Well Enough Alone
Episode 2 of Westworld Season 4 starts with William on the hunt, drawing blood on his way to finding Dolores/Christina. While this is going on, Caleb and Maeve head out together on the road. Their travels bring them to the senator’s mansion, where Maeve turns off the cameras with her powers from afar because, yep, she’s still unstoppable at this point. Anyway, she’s looking for William but it turns out the senator and his wife are actually hosts too. Interestingly, they don’t respond to Maeve trying to freeze their motor functions and the robots seem to get the upper-hand… until Maeve shoots the guy in the crotch and then stabs the other in the head. When Maeve does eventually gain control we get some answers. Apparently there are 249 other upgraded hosts that William has under his control. The original Senator and his wife have been taken care of and dispatched. And done so by… Charlotte. Caleb and Maeve head into the barn and find a crazed Anastasia in the stable, humming to herself and cutting open a horse. The Senator’s wife is completely out of it and pleads with Caleb to “free her.” Eventually Maeve does that, and shoots her in the head. As they continue down this rabbit hole, the pair find themselves on the train back to Westworld. Remember Sofia? She’s had a bit of an upgrade but she doesn’t recognize the pair either. Meanwhile, Christina heads off to work but on the way, hears the homeless guy from before muttering. He mentions the tower and the signal, which gets Christina thinking that there’s something going on here she’s not aware of. Even more alarming, she finds pigeons dead all over the floor., and people seem to just be walking by without batting an eyelid. William continues to play the field, with Senators in his pocket and raising a secret army. The secret service and the Justice Department show up and throw their weight around but William has learned from his mistakes in the past. He shrugs off these threats, although he is told by one of the men that if he goes ahead with his plan, they’ll “burn him down.” Well, William retaliates to that threat… by breaking this officer and knocking him out with a golf club. Not only that, but he goes after those in the secret service asking questions and sniffing around what William and Charlotte are up to. It would appear that these flies are being used to control humans. Charlotte happens to have William hooked up to a machine and she’s the one pulling the strings. She’s copied William completely and injects the guy’s neck with a sedative, telling him he needs to have a deep slumber. Filling up his chamber with smoke, she says goodbye to William and leaves. Back with Christina though and she continues to investigate Peter Myers. In doing so, Christina realizes the story she’s come up with is exactly what she wrote previously – right down to the details about his paranoia and Peter killing himself. Christina’s boss rings and questions just what she’s up to, given she’s not in the office. When Christina shows up at the clinic, she notices a wing memorialized for Peter Myers. Only…that doesn’t make any sense. The clinic was actually shut down years back and it would appear that Christina’s run in with this Peter Myers is causing her memories to fracture. Maybe this is something that happened in the past? Well, inside his office Christina notices pictures of that familiar radio tower. As the episode closes out, William (Charlotte’s puppet version) gives a big board meeting about how they’re bringing the past to them. Flicking the lights on, old Chicago is twinkling in place of the Wild West, as Caleb and Maeve arrive and prepare to journey in.
The Episode Review
There are more developments this episode as Dolores/Christina appears to be experiencing issues, namely that involving this Peter Myers. I would assume at a guess this is directly linked with her memories of the past, and she’s experiencing some of these out of sync. It would make sense, given she needs to come up with stories and a lot of these are probably being accessed from her own memories. Meanwhile, our real Mary Sue, Maeve, is off on the hunt and she makes swift work of the Senator by shooting him in the crutch. A not very subtle nod there to the patriarchy perhaps? Quips aside, Maeve’s character does have a few flaws now in that she can’t actually control all of William’s men which appears to be a way of undoing some of the work done last season. It was perhaps obvious that the real William is being kept under control, with his host taking over while Charlotte pulls the strings. It would seem Charlotte has a far more dastardly plot going on here, moving all these pieces around and using William as a shield. Westworld is just starting to get interesting now and with a brand new world to explore, it would seem this show has learned from its mistakes and is moving back into the parks again. But with viewing figures down by over 70% this year compared to last, is there still life in this series?
