. And then, in an act of self-sacrifice, he has Dolores (as Wyatt) kill him, thus setting off the final narrative.

Is this what “shownlys” felt like when Ned Stark’s head was cut off in “Baelor?” I did not see this coming until Ford uncovered Dolores’ gun and asked her to forgive him. My mouth hit the floor as he turned on the same music that Arnold played as he had Dolores kill him in the past timeline that we had been experiencing all season (another brilliant idea, by the way). And as she walked up behind Ford and raised her gun, I was standing and yelling out loud, “There is no way they are about to kill off a major actor like Anthony Hopkins!” I guess now, I can see why so many people are drawing the comparisons Game of Thrones. Corey, what did you think?

COREY: Well, let’s start by saying I think we have completely different views on the show. It’s interesting to me to that many people try to compare Westworld to Game of Thrones, because like you, Razor, I don’t think the shows could be more different. Game of Thrones had its surprises to be sure, but there wasn’t a large overall mystery that was creating the buzz. Westworld kept people talking mainly because we were all trying to figure out just what the hell was going on (and I’m still not sure we know). Sure, Jon’s parentage was a big mystery, but it wasn’t at the forefront of every episode. It wasn’t driving the action.

I think a more appropriate comparison would be Lost, a show with layers upon layers of mystery. The mystery was what drove that show, and in my opinion it drives Westworld, as well. Yes, both Westworld and Game of Thrones axed a main character at the end of Season 1 (and in each case, it was the best-known actor in the cast), but I think the similarities mainly stop there. You could argue that, much in the same way Ned Stark’s death launched all our favorite characters on their journeys for the next several seasons, Ford’s death will send the Hosts in new directions.

Unlike you, however, I wasn’t very surprised by any of the twists this season. When you have a park populated by human-looking robots, it seems only natural that one of the characters we’re told was human would end up being a robot. Hello, Bernarnold. Likewise, Bernard being Ford’s dead partner, Arnold, was fairly easy to spot once we established Bernard was a Host. As far as Anthony Hopkins biting the bullet (literally), there wasn’t much shock there for me. Sir Anthony Hopkins has to be incredibly expensive, so it didn’t seem likely to be he’d be hanging around for six seasons or something. Again, that was the strategy with Sean Bean on Game of Thrones. HBO was never going to keep him around forever.

My biggest problem with the show is that, unlike on Game of Thrones, I really didn’t care about any of the characters. A couple factors played into this, but I’ll let you tell me why I should have cared first, Razor.

RAZOR: If you want me to tell you how you should feel about character development on a show you’ve been watching all season long, then it sounds like you may have wasted 10 hours of your life. In all honesty, if you couldn’t muster any feelings for characters like Dolores and Maeve, both of whom are haunted by the memories of multiple murders and rapes not completely erased form their memories because their creator was trying to prepare them to face humanity as conscious beings, then how do you enjoy any show on television?

Maeve watched the Man in Black (William) pull her daughter from her arms and kill her in front of her face, and that memory haunted her long after it was supposedly wiped from her system. Dolores’ was doomed to watch her father and mother get shot by bandits nearly every night, and then sometimes she would be raped or killed, or both, depending on the mood of the Guest.

You might say, “Well, yes, but they’re robots, who cares what happens to them?” First of all, yuck, what’s wrong with you? Secondly, what about the story about how William became the Man in Black because the park reset Dolores and wiped her memory? That was such a humanizing story for a man that, when he was first introduced, seemed like the big bad monster of the show. What about the character of Arnold/Bernard, and the complicated emotional currents between him, his son, and Dolores?

These are the characters that you should be caring about, Corey. Now, tell me why you don’t.

COREY: Since I have no feelings, mayhaps I am a Host? It was just hard for me to care about robots who I was told from the beginning could simply be reset and all was hunky dory? Maybe the show did too good of a job hammering that point home with me.

William/The Man in Black was interesting for me, though. I couldn’t have cared less about the younger version of William, who seemed to jump fairly quickly from being a little ninny to being a robot mass murderer, but the Man in Black version I found to be extremely interesting. Here was a man who had everything, and wanted a game with stakes, as opposed to something that was rigged in his favor. That train of thought was very appealing to me.

