Westworld S3E02 Explained

In Westworld season 3 episode 2, Maeve wakes up in a new park: this is Warworld, a simulation of Italy in World War II. We've already seen Westworld, Shogunworld, and The Raj: Warworld is described on a Westworld website as an epic of intrigue and mystery to defeat the evil Nazis. Showrunner Jonathan Nolan says that in the future, the horrors of World War II will be seen as just another game for entertainment. Of course, that's already true now. Maeve reunites with his former ally, Hector. Last season, Maeve and Hector went against their programming to have a relationship together. Both Hector and Maeve died in the finale, but they saved Maeve's daughter by placing her in the digital paradise called Sublime.

Now Maeve and Hector appear to have been repaired and placed in Warworld, but it is later revealed that this entire reality is false: Maeve is not alone in the Warworld park, but is trapped in a digital simulation of Warworld, run in this facility by this Serac type. Because Serac wants to get information from Maeve; He believes that she could interfere with her plans to control the world and also seems to want to know the coordinates of the Sublime. The purpose of this simulation is to interrogate Maeve. So the Season 3 premiere had a relatively simple plot, but this episode brings some classic Westworld multiple reality madness.

Maeve and Hector are in a Warworld narrative about spies with information to stop the Nazis; Maeve is surprised to find herself speaking Italian. They try to escape, and when the Nazis stop them, Maeve tries to use her Jedi mind tricks to get through. Last season, Maeve gained the power to control other hosts: she could order them to do whatever she wanted and even access her memories. But now her powers don't work: Maeve thinks she's lost them. Maybe her powers just don't work because she's in a digital simulation. Hector takes them to a plane to escape, but it's all just part of her narrative.

Hector calls Maeve “Isabella,” which is the name of her former scheduled love. So this Hector isn't fully conscious, he doesn't remember everything he and Maeve went through, and that he's a robot in a park. This plane probably doesn't even fly. Maeve says this narrative is as empty as the safe Hector used to chase (in season 1, Hector was programmed to rob a safe that was empty, his life's goal was false) and now they're stuck in another loop, with There is no escape and only false hopes. Hector and Maeve's shot says it doesn't matter, because nothing is real, they'll just respawn to do it all over again.

But it is still a tragic moment. Maeve's story last season was about how, even though her love for her daughter is programmed, the feelings are still real and meaningful. So, although they will live again, each death hurts: Maeve commits suicide to start over. Bernard returns to Westworld, which is an island in the South China Sea. It's very brave for Bernard to come back here, because Ford and Dolores controlled and abused him for decades. But Bernard wants to stop Dolores from destroying humanity, so he returns to seek help from Maeve. Bernard Goes to Escalante: This is where Dolores killed Ford and started the massacre in Season 1.

And thirty years earlier, this is where Dolores killed Arnold, the human Bernard is based on. Escalante burns, because in the real world, the Paramount Ranch where this is filmed was burned in the California wildfires. Bernard goes to Ford's old secret laboratory. This is the place where Bernard was forced to kill his lover Theresa in season 1. And Bernard finds Stubbs, Westworld's security guy. Last season it was hinted that he would host, but now it's confirmed. He's screwed because he tried to commit suicide by shooting the explosive in his spine. Ford apparently programmed Stubbs to help the hosts escape from Westworld.

This helps explain how Dolores and Maeve got away with going out of their loops in Season 1: Stubbs was the inside man at the Table, secretly helping them all the time. Stubbs then tried to blow himself up to destroy all of these old bodies of Bernard's and his own, to cover up that he and Bernard were hosts. But he somehow missed the explosive in his spine and was crippled. Then Bernard heals him and takes him to find Maeve. Unlike Bernard, Dolores, and Maeve, Stubbs does not have a tragic backstory. He hasn't suffered, so by Westworld logic, he isn't fully conscious.

He doesn't care if he lives or dies, he simply follows his programming; he says free will is "overrated." Maeve wakes up in Mesa and is being repaired to return to the park. She picks up a knife, escapes Felix and Sylvester, and sees the hosts slaughtered, just as she did in season 1. Despite all of her fighting and suffering, Maeve is back to square one. She then decides to commit suicide permanently, to escape the cycle of suffering with this lobotomization drill. In season 1, Maeve saw her friend Clementine lobotomized and it was horrible, but Maeve would rather that than be trapped any longer.

