"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Monday, March 23, 2020

Westword 3.2: Dolores' Enemies



A fine second episode of the third season of Westworld on HBO tonight, even though Dolores and what we saw of her life last week was present only in the lives of others, Maeve and Bernard, and the characters, androids and humans, in their worlds.  Of course, all the worlds and lives are connected, so Dolores was actually very present in the story, and the stories of Maeve and Bernard, on the way to approaching each other, were quite good.

Maeve has always been a great character, driven by the need to find her daughter, able to defy programming and orders, but only most of the time.  We encounter one of the times she can't, a very significant time, at the very end of tonight's episode, when Engerraund Serac freezes her, in that excellent white dress, with a remote control (yeah, reminiscent of today's television remotes).  In that instant, Serac instantly becomes one of the most important and provocative characters on the show, maybe even a successor to Ford.  He clearly has enormous knowledge of the hosts and how they work.  And, just for good measure in making him provocative, he wants Maeve to kill Dolores.  (It also doesn't hurt that he's played by one of my favorite actors, Vincent Cassel.)

Does Maeve have loyalty to her kind?  So far in the two seasons plus two new episodes, it's tough to say.  She has loyalty to and love for her daughter, clearly.  She'd kill Dolores in a heartbeat to save her little girl. (It's still not 100% clear, by the way, why Maeve is so devoted to her - the devotion is definitely sprung of something deeper than programming.)  But if her daughter wasn't at stake, would Maeve kill Delores?  Certainly not necessarily if she were commanded to do so - she could defy the command.  But since we don't really know what makes Maeve tick, it's impossible to say at this point what Maeve would do.  Which makes her story this season especially alluring.

Bernard also wants to stop Delores from wiping out humanity, and if killing her is the only way to do that, I'd say at this point that he would.  Bernard remains a supremely interesting character, since he's both a host and a master programmer.   That makes him uniquely different from both Dolores and Maeve, in different ways.   In one obvious sense, he's also a successor to Ford.  And there's no doubt the Bernard and Serac will meet before this season ends.

So we're off and running, with more sharp characters and storylines.  And I'm glad Warworld and its Nazis were apparently just an appetizer for a much bigger story.




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