Westworld review: “Années Folles” is a trip down memory lane

Things are heating up on Westworld. The show’s fourth season has felt like a return to form for HBO’s mind-bending science fiction drama, and its latest episode keeps that trend going. “Années Folles” takes us on a walk down memory lane as Maeve and Caleb explore the new Roaring ’20s-themed park. It also catches us up with Bernard for the first time this season.

As always, SPOILERS for this week’s episode of Westworld beyond.

Westworld Episode 403 review

For as sprawling and dense as Westworld can be, “Années Folles” is a great reminder that the show is often at its best when it dials things back and really focuses on a few characters. This is the tightest episode of the season yet; Christina (Evan Rachel Wood) and Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) aren’t in it at all, and William (Ed Harris) only pops up near the end for a brief minute. The result is one of the strongest episodes since the original Westworld park was destroyed back in season 2.

“Années Folles” primarily follows two groups of characters. The first consists of Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth). When last we saw Bernard in the season 3 finale, he had gone into the Sublime to look for all the hosts that escaped the Westworld park through the “door” into virtual reality. The Sublime is basically “robot heaven,” as Stubbs aptly puts it. Now we actually get to see what that looks like.

It turns out that robot heaven is all about perception. The Sublime is as limitless as the hosts’ processing capacity, meaning that they can all create their own realities to live in. It doesn’t work out so well for Bernard, since he has so much anxiety about the dangers threatening humanity that he creates a dark mental loop for himself. He walks through a projection that draws a comparison between the Westworld massacre and the human riots that happened after Rehoboam was destroyed. Then he meets Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon), who we haven’t seen since season 2.

The reunion is pretty cool; Wright and McClarnon are both fantastic actors and work really well together. It sets up what we can presume will be Bernard’s driving motivation for the season. A year outside the Sublime is roughly equivalent to a “millennia” inside, and with all that time on their hands Akecheta and the other hosts have calculated every possible route that humanity can take, finding they pretty much all end in destruction. Akecheta gives Bernard all the data, which he internalizes Doctor Strange-style to see what lies ahead so he can try to help humanity avoid their fate. Turns out that every scenario also includes Bernard’s death as well, so there are some stakes here.

Then Bernard wakes up, and we realize that all this happened before that end credits scene in the season 3 finale, where Bernard awakens covered in dust. This confirms that he spent the entire seven-year gap between seasons in the Sublime. Stubbs is still watching over him, and the two immediately start bantering like it’s the old days.

From there things get moving pretty quickly. Bernard now has the ability to predict the future, more or less, with the slight caveat that until certain things happen, he isn’t 100% sure which future is occurring. The episode uses this in a lot of really fun ways, from Bernard predicting Stubbs won’t get the sandwich he wants at a diner to disarming host infiltrators in order to gain the trust of a resistance cell fighting against William. This might be the most fun Bernard has been as a character since season 1.

That resistance cell is an interesting turn. This group, which is led by a mysterious man played by Daniel Wu, is scouring the desert for some weapon to use against Delos. Bernard tells them he knows where it is, and given his newfound abilities, we know he’s not bluffing.

Caleb and Maeve’s roaring ’20s adventure

The rest of “Années Folles” mainly focuses on Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) and Caleb (Aaron Paul) as they explore the new roaring ’20s-themed park. There are a lot of similarities with the original Westworld park, from a train station to a group of bounty hunters searching out a known criminal to a speakeasy meant to mirror Maeve’s old brothel. One of the most chilling moments comes when a can rolls up and hits Caleb’s foot; he reaches for it, but Maeve warns him not to touch it. As you’ll recall, this is one of the ways that Dolores’ storyline was initiated in Westworld, and lo and behold, when some other poor sap picks up the can, we get our first look at the ’20s park’s version of Dolores, complete with a blue dress and long blonde hair.

Those kinds of callbacks are everywhere in this sequence, and the show does a lot with them. Maeve leads Caleb into the speakeasy, where we get to watch as this world’s version of the safe heist gets underway. The commentary here is something the show has been missing; Caleb is horrified by the things the hosts have to deal with in the park, and Maeve watching hosts meant to mirror her and Hector is fascinating considering how far she’s come.

