"Westworld," Year Four

Spoilers for the first three seasons ahead.

HBO's "Westworld" came back, somewhat inexplicably, for what turned out to be its final year.  I liked the much-maligned third season better than most, but I figured that the story had gone about as far as it was going to, with the defeat of the sinister systems keeping humanity trapped in host-like loops.  Not so, it turns out.  Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy reordered their strange vision of the future once again for year four, and have a couple of new tricks up their sleeves.  They also pull out some of the old ones, to mostly good effect.  

I find it astounding that there are so many top drawer actors who remained regulars in this series.  Tessa Thompson, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Aaron Paul, Ed Harris, and James Marsden, among others, are still here.  Newcomers include Ariana DeBose and Daniel Wu.  Thompson and Wood are playing two different versions of Dolores/Wyatt, one villainous and tyrannical, and one completely innocent and unaware of the bloody conflicts driving nearly everyone else in the show.  However it's Aaron Paul as Caleb, the everyman introduced in the previous season, who most of the season revolves around.  He's one of the only truly sympathetic characters left, and given the most straightforward, uncomplicated story to follow.  Most of the other major players like Maeve and Bernard are more enigmatic, having shed their original roles and drives as the show has become more complex.

And boy, does "Westworld" continue to double down on its convoluted plotting and heady sci-fi concepts.  It's not that any of the material is particularly difficult to grasp, but the tricky narrative and storytelling choices are purposefully disorienting, and the show assumes that the viewer has a good recall of events that happened in previous seasons - now several years in the past.  Thankfully, "Westworld" has left behind the more vague and infuriating mysteries like The Maze, and is more transparent this year about what is actually going on.  The timeline is messy, and a few characters aren't quite living in the same reality, but the central conflict is the same as ever.  The hosts are still fighting with the humans over who controls the planet, and this time the hosts have finally gained the upper hand.  Old faces keep popping up because nobody stays dead in this universe for long.  The season is well-paced and never feels like it's stalling for time at any point.  There are two standout episodes, both leaning very hard on science-fiction concepts, and both so wonderfully executed that I think they're worth seeking out on their own, independent of the rest of the season.

Because honestly, by the time the final episode rolled around, I was ready for "Westworld" to be over.  I'd stopped caring about any of the characters after they'd all been killed and resurrected multiple times.  The show's bleak outlook on the fate of intelligent life is unusual, and I respect that mutual destruction was the chosen endgame.  However, it felt very compromised in execution, with all the bloodshed and fighting coming across as perfunctory and toothless.  The show clearly wanted to get more cerebral and more philosophical, but was held back by having to keep delivering more stupid violence and melodrama to appease the more restless viewers.  "Westworld" looks as prestigious and expensive as ever, with an effects budget that other genre shows could only dream of.  However, it's also incredibly frustrating to see so much effort and talent put in service of a series that only sporadically lives up to its promise.        

I'm glad that "Westworld" got a more definite conclusion, and a chance to redeem itself somewhat after the poorly received third season.  We got a lot of answers to a lot of mysteries, and some of them were satisfying.  Others weren't.  Luke Hemsworth's Stubbs apparently only survived this long to give Bernard someone to talk to.  Still, science-fiction media of this scope and this much ambition remain too rare, and I was satisfied with "Westworld," imperfect as it is.  The trip is not for everyone, but I found it worthwhile.

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