Behind the scenes of Westworld Episode 209, “Vanishing Point”: Deconstructing Maeve
The penultimate episode of Westworld season 2, “Vanishing Point,” took fans on a roller coaster of emotions. From the tragic tale of the Man in Black to Teddy’s suicide, this episode wasn’t for the faint of heart.
One story that ended on a good note was Maeve’s…although it didn’t start that way. Last week, Maeve was flayed and left to suffer while Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) and her team tried to discover how her Jedi mind powers work.
In “Vanishing Point,” Delos finally cracked the code, ensuring Maeve would be deactivated. But all was not lost, as Dr. Ford gave his favorite child a parting gift that allowed her to get back in the game. This week, HBO takes us behind the scenes of her suffering, and details what exactly Ford left for her.
Justin Raleigh, the head of Westworld’s special effects make-up department, gets into the gory details of Maeve’s operation:
"Within that sequence, her neck has been cut from the outside of the ear, all the way down the clavicle, exposed muscle tissue inside. Within that, they’ve put in a bunch of wiring, and you can imagine that they’re trying to find a way to tap into her system."
It took a couple of hours each day to apply Maeve’s neck and arm pieces. They were gruesome, but very effective.
As for Dr. Ford’s (Anthony Hopkins) role in Maeve’s recovery, Lisa Joy thinks their meeting is a vulnerable moment for both of them. This is where Ford tells Maeve that she was “always my favorite,” which came as a bit of a shock to me; I’d have figured his favorite was Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood).
But then again, Dolores is following the narrative Ford set for her, while Maeve turned against hers. That earned her Ford’s respect. “A big theme of the whole season is the way that love and the emotional connections that these hosts were given as part of their narratives, were a function of their waking up,” explains producer/writer Carly Wray.
"Maeve has completely pulled the cover on this thing. She knows that all of her attributes were given to her by designers, she knows that her narratives are written by human beings, and yet, she’s not going to give up the story of her daughter, she’s going to reclaim it."
As Lisa Joy puts it, Ford has “realized as a father of a creation, that you cannot dictate the course of your children’s lives. And so, he tells her, he just needed to give her the freedom to make her own choices. And in doing that, he gives her one last parting gift, which is, he turns her mesh network back on.”
Based on the trailer for the season finale, Maeve will use it to wreck some serious havoc. We’ll see more when “The Passenger” airs this Sunday night at 9:00 p.m. EST on HBO.
Next: Watch the trailer for the Westworld season 2 finale: “The Passenger”
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