Ultimately, she ends up killing the lot of these “poor imitations” in order to lure out the park’s body disposal team so that she and Caleb can sneak down to the lower levels with the corpses. It works, and we get another nostalgic callback as they explore glass-walled rooms filled with hosts. All is not what it seems, however, as we soon discover that this level is also part of the park’s simulation; it’s a “secret mission” designed to simulate the Westworld massacre, with fake-Dolores and her posse popping in and slaughtering all the guards. The fact that this tragic event is used as entertainment is the kind of chilling twist that used to make Westworld so good.

Secrets of the new Delos park

Ultimately, Maeve and Caleb are able to escape the massacre (hosts’ guns can’t actually harm humans). Caleb defends Maeve, and she uses her superpowers to hack into the elevator and get them to the actual control level of the park. Paul and Newton’s chemistry is a total blast. Giving them this story was such a great choice.

On the lower level we actually get a look behind the curtain of this new ’20s park, and it’s pretty terrifying. We find out that the flies that keep popping up are being fed an ominous black liquid, which accounts for how they’re able to control the people they infest. From there, Maeve stumbles on a device emitting a sound beyond human hearing, which triggers compliance in test subjects who have already been exposed to the flies. The humans all kill themselves, while Maeve and Caleb are helpless to stop them.

It’s then that we get hit with one of the episode’s big twists. Caleb’s wife and daughter are being taken to a safehouse by a member of the resistance cell…except this particular resistance member is actually a host. While Caleb’s family discovers this in time to kill him and escape, the show does a neat back and forth to make us think that Caleb’s daughter is actually captured and is now one of the humans about to kill herself in the lab. Caleb pretty understandably loses it trying to free her, but once Maeve is finally able to open the door, we find out that the daughter is a host. Her face opens up, and flies swarm Caleb. One of them goes into his ear, which will presumably allow Delos to control him.

Maeve, on the other hand, finally comes face-to-face with William. This confrontation has been a long time coming, and it’s a really exciting moment to finally see Maeve and William square off. They duke it out, and as badass as William is, he’s got nothing on Maeve…or so we think. She shoots him, not realizing he’s a host until he comes back and ambushes her. The episode ends with both Maeve and Caleb captive.

Westworld Bullet Points

• The episode title, “Années Folles,” is the term used for the roaring ’20s in France, which also had a cultural renaissance in the decade after World War I.
• A big band rendition of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” plays during the safe heist. First Stranger Things, now Westworld! Those guys are having a good couple of weeks.
• Bernard flashes a symbol of the Maze to the resistance members in order to gain their trust. It’s interesting that something that symbolized the path to awareness and freedom for the hosts has come to mean something similar for human beings. Where did they get that symbol?
• Bernard sees a large white tower in the Sublime, which looks an awful lot like a larger version of the mind-control machine Maeve and Caleb find. It seems clear that the Tower that keeps being referenced in Christina’s plotline is related to this mind-control technology.
• The roaring ’20s park is an absolute blast. Very cool to get this reminder of how it all started, as well as an opportunity to see how Caleb would act in a Delos park.
• Maeve seeing this park’s version of her was a highlight. Maeve’s journey on Westworld is one of the best and it’s great that she gets this moment to reflect.
• One of the people we saw kill themselves was Jim Navarro (Josh Randall), the U.S. Justice Department official who hassled Delos in Episode 2 and was subsequently captured by Charlotte and subjected to the fly swarm.
• Now that Caleb’s been infected by one of those flies, I’m pretty nervous about how he’s going to get out of it. Everyone else we’ve seen infected ends up killing themself. How will Caleb escape? Or will he?

Verdict

For as hit and miss as Westworld has been in the past, season 4 has on the whole been pretty solid. From the time spent in the ’20s-themed park to Bernard’s newfound prophetic abilities, “Années Folles” was a great episode that explored new mysteries and had plenty of callbacks to the things that made the show so good in the first place. At this rate, Westworld may just redeem itself from its jumbled third season.

Episode Grade: B+

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