After last week’s return to a familiar locale, we finally get an appearance from one of our favorite hosts…who apparently got quite the upgrade
Hello my fellow guests/hosts, since I’ve been traveling and got behind, I’ve had the benefit of watching the first 5 episodes, so I’ll contain my thoughts to what happened in each episode in case you want to read these as you catch up.
So far through two episodes, we hadn’t seen anything from Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and/or how he fits into the narrative this season. This episode explains what he’s been up to in the Sublime, but he’s clearly not operating at the same time as everyone else (remember at the end of season three, he woke up from the Sublime covered in dust and was clearly there for a substantial period.)
Bernard The Wise
We open on Bernard inside the Sublime and a number of potential new worlds that have been built by the hosts stored there. He eventually encounters Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon) living in a world that’s close to ours aesthetic, where we learn a key detail about the Sublime, that it moves much faster than the real world. Bernard uses this advantage to run scenarios of the real world to figure out if he can save humanity and the hosts, which he determines he can, but it will result in his death.
Once Bernard emerges from the Sublime, we find that Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) has been there the whole time (but reluctantly, since he’s sort of working for Bernard against his will). We quickly notice that Bernard cuts off many of his sentences and predicts many things that are going to happen. This is likely from his time running scenarios in the Sublime, but I’ll explain more about this at the end. Bernard kills two hosts (likely sent by Halores) that were going to infiltrate a rebel group and uses them as a peace offering to C (Aurora Perrineau), a member of the rebel group. Bernard says he can help them find the weapon they’ve been looking for in the desert when they are taken to meet the group’s leader Jay (played by Daniel Wu).
Setting Off The Trap
I will still contend that going back to the park is mostly a waste of everyone’s time. That said, there’s nothing poorly executed about the moments Caleb (Aaron Paul) and Maeve (Thandie Newton) spend in the park, from the new Temperance set that echoes many of the loops and storylines from the original park. Maeve laments how her saloon is effectively the same as was before (or worse) and even has to keep Caleb from accidentally triggering some of the story prompts. Maeve knows they need to get to the park’s lower levels so they wait in the new bar area until the new Hector (played now by Nico Galán and set to the theme of Metallica’s Enter The Sandman) inevitably kills many hosts and offers them an opportunity to hide amongst the bodies into the lower levels.
While this is going on, Frankie (Celeste Clark) and Uwade (Nozipho Mclean) are preparing to leave when Frankie realizes that the real Carver (Manny Montana) is dead and that they are dealing with a host. Due to her quick thinking, Frankie alerts her mom, and she’s able to kill him and they are just barely able to escape…however our favorite duo Caleb and Maeve doesn’t know this yet.
As they successfully make it into the lower levels, Maeve realizes that it’s not quite right, which is suddenly confirmed when guests are shown in the lower levels reenacting the massacre in the park from season one/two. This gets Maeve shot and forces them to retreat until they find the actual administrative levels, where they encounter the same flies from the past two episodes. Here, Caleb finds humans being subjected to the flies, and his own Frankie in one of the glass rooms. However, this is shown to be a trap, as Halores was aware they were coming to the park. As Maeve is struggling to take down the security, Frankie’s head opens up like one of the classic host models and floods the room with flies as Caleb is swarmed.
What Is Bernard Attempting To Do?
So this is where I wanted to explain what Bernard’s powers are a bit more.
To be clear, he’s not really seeing the future in the sense of knowing what exactly will happen. But he’s using the power of model generation to predict potential outcomes and use that information to try and steer the world towards a scenario where hosts and humans can survive. Imagine you had a powerful enough computer that effectively knew the entirety of human history up until this point and you tried to see what was going to happen next: that would be an incredibly effective tool or ability. Sound familiar? Remember in season three when Seroc was using Rehoboam’s predictive models to force human into their own loops (and hopefully save them from themselves)? It’s similar to that but on steroids based on the potential computing space and power of the Sublime. Now, given what Halores is doing with the flies and Maeve reactions to it, I am starting to wonder if this was the future that Seroc was worried about … did Rehoboam also predict a similar scenario using the same predictive power that Bernard is now trying to use in a different way?
I’m hoping the rest of the season will dive into this power a bit more, but it’s something that’s been logically consistent as the series has described how humanity was fairly predictable after Delos gained tons of information in the park through guest visits through the decades. So with that model already set in the show, it’s provided really cool avenues to keep exploring a modern day issue – predictive models are being used by companies in eerily similar ways as we speak – through different lenses: Bernard and Rehoboam.
Lastly, I just want to say the idea of the Sublime moving faster is so great. If you’ve ever watched a little show called Digimon (yes I’m dating myself with this reference somehow), you’ll remember that the digital world there also worked the same way, and this is largely due to the speed at which computers can think compared to humanity. If you can think faster, you can basically live another life time through the speed of thought before a child has even grown up in the real world. It’s a really cool concept and I’m glad to see it portrayed in Westworld in such a cool way and tied into Bernard’s predictions for the future.
Final Thoughts
Welp, I’m finally glad to see that Bernard has joined the chat even if I have no idea exactly when his storyline is taking place. I do worry given how poorly the timelines were executed back in season two if this will affect the quality of this season. The time play in season one was masterful and Westworld has sometimes felt paralzyed, either by the park itself or the need to wow us with a big reveal. I think relying on the strong science fiction and intelligence questions concepts will always bear more fruit than a potential gimmick or poorly executed time skip. I hope I’m wrong, but only time will tell.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Previous Episode: Well Enough Alone
Next Episode: Generation Loss
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