Warning: The following contains full spoilers for the Westworld Season 4 episode "Que Será, Será," which aired on Aug. 14 on HBO.
To read our review of last week's Westworld episode, "Metanoia," click here.
With Westworld going so big with its robot apocalypse, and even bigger with the absolute end point for all humanity, there was no story left... than to go back to the park. Shrink it all back down to something smaller. Give us Westworld again. It was almost comical how far reaching the story journeyed beyond the park of the first two seasons (while still keeping it in the title), so much so that this season and the previous one featured new parks, just to make things feel tethered. There were no massive surprises in "Que Será, Será" (since there there was no going back from last week) but it still unfolded nicely as an "aftermath"-style finale leading us into the next -- and presumedly final -- stage of the story.
"Que Será, Será" focused on Hale's final showdown with William, Caleb and Frankie's escape and tearful goodbye, and -- at long last -- Dolores' true role in all of this. The Christina/Dolores reveal felt right, but also underwhelming. It wasn't too hard to figure out that she'd dreamt up Teddy (especially after they revealed that she'd also created Maya, her mean boss, and even paranoid Peter) to help her wake up but that didn't stop the sentiment of the moment, and the tender scenes between them, from working. In fact, this is the most attention paid to their relationship to date. The bigger revelation at play here, breaking it all down, was that Dolores' world was digitally separate from everyone else. She was a ghost who'd surrounded herself with a small circle of ghosts.
Side Quest: Hale stomping on the floor of the digital city map, rocking Dolores' reality, was pretty rad.
So Bernard was sending a message to Hale, it turned out, one that turned Hale into a de facto hero -- or even a Maeve surrogate, if you will -- for this finale. She was now out to stop William from getting his murderous mitts on the Sublime and the gun Bernard stashed last week at the dam was, in fact, meant for her. We left things with Dolores running a giant Westworld sim inside the Sublime, something representing a "final test" for both humanity and hosts (or possibly just the hosts since there's no real way to sneak any humans in there, right?). Anyhow, whatever stories run in this new park are there to determine if sentient life gets to continue on, not necessarily human life... as far as we can tell.
Dammit, Stubbs almost made it! There was a small fun twist last week when Stubbs lived and Bernard died because Stubbs assumed he'd be the one getting killed. And this week it sure seemed like he'd make it out, but then Clementine clobbered him, rather unceremoniously. Look, Stubbs was never a full character. He started as a blank slate and then became the guy rolling his eyes at Bernard, but him surviving last week's initial purge held promise. But now that's done. Clementine, too, was never a developed personality, but at least she had one menacing move to make before all was said and done.
The use of music at the end of these last two Season 4 episodes really helped ground the story and give these large chapters a landing spot, while also reminding us of Jonathan Nolan's love of David Bowie and Radiohead (which we knew from Person of Interest, even though Nolan didn't wind up using "Heroes" in the POI finale). Anyhow, Ramin Djawadi's (Game of Thrones, Person of Interest) instrumental version of Radiohead's "Pyramid Song" was sublime (pun intended!). If humanity needed to fade into existence then you could do worse, music-wise. Again, when you've got so much going on in your story, and the stakes are life itself, it helps lasso it all up when you've got a song and some somber voiceover.
The idea here is that humans have only a few years left. Some will remain as outliers, in the badlands, but they won't last. It's basically the scenario of The Road. That's sort of a bummer for Frankie given all she and her mom (and dad) did to try and save everyone, and even more of a dead man's hand when you think of Caleb spending his final moments (in his final Caleb form) to make sure Frankie survived. But now it's like... survived for what? Hopefully Season 5's Sublime Park story will incorporate Frankie and the remaining humans somehow. It seems easy to bring back anyone who's ever been a host (even if they never made it to the Sublime) because there's always robot trickery available, but humans are a different deal.
Speaking of bots, it was cool to see previous Westworld hosts Steven Ogg and Jonathan Tucker return, albeit briefly, for some Purge Planet mayhem. Ogg was taken out by an axe during the fun "murder chain" opener while Tucker got gunned down by William on the road to the Hoover Dam. It's a small thing, sure, but little nuggets like that help tie things together when the story gets too big. It reminded us of where we came from and foreshadowed, as we'd find out, where we're headed back to. "One last loop around the bend."
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/nNQWB1e
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming
No comments:
Post a Comment