'Westworld' Season 3 Episode 7 painfully predictable but Maeve-Dolores showdown lives up to its promise
Spoilers for 'Westworld' Season 3 Episode 7 'Passed Pawn'
It’s not a stretch of any imagination to call season 3 of ‘Westworld’ weak. The deterministic theme of the story has potential. As does the neo-futurist ‘Ghost in the Shell’ cyberpunk aesthetic and vibe of the installment. But where the show fails, and this has been a predictable flaw for the Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan creation, is living up to its own magnificence.
There’s visible hubris in the writing, and when that is not executed well, it leaves the audience crestfallen. This season has done more than its fair share of that. But none has been more apparent than in the penultimate episode. ‘Passed Pawn’ promised to be great. But it failed, especially with Caleb’s (Aaron Paul) backstory -- it was painfully predictable, especially considering how this season has been dropping gratuitous hints all along.
Caleb was quote-unquote reprogrammed by the system so that he was not just no longer an outlier, but also so that he could help hunt other outliers like him. Big whoop. This would have been easy to figure out at least two episodes ago. But that does not mean the episode was all bad. And where it wasn’t all bad -- in fact, it was as far away from that as could be -- is where the episode shone: The ultimate fight.
We have been teased with a Maeve versus Dolores (Thandie Newton and Evan Rachel Wood) fight since the day the trailer for season 3 arrived. The two most powerful Hosts clashing against each other was promised as a mega event. And think what you want of the rest of the episode, the fight lived up to its promise.
Television and cinema have had to endure its fair share of bad final fights. The most painful of which in recent history has probably been in ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’. But the one between Dolores and Maeve is more reminiscent of the fight between Neo and Agent Smith in ‘The Matrix Revolution’, which is fitting both in name and themes. While the Neo-Smith fight was a lot more CGI and a little too long in its endeavor, the Dolores-Meave battle was perfect.
They both had motives that were strong. For Maeve, it was sentimentality towards her daughter and the others who had made it to the valley beyond. Her maternal instincts were what drove her to fight Dolores, who she saw as an existential threat to them. For Dolores, it was ironically similar. She saw human beings as an existential threat to Hosts. And she saw Maeve as an agent of that threat. On her part, Dolores did attempt to reason. But she knows when to give up.
The fight is swift but not rushed. It embodies not just the spectacular construction of the Hosts, and their sheer physical capabilities and skills, but it also embodies their individual rages. In its choreography, one can feel not just intense urgency, but also the inevitability of it. It is difficult to choose a favorite in the fight even if your allegiances bend on one side and you are left with a feeling of deep despair that one of them is going to meet their maker at the end of it.
When Dolores loses her arm, you are all but sure that the fight has been won by Maeve. And this is where the writers work their magic. The end is mutually-assured destruction. Dolores activates a charge of electromagnetic pulse, making sure that if she did not survive, Maeve sure as hell should not either. But there was no pettiness there. For all Dolores does, she does for a purpose. And right now, at the very end, Dolores’ purpose was to make sure Caleb was saved. For Caleb was the one who would take her revolution forward.
Yes, the episode was disappointing in many respects but it lived up to one promise with flying colors. And while it doesn’t erase the bad parts of the episode, it does make it one that you can never skip, even if you wanted to, should you ever choose to watch season 3 of ‘Westworld’ again. It doesn’t neutralize it altogether, but it does make the episode as memorable as any ‘Westworld’ episode can be. Like ‘Kiksuya’ in season 2, or ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’ in season 1, it is, for better or for worse, a hall-of-Famer.
The next episode of 'Westworld' airs May 3 on HBO.