Why Westworld Season Two Needs a System Check

With two weeks having passed since season two finale aired, it’s a perfect time to breakdown Westworld season two and where it went wrong. When Westworld season one ended, I had mostly positive feelings for the show. Despite some slow, plodding episodes the first season mostly delivered on the hype of sophisticated androids rebelling against their human masters in the park the show is set in. Bolstered by strong performances from its cast and great direction by writer-directors Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy and others, the show was able to move past its issues and inspire hope for an even greater season two. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Instead of moving forward, season two felt it took two steps backwards due to its pretentious dialogue, hackneyed action and overly relying on its audience’s intelligence.

Let’s get this out of the way, Westworld’s cast is still fantastic. Led by Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Jeffery Wright, and others, they are able to somehow–episode after episode—deliver the philosophical mush that the writers wanted the audience to hear. Evan Rachel Wood’s Dolores got the worst of it. As the leader of one of the sects of rebel androids, Dolores explains her actions in edgy philosophical diatribes that a college freshman would be excited to make after taking Philosophy 101. Instead of making Dolores more personable to the audience, Nolan and Joy make her feel too distant and disconnected. The only saving grace is Wood, who still gives her all when delivering Dolores’ cringey lines. Other characters like Ed Harris’ William/Man in Black are also subject to dialogue unbecoming of the precedent set by the first season.

Next up: the action. With as big of a budget as Westworld has ($100 million apparently), season two was bound to up the action as the humans fought back to take the park back from the rebelling hosts. It bemoans me to say that Westworld, despite the prestige talent in front of and behind the camera, has some of the most befuddling action I’ve ever seen. The human security forces hired by the people running the park are some of dumbest characters ever to grace the screen. When storming an android stronghold, there are no formations, there’s no taking cover-they literally run straight into enemy fire, firing wildly and are defeated. In one of the later episodes, a soldier is seduced and killed by a pretty female android despite knowing said android was an enemy and its sole purpose was to kill him. I know we’re supposed to want to root for the androids to rise up and usurp their human overlords, but the show makes it too easy with the humans acting so dim-witted. A slight increase to the humans intelligence would have benefited the show and increased the tension in the battle scenes

Westworld from the beginning has relied on its audience’s ability to keep up with its non-linear storytelling and numerous timelines. Which timeline is this characters story taking place in? The past? Or the present? Is what this character’s experiencing real, or just part of its programming? In season two the audience gets to keep track of all these questions and more. At a certain point, it becomes tiring trying to figure out whether a scene is happening in the past, present or future. It takes away from the enjoyment of actually watching the show. Visiting the Westworld Reddit subreddit is necessity if you want to make sense of what is happening in the show. Perhaps the subreddit’s proclivity for guessing the first season’s big reveals before they happened forced the writers to obfuscate the show’s path even more in the second season. The writers seem to enjoy the audience’s confusion, but while it is nice to respect an audience’s intelligence, Westworld season two gambled and decided to go full carte blanche, leaving the audience to scratch their heads as they tried to figure out what exactly was going on. The result was a muddled mess in both structure and pace as the show tried to constantly throw the audience for a loop.

While Westworld season two wasn’t all bad as mentioned in this column–it was reduced to moments, rarely an entire episode. The return of Anthony Hopkins’ Ford was well done and menacing. And the show, visually speaking rivals Game of Thrones as one of the prettiest shows on television with its sweeping vistas and movie-like visuals. These great moments are unfortunately surrounded by muddled dialogue, pacing, action and structure. Hopefully Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy take the criticism of season two to heart and make a better season three because Westworld still has the potential to be the heir apparent to Game of Thrones as television’s premiere big budget show, despite its glaring flaws.