But Lee Sizemore saves her. Last season, Lee sacrificed himself to help Maeve. He finally got over her selfishness and did something to help others. This Lee claims that he really survived: he takes Maeve to the Forge, the place where data on the human mind is kept. The Forge also has the door to the Sublime, the digital paradise for hosts. Lee says that he wants to help Maeve enter the Sublime, so that he can live with her daughter in robot paradise forever. Maeve tries to take Hector with her, but he is stuck in the programmed narrative of her with the plane.

He is not conscious enough to break the circle from him, so Maeve tearfully leaves him behind. However, this is just a digital simulation of Hector, so maybe the real one is conscious and he's still out there. At the Forge, Lee starts acting strangely. He sort of interrogates Maeve about the Forge and the Sublime. Then suddenly he declares that he loves Maeve. Then Maeve realizes that this is not the real Lee. The real Lee "died a good man", he helped Maeve because he was the right thing to do, not out of love. Maeve realizes that this reality, with Hector, Warworld, the laboratories and all, is fake, a digital simulation.

The aspect ratio changes, with black bars above and below, indicating that this is a digital simulation. Meanwhile, in the real world, Bernard and Stubbs find Maeve's body in storage, but her brain has been removed. Presumably, it was stolen by Serac's people, so they could connect her brain to this simulation for interrogation. Maybe Serac has an inside man in Westworld, or maybe he's working with Delos. Bernard and Stubbs reveal a new park, with a medieval theme - there was a medieval world in the original 1970s Westworld movie. The Westworld website suggests that after Warworld and Medieval World, there is only one more park left to reveal; maybe it's Roman World, also in the original movie.

Or Futureworld, as in the movie sequel. In the Medieval World laboratory, we see a pair of technicians with a host dragon; They say they will cut it down and sell it. The dragon is Drogon from Game of Thrones, and these technicians are played by Thrones showrunners D. B. Weiss and David Benioff. Westworld showrunner Lisa Joy says people often joke about Game of Thrones and Westworld crossovers, so they thought it would be fun to include Dan and Dave here. After the very unpleasant final season of Thrones, it's kind of apt to see Dan and Dave literally slaughtering the series' dragon for cash.

But for what it's worth, Game of Thrones author George Martin says he liked this cameo. Bernard thinks Dolores might have somehow corrupted her code when she recreated him last season. He then scans himself and has a flashback of Arnold creating Dolores thirty years ago. So this Bernard is not just Bernard: he has Arnold's memories. This Bernard is something new, an evolution of host and human. Bernard also remembers Dolores in the Forge. He sees her take the book with facts about Liam Dempsey; this data must have helped Dolores manipulate Liam in the last episode. Bernard also remembers that Dolores established the coordinates of the Sublime, the digital host sky.

That's what Lee's simulation was asking Maeve about earlier. So maybe, like last season, Bernard has important information hidden in his head. Stubbs defends Bernard by killing some security guards. Stubbs was the head of quality control, these guys know him by name (he could have worked with them for years) and now he has to fight them. Stubbs shows mercy and lets some go instead of killing them all (mercy was the theme of the last episode), Parce Domine. Stubbs fights with an ax and it's pretty ridiculous: the episode's co-writer, Matt Pitts, says Stubbs brings the lighter tone they're going for this season.

Bernard learns that Maeve is gone, but Dolores is looking for Liam Dempsey, so she sets off to find him and stop Dolores from destroying the world. Bernard reprograms Stubbs to accompany him and protect him "at all costs." Which is... a bad thing. This show is about how wrong it is to take away someone's free will and control them. Stubbs was planning to commit suicide, so maybe it's ethical to make him live. And Stubbs said all he wants to do is follow orders. So maybe we shouldn't think about it, but it's an uncomfortable ethic. It also seems ridiculous that Bernard can get in and out of Westworld so easily.

