'Westworld' Season 3 Episode 2 Review: The need for 'shocking' twists is holding the show back and boring fans
Spoilers for 'Westworld' Season 3 Episode 2 'The Winter Line'
You can't easily call 'Westworld' a bad show. It's got some amazing performances, ambitious ideas, gorgeous sets, props, effects and visuals, an incredible soundtrack and masterfully shot cinematic scenes. However, its constant need to set up big, shocking reveals has grown exhausting, and as of this episode, lazy.
It's not like they're twists for twist's sake, to be fair to HBO. The reveal that Maeve (Thandie Newton) is in a simulation inside another simulation is both an important plot point and an excellent showcase of Maeve's capabilities.
The reveal that Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) has always been a host is likewise something that will inform a lot of what comes next, especially with him and Bernard Lowe (Jeffery Wright) now working together.
The show spent a LOT of time setting up these reveals, however, with slow lingering shots, dramatic music and explainers all mixed as if these reveals are season finale cliffhangers that change everything we thought we knew.
The concept that what we're seeing might not be real has stopped being a surprise for a long time now. Fans were playing the spot-the-host game way back in Season 1.
The idea that all these reveals are somehow surprising or game-changing feels like the show has been vastly underestimating itself — it's like a comedian constantly asking if their audience "gets it".
It's a little extra frustrating given that once the big reveals (and that cameo) are out of the way, the show gets a lot more interesting. As seen in the last episode, the show has some very intriguing writing and appears to be setting up a Maeve vs Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) war for the human race, with more sympathetic AIs than we've ever seen in a robot uprising.
With the hosts out in the real world, the stakes are higher, as they all have a chance to affect significant change. Maeve's brilliant, no-nonsense approach to the question of what's real or what isn't is an ironically refreshing criticism of the show itself.
"None of this matters," she says, as a reprogrammed simulation of Hector (Rodrigo Santoro) dies to serve as a story that's merely a distraction from the main plot.
It's what the first half of the episode feels like — a distraction and not a very good one. The Warworld scenes were admittedly beautiful, but ultimately served little purpose, which takes any good they may have had away.
Seeing Maeve on the show, however, revitalizes 'Westworld' and the idea of pitting her against Dolores brings a lot of excitement for the episodes to come.
The next episode of 'Westworld' airs on March 29 on HBO.