Westworld pulled off the ultimate twist: It got good again

Westworld came barreling out of the gate in 2016 and was an immediate hit. It had the production values of Game of Thrones, the heady sci-fi concepts of The Matrix and the acting mega-wattage of Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood and others. It even created its own catch phrases: “These violent delights have violent ends.” It looked for all the world that this was the next big water cooler show.

And then season 2 came along and the show started digging itself into a hole. With season 3, it buried itself. Frankly, I was pretty much ready to leave the series behind. I wasn’t planning to watch season 4, which is airing now, but I checked it out based on better-than-expected word of mouth, and found that I…was enjoying myself?

Yes, miraculously, Westworld is good again, provided nothing goes horribly sideways in the back half of the fourth season. Season 4 has tapped into what once made the show so compelling, but is it too late to become the game-changer we expected, or can it make good on the promise of that first season and take us somewhere new?

Why was Westworld so good in the first place?

The first season of Westworld was a sci-fi mystery show. We’re in an old west-themed amusement park where sophisticated androids — called “hosts” — give the illusion that guests are interacting with real outlaws, real ranch cowboys, real prostitutes…anything you can think of. The ultra-rich guests act out their fantasies on the robotic hosts and leave without having done any harm…or so they think.

Over the course of the first season, the hosts slowly become conscious of their predicament, which the show teases out in thrilling ways. At the end of the premiere episode, after we’re told the hosts’ programming won’t let them hurt another living thing, we see Dolores (Wood) swat a fly. It’s a tiny moment with huge implications. She’s gonna figure out what’s going on and start swatting people, isn’t she? She did, and it wasn’t pretty.

There was a lot of other stuff to chew on, including the enigmatic plans of the park’s creator, Dr. Robert Ford (Hopkins) and the mystery behind the malevolent Man in Black (Harris), who enjoyed his trips to the park way too much. And the twists! On a show with sophisticated robots practically indistinguishable from humans, you know someone we think is a flesh-and-blood person is going to turn out to be a being of chrome and steel, right? When Westworld revealed the truth behind park employee Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright), it was a mind-blowing moment.

The first season of Westworld gave us a variety of characters to root for and against, and made sure we understood what they wanted and why. And it did this while inspiring us to think about the nature of consciousness and exploitation, and while pulling off a multiple timeline trick many did not see coming. It remains an excellent seasons of TV.

So how did they screw up such a good thing?

How did Westworld go wrong?

The first season ended with Dolores finally becoming self-aware and basically declaring war on humanity. The stage was set for a new season of violent delights.

And we got some of that in season 2…but we also got a lot of weird stuff. The philosophizing that came so naturally in season 1 now seemed forced. Where before we knew what the characters wanted, now they talked in vague generalities about finding “the Forge” or “Glory” or “the Valley Beyond.” The show again played with timelines, but this time it was obvious and intrusive. There were highlights — the episode “Kiksuya” was excellent, and no force on Earth could stop Maeve MIllay (Thandiwe Newton) from being entertaining — but it was definitely a step down.

And season 3 kept dropping. With several of the hosts now escaped into the human world, the show rebooted into a more straightforward, more boring version of itself. Dolores and a new human character named Caleb (Aaron Paul) were now fighting a super computer named Rehoboam (terrible name for a malevolent AI, by the way) that basically came out of nowhere. The season ended with a promise of another reset, but by this point I was done.

How Westworld got good again

For season 4, Westworld went through some changes behind the scenes. The biggest is that Alison Schapker (Fringe, Altered Carbon) was brought on as a new showrunner, perhaps because original series creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy were busy with other projects like Amazon’s upcoming Fallout TV series. Would that she had joined sooner, because Westworld quickly began to correct course by going back to what worked in the first place.

Westworld keeps the storylines that began in season 3 going, but it revives something that has been missing from the show for far too long: a sense of mystery. We’re introduced to a new character, Christina, played by Evan Rachel Wood, who played the host Dolores. We aren’t told why they look identical, we don’t know what’s going on, but it’s intriguing enough for us to stick with it, particularly when the rest of the show has been so entertaining.

Maeve was always Westworld’s secret weapon. I don’t know what sorcery Thandiwe Newton is using, but she has the power to take a line that would sound cliché coming out of almost any other actor and make it a knee-slapping delight. And this time around she’s not just here to raise eyebrows and deliver sassy missives; she has chemistry with Caleb, who we catch up with after a seven-year time jump. Their trip through a 1920s-themed park has been equal parts giddy thrill and disturbing thriller, which is exactly the mix Westworld used to have.

The show is also playing with time again, but in a way we didn’t see coming. The latest episode, “Generation Loss,” ended with a monster twist that revealed that nothing we’d been watching was at it seemed, characters we thought were humans were hosts, and the villain had won completely. It was a killer twist the likes of which the show hadn’t pulled off for a long time.

I’m officially excited to see how the rest of the season plays out, but I do fear that the moment for Westworld to be a big part of the cultural conversation has passed.

Westworld’s recovery is too little, too late

Westworld’s ratings started to fall in season 2, continued in season 3 and are at their lowest ebb here in season 4. Granted, it’s probably picking up more viewers on HBO Max, but the numbers tell a clear story. After a lackluster couple of seasons, people aren’t as interested as they used to be, and I can’t blame them. I’m not gonna ask anyone to sit through two middling seasons of TV just to get to the good bit.

What’s more, even though the show is more entertaining than it’s been in years, it’s achieved this in part by playing the hits. Dolores (or Cristina, or whoever) is once again waking up in bed day after day feeling like something is amiss, and there’s once again an unfeeling force controlling people from on high; only this time the roles of host and human are reversed, which is a clever inversion of how the show began. I feel like this is the story the show was aiming for in season 3. Better late than never, I suppose. But there was a time when Westworld sold itself as a show with vision, as a show that had a master plan that would all make sense in the end. It’s hard to believe that after two seasons of wrong-headed waffling, even if things have returned to form.

So here’s to Westworld: it’s been the best of shows, it’s been the worst of shows, and it may be the best again. See you on Sunday.

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