Westworld Season 2 Review: The Robot Revolution Will Be Televised, Beautifully
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains broad details of the second season of Westworld, which premieres ..
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains broad details of the second season of Westworld, which premieres tonight on HBO.
Regardless of its actual merits, theres always been a bit of a Joe Biden quality to Westworld but heading into its Season 2 debut tonight the HBO drama is increasingly displaying its ready for the top job.
Obviously birthed as an eventual successor to Game of Thrones by the premium cabler when the Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan created drama based on Michael Crichtons novel and 1973 movie premiered in October 2016, the now buoyant and streamlined Westworld 2.0 finds itself off the training wheels and standing as the first defining drama of the #MeToo and Times Up era. No spoilers, but by the time “Men have lost their hands for touching a Geisha without permission” is uttered several episodes into Season 2, the unrelenting ethos of sexual violence that stained Season 1 and many a big budget series has found a whole new form.
As the finale of the Emmy-nominated Season 1 revealed, the female-led robot hosts of the near-future theme park have killed their creator Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) and are currently implacably rising up against their oppressors. Put more curtly, having achieved consciousness and seemingly freedom from their programmed narratives to entertain sadistic visitors, Evan Rachel Woods farm girl Delores and Thandie Newtons brothel madam Maeve are taking no prisoners and shedding few electronic tears. On the trail of her digital daughter, steely Maeve sums up a lot of the season when she proclaims “Ive found a new voice, now I use it.”
On the other side of the corporate veil, Tessa Thompsons power-hungry Charlotte Hale of Westworld parent company Delos has ruthlessly leaped into the real and digital void created by the apparent death of Hopkins Robert Ford at the end of last season.
After a rocky start with tonights “Journey Into Night” episode and with much explicitly left unspoken, Westworld Season 2 thankfully cuts loose most of the labyrinth and ultimately uneventful plots of the first season to gallop towards a “reckoning” of reminiscence and revenge. With whole new blood-soaked physical and existential worlds to be explored and newcomers like Kingdoms Jonathan Tucker on board, Wood, Newton, and Thompson are exemplary in 2.0 and worth the price of admission on their own.
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In such a landscape, the spectacular work of production designer and The Knick alum Howard Cummings and cinematographer Darren Tiernan of American Gods esteem have to be given a shout out. They and the below the line team of Westworld Season 2 have helped craft what is by far one of the best looking and most textured series to grace the small screen in this or any other era.
Back as both ends of the well-heeled and broken park Man In Black patron, Ed Harris and Unsolveds Jimmi Simpson provide a new sense of foundation to the tale, which I liked in Season 1. On the storytelling side itself, Jeffrey Wright as brooding Westworld Programming Division chief and android Bernard Lowe and Simon Quartermans narrative director Lee Sizemore are the captains of consequences when the machine turns on its makers, so to speak – and that is a much more interesting ghost to be pursuing.
With the robot revolution, big business intrigue, understated lines about guns and knife fights, and likely the most predominant Japanese presence on American television in neighboring Shogun World, Westworld 2.0 clearly aims to show Disneys Epcot Center along with everyone else in Prestige TV-land how its really done. For the most part, it succeeds beyond its wildest electric dreams and proves that a more fully realized lurch for the throne is no game.
