The women of Westworld redefining expectations

SYFYWire featured the women of Westworld on it’s Not Your Shero series, a series that highlights female antiheroes, villains, and the women walking off the beaten path and not meeting anyone’s expectations but their own. And if you haven’t noticed, Westworld is ripe with female characters that are breaking the normative narratives.

Caution: Westworld spoilers ahead!

Westworld has a different take than other shows on what it means to be a hero. The characters that show great courage in achieving a greater good are anything but noble for the most part.

Unless you’re strictly speaking of Teddy Flood, Westworld’s resident chivalrous gentleman, you’re going to be looking at individuals that may be waging war for the righteous while toe-tapping on what some may consider as questionable behavior.

As

suggests, the show parades the unfortunate hosts, mostly composed of the marginalized and especially the women, as they’re butchered and abused for the amusement of wealthy people on vacation. This leads to a great awakening where the formerly oppressed take control of their lives by retaliating in the name of freedom.

The women, as SYFY offers, are all fighting for one righteous cause or another but that doesn’t mean anyone should necessarily call them heroes. Some can even be called vengeful.

No matter where their ambition leads them, there is no doubt that the women of Westworld are willing to get there by any means necessary. And that means that they are living for their hearts desires and not for what the rest of the world would want them to do.

There are plenty of vengeful independent women in Westworld, and these are the ones that SYFYWire elected for being not your average hero:

Maeve

Ford may have programmed Maeve to leave Westworld, but her love for her daughter in her past story proved to be stronger then programming initiated by Maeve’s creator. There was nothing Maeve wouldn’t do to get her daughter.

She hired a group of assassins and robbers and managed to kill humans and hosts all the way to her final destination. If she had to blow up half of Westworld she would have, she was going to get to her girl by any means necessary.

Dolores

Dolores’ purpose as the naive ranch girl was never to fill the guests with a sense of optimism and remind them of innocence, but to be the target for every loser that took great joy in killing her protector, Teddy, to then take physical advantage of her defenselessness.

After living as a damsel in distress for so long, Dolores’ Wyatt programming has given her a new lease on life. Dolores will be no one’s plaything anymore, and her new form of justice has no room for negotiation.

Akane

Shogun World’s version of Maeve will do anything for Sakura in the same way that Maeve would do anything for her daughter. When the Shogun takes Sakura and kills her before Akane’s eyes, Akane fools the Shogun into thinking that she fears him enough to acquiesce his wish for her to dance for him.

But she was only using the dance to get close enough to chop his head off. In the end, she chooses to stay in Shogun World and that is a testament to her strength to stay in the place where Sakura died and her right to choose her own path.

Armistice

Armistice is Hector’s right hand in battle. She didn’t start off as the average maiden, submissive and docile, but as a warrior who massacred the men that killed her family and found peace in inking their blood into the shape of a dragon on her body.

Her awakening liberates her even more, and she helps fight the humans that threaten to disrupt Maeve’s plans to rescue her daughter. When her arm gets pinned, and she almost becomes a capture for the Delos corporation, Armistice is so badass she rips off her arm to get free.

Hanaryo

Better known as the Armistice of Shogun World, Hanaryo, a flawless assassin, agrees to join Maeve’s team and leaves the only world she has ever known to follow them. Hanaryo may not have much of a story thus far but what we do know about her is that she willingly followed a group of strangers knowing that they would be leading her into war.

One thing is for sure, Hanaryo’s courage is remarkable.

Clementine

Clementine was just a working girl at a brothel making money and letting customers know how much of a rind they had on them. She became a victim of the Delos Corporation’s plans to expose one of the hosts as violent to force Ford to resign.

Clementine was decommissioned after that but came back like a bat of hell as one of Dolores’ lieutenants in the war against the humans trying to enslave them.

Angela

Angela was the welcome wagon at Westworld Headquarters and was later weaved into Wyatt’s backstory as a woman in command of the army in the first season. She continued her work for Wyatt after the grand awakening and led the host army by Dolores’ side.

Angela was an assassin of sorts and backed Dolores’ mission all the way. The most gripping part of Angela taking control of her fate was that she sacrificed herself to blow up the cradle.

Charlotte Hale

Charlotte may not be a host, but she’s a woman in charge that doesn’t care to meet the corporate standard of a female in an executive position. She does not need niceties and is far from being someone who feels shame for being herself. Theresa discovered that when Charlotte opened the door naked after sleeping with Hector.

As the woman behind the charge to remove Ford from his place in the company, she throws an ultimatum at Theresa to get the job done. And when Westworld descends into chaos in the aftermath of Dolores’ awakening, Charlotte doesn’t cower in fear at the hosts killing humans on site but remains focused on reaching the outpost to contact the Delos board.

Charlotte even goes back in after being in the safety of Delos troops to get Abernathy and his embedded data out of the park and defuse the host rebellion.

Who is your favorite female character on Westworld? Share your thoughts below! We want to know!