Westworld Season 1 Overview (Or Why It Could Have Been A Much Better Show)

The opening season of Westworld has ended and we can finally form our opinion of this new HBO show and one of the most promising TV dramas today. Though the series is yet to reach its full consciousness, the final episode rounded up all the plot stems pretty nicely and wait for Westworld Season 2 is too damn long (almost 2 years).

The last episode of Season 1 was a pretty amazing feature-length piece packed with action, suspense, some untangling, and then some more twists… The whole season has been building to the moment in which the bots rebel against their foolish makers, and it finally happened in “The Bicameral Mind”.

The bots certainly managed to rise to the occasion, but did the show altogether?

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (Truth)

Now, don’t get us wrong, we really love Westworld and we enjoyed watching Season 1 immensely, but it feels like its makers, Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, could have done a much better job.

One of the major flaws are the characters themselves.

They are simply underdeveloped. And yes, we know it is rather tricky to make bot-like characters easy to fall in love with; and yes, we know this is only the first season, but we simply haven’t bonded with almost any of them (yet).

Aside from a few really cool personas (Ford, Dolores, Maeve), the vast majority of them are merely forgettable archetypes and nothing more.

Take William and the Man In Black for example. Admittedly, it is pretty awesome that they are the same dude and the whole multiple timelines thing is pretty great, but for the two (one) characters who got that much screen time these fellas are unacceptably plain, despite all the nasty violence and intricate dispositions they possess.

Also, pretty much everybody figured out the whole William/MIB twist way before it was ever-so dramatically portrayed in the finale. The same thing goes for Bernard and Arnold (BernArnold?), while we also think much was sacrificed for the sake of the tangled plot and all the oh-so-unforeseen twists.

The narrative has shown quite a lack of curation due to the overuse of twists and reveals, which again brings us back to the characters. We barely get to know them, and the season is already over.

Can’t Wait For Season 2 Though

There is, of course, a plethora of positive events and much intrigue to Westworld. The themes underpinning the show are simply too relevant and fascinating not to come back for Season 2.

The moment when dark epiphany finally strikes Dolores and she attacks the Man In Black with so much hatred and resentment in her eyes, is something we waited for from the very first episode and when it finally happened, we fell in love with Dolores even more.

Also, the scene with Maeve and Felix when he helps her and Maeve says to him: “Oh Felix, you really do make a terrible human being, and I mean that as a compliment,” is definitely one of the best moments of modern television and it perfectly sums up the point of this show – humans are the most inhumane beings to ever walk this Earth.

To sum up: Westworld Season 1 is at the same time excellent but also rather tenuous. Bicameral indeed.