I was also intrigued with the Hosts’ struggle for consciousness, and the attempt to define that term to begin with. But again, it was hard for me to really care about robots I was told not to care about. If they got shot, it ultimately had no long-term physical effects on them, so then it becomes simply a mental anguish thing. And if you know you aren’t really dead, or you aren’t really getting shot, I don’t see what the big deal is from the robot’s perspective.

Now, the death of Maeve’s daughter and Dolores’ encounters with the bandits each night would be rather traumatizing, but it was hard for me to draw a line between what they were feeling on their own, and what they were told to feel. Dolores had her father replaced and didn’t skip a beat, so I don’t know why I’m supposed to feel sorry she experienced the death of either version of her father so many times.

Again, this is all in stark contrast to Game of Thrones, where you have characters that you almost immediately connect to. Events like Bran being thrown out of a window had consequences for the character for the rest of the series. Bran didn’t get patched up that night and then sent on his merry little way. Speaking of, if they are patching up all the Hosts each night, who’s in the park?

RAZOR: Ugh, so basically this argument has boiled down to you not understanding a show because it’s not Game of Thrones. Here, let me break down your rebuttal to my counterpoints to you:

• You don’t care about William, but you do like the Man in Black. However, they are the same character, and the show took a careful approach to show two separate timelines, in order to show William’s growth (see what I did there?) into the Man in Black. You see? You had to pay attention to William, and care about him, in order to understand who he was, in order to understand what he became.
• You say the show told us never to care about the robots when in fact that is not true at all. From the jump, from Episode 1, we are made to feel bad for the plight of the Hosts. Humans come to this world in order to commit every unimaginable sin they can think of, and at the start of every day, the Hosts are supposed to have their memory of those horrible nights wiped away. But it’s starting to all go wrong, and the Hosts are starting to remember being raped and murdered. Every episode is literally telling the viewer—no, screaming at the viewer, “THIS IS NOT OKAY! THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS HAVE VIOLENT ENDS!” But you’re telling me that you can’t care about the plight of the “robots.”

Enough of this back and forth over your disturbingly clear lack of empathy. Let’s talk about the correlation between Game of Thrones Season 1 and Westworld Season 1, and how each inaugural season spawned a plethora of fan theories. For instance, fans of Westworld believe Elsie and Stubbs are still alive thanks to the official Discover Westworld site. Kind of like the theory that Syrio Forel didn’t die because we didn’t see it on camera.

COREY: Honestly, I will say it was the theories that pulled me back in. What was the maze? Who was Arnold? Were William and the Man in Black the same person? All of those mysteries are what pulled me back after giving up about four episodes in. There were no shortage of theories flying around, and they had me intrigued.

It was a bit different from Game of Thrones, though, where one does not necessarily need to care about the theories to enjoy the show. I’ve talked to plenty of fans who never really wondered about Jon Snow’s parents, or who created the White Walkers. I believe you can watch what’s going on in Game of Thrones without caring about every little secret, as opposed to Westworld, where the show is all about its secrets.

And I hate to harken back to Lost again, but I hope Westworld doesn’t ultimately succumb to the same problem that Lost had, which was that it became overly complicated and sometimes created mysteries to create mysteries, with no intention of solving them. No matter what HBO says publicly, they are banking on Westworld being a massive hit. Game of Thrones will sadly soon be gone, and HBO is going to need a flagship program to carry the torch. There isn’t anything on their schedule that has the potential to top or even closely resemble the ratings of Thrones, but Westworld certainly is the network’s best bet.

Overall, Westworld and Thrones had somewhat similar seasons, in that we learned the rules, saw a major character die, and then watched the remaining characters all go in new and exciting directions. If Thrones could learn anything from Westworld, I’d say it would be that post-credits scene. That was great. I’ll be looking for Season 2, but certainly not with the type of anticipation that I was with the second season of Thrones. 

RAZOR: We can agree on that. The post credits scene was fantastic and I hope it is something we start to see more of from HBO shows, including Game of Thrones.