"Are you ready Darling?"

"For what?"

"This is the new world... and in this world... you can be whoever the fuck you want."

[Part 2. I had hit the character limit in my first review. A thought I had originally believed impossible, but here's the rest.]

Ed Harris and Jeffrey Wright get the least to do here out of the four seasons, and it can be frustrating to watch two actors have to sit out considering their talent. However, they aren’t crucial to the story being told and I enjoy Aaron Paul’s Caleb in a different way that gives the season a distinctive feel compared to the first two. Season 4 does a better job of balancing every character and making them feel more important (except Stubbs, what they did to Stubbs in the season 4 finale will never be forgiven by me), which is why I prefer it to 3, even if I do like both seasons. In saying this, Harris and Wright both have several scenes that sit amongst their best work across the show’s run. Harris has the masterstroke hallucination sequence at the start of “Mother of Exiles”, and the concluding moment of said episode in which Evan Rachel Wood whispers “Welcome to the end of the game” into his ear. A terrifyingly brutal realization that he’s sitting exactly where his deceased wife was. 

I’m mixed on the season’s ‘post credit scene’ where William goes into the research lab and encounters Chalores. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with the scene from a narrative standpoint… until he DOESN’T shoot his doppelganger in the head. One of the individual worst moments of the series and something that needs to be addressed here. I do enjoy where they take him from this point in Season 4, and can see how important this moment was to Season 5 and the story line they were building, but the sequence should be written differently. Host in Black should have snuck up BEHIND William and stabbed him. Not walked towards him and got shot. Stupid and flimsy writing, well worthy of criticism. Again, I do like their speech patterns imitating one another (“You’re just some cheap imitation of me!” from two Harris’ is gold) and I love several of the key moments drawn from this choice in season 4, but if I’d watched this when it aired… not knowing that William would be back the next season. I’d be outraged.

Wright has a beautifully written moment where Bernard meets Lauren (the mother of Arnold’s child, Charlie) again in the real world and apologizes for ‘ending’ things with her the way he did. A wonderful reminder that Bernarnold has passed the ‘fidelity’ test in successfully mixing a host’s body with the memories of a human. I could see this being a driving force for some of Season 5’s potential plot points, which I’ll explore when I do my review for “The Choice”. This scene hits me in an emotional sense that few pieces of television do (I’ve written about that scene more so in my “Crisis Theory” review).

Another note I have to mention is Tessa Thompson’s “Hale” story line. For me, this only works because of the season’s best twist, every pearl from the park is Dolores. Chalores (as I will now refer to her) is compelling, a version of Dolores that desperately wants to be loved and form a bond with Hale’s family. While some of the stuff with her is goofy (the scene in “Absence of Field” where she kills a man in broad daylight is stupid, and even if the cameras were off, it was very risky to do that. What would she have done if she was caught?), I enjoy my time with her character and love where they take her with Season 4.

I mentioned Ramin Djawdi beforehand but he deserves an entire paragraph dedicated to himself for his sublime musical work this season. Beautiful tracks like “Rehoboam”, “Serac”, “Hope” & “Free Will” take this season to another level. He even intertwines the musical notes of Rehoboam into the Serac theme to subtly hint at the twist that Serac is Rehoboam’s ‘puppet’. His work on this show surprasses an already high bar set by Game of Thrones, he’s a constant for quality, never once disappointing across the four season run.

I’ve also mentioned Aaron Paul numerous times across the review, so I’ll try and keep my thoughts about Caleb Nicholas short. He’s brilliant. Besides having a somewhat predictable plot twist for a backstory, his integration into the series overall narrative is seamless and I love that the mysterious “Park 5” (mentioned earlier in the show) plays a part in the twist of his military background. The justification for Dolores choosing Caleb can be somewhat flimsy (Maeve’s “You’ve done terrible things, and you’ve done generous things. She didn’t pick you for your capacity for violence. She picked you for your capacity to choose…” is a brilliant line but doesn’t fully convince me), Paul’s performance is great enough for me to overlook some of the poor writing in his back story. I also love the flipped perspective of a ‘human’ cold storage for Rehoboam’s outliers that cannot be refitted into Earth’s narrative.

Season 3 is still great television. It doesn’t reach the lofty heights of the first two entries into Westworld’s run, but I still loved it overall. I consider its reputation to be a falsity, it deserves so much better than the things I’ve read about it. Hopefully this monolithic review justified why I feel that way. That’s pretty much all I have to say. I’m sure I’ll look back on this review in the future and feel like I’ve missed out on a few other key things I wanted to mention, but I’ve rambled enough. Season 3 has flaws, but I choose to see the beauty.

PS: This season ends with a beautiful piano cover of Pink Flyod’s “Brain Damage” before quite literally BLASTING into focus to the song itself. How could I possibly hate this? And if the dam breaks open many years too soon, and if there is no room upon the hill, and if your head explodes with dark forebodings too. I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon!

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