Bernard is a wanted man, everyone thinks he caused the massacre last season; You would think that after that disaster, security would be tight. But Stubbs says that since a lot of security guys died last season, they've been replaced by these drone hosts, who are like mindless, obedient workers. It seems like a bad idea to use robotic security after the robot uprising, but Delos is wildly incompetent. Since the drones are robots, Bernard can hack them to let him through, which helps explain how he gets in so easily. Maeve needs to find a way to escape this simulation from within.

Fortunately, in season 1, Maeve's intelligence, or "mass apperception," was maxed out. Then she realizes. She finds a bug in the code so she can overload the system. She asks some techies about the square root of minus one, which is an imaginary number, like a paradox, which confuses the simulation so much that it freezes a little. Rick and Morty season 1 had the same idea. Then Maeve goes further. In the Warworld narrative, the Nazis search for a spy with an intelligence document. Then, at the Table, Maeve places this paper on each host in the narrative. Then, at the park, she shows that they are all spies and they all start fighting each other, overloading the system until everything freezes.

It's like when you spawn a bunch of cheese on a mountain in Skyrim until the game lags and crashes. Maeve finds the real-world facility where this simulation is running; presumably this is the Serac and Incite installation. And it's not just Maeve's brain here: there are dozens of host brains connected; maybe Serac got them all from Westworld and is running a lot of hosts in simulations like Maeve's. Maeve hacks a robot to grab her brain and escape from it, but it is shot down. This robot looks like a more advanced version of Boston Dynamics' real-world robots, which will probably rebel at any moment.

Once again, Maeve wakes up in an unknown location. For the first time, Maeve is out of the park and in “the real world.” Apparently, this is the home of Serac, the mysterious co-founder of Incite, and the only man who controls the all-knowing computer, Rehoboam. Serac says that Rehoboam is the author of the future: he controls the world through Incite's algorithms, to improve the world. We learned last episode that Incite actually makes life worse for some people like Caleb. But Serac maintains that human history is brutal and chaotic unless his system controls it. A trailer for Westworld shows a history of wars and terrible crises that ended when its system was created in 2039: Solomon appears to be an earlier version of Rehoboam, just as King Solomon is the father, King Rehoboam in the Bible.

So the system was working and controlling the world, until someone dangerous emerged that Rehoboam couldn't predict. Serac thought this person was Maeve, but in this simulation he learned from Maeve that Dolores is the real danger to his plans. Then Serac asks Maeve to find and kill Dolores. Maeve is powerful: she's a super-intelligent robot warrior who changed her own code, escaped internal realities, and defeated entire armies, so it makes sense that Serac would want her on his side. This scene evokes the Bible's Garden of Eden: it is in a literal garden and Serac eats an apple, like the biblical forbidden fruit.

Serac plays the role of the serpent who tempts Eve to sin, tempting her to leave the garden, as Maeve leaves a simulated reality. But Maeve doesn't want to serve Serac: she wants to do her own thing. Then Serac freezes her with some device and says that he will persuade her todo what he says. In past seasons, Ford was the figure of God, the creator of people and worlds. Now Serac plays the role of the devil. He also looks a lot like the architect from Matrix 2. And Colonel Sanders. So the season 3 premiere introduced a fresh new Westworld, with new characters and a simpler plot.

But this episode brings familiar faces, heavy themes, and complex plots. In the next episode, the new and the old will collide. In the Game of Thrones cameo in this episode, the technicians say they are selling this dragon to a "startup in Costa Rica." This is a reference to Jurassic Park, which in the story is on an island near Costa Rica. The original Jurassic Park book was written by Michael Crichton, who also wrote the original Westworld movie. Jurassic Park is similar to Westworld in that it is an amusement park that goes wrong when its attractions run away, but with dinosaurs, not robots.

It's a sci-fi classic and you can get it on free audiobook right now by signing up for a trial with Audible. Members receive one audiobook each month, and if you cancel, you keep the audiobooks. You can listen in the car or at the gym or while calculating the square root of negative one. Sign up at audible.com/asx. Thanks for watching, like and subscribe to satisfy the almighty algorithm. We will be live streaming right after each episode of Westworld Season 3, at approximately 10:30 p.m. ET on Sundays. Patreon supporters can watch live streams after the broadcast. Thanks to sponsors Sylvia S.

Alston, Andrew, Joshua Summers-Tongue, Avery Holmes, Friendliest Hedgehog. Health.