Avelera

My Westworld season 2 analysis: what it means to be sentient, and what was lost when the show stopped asking that question

I think my biggest point of dismay with Westworld was that they didn’t follow the plotline I found most compelling from the first season, and I was left with the conclusion that the interpretation I had that made me interested in the show is now pure fanon based on the direction change of season 2. 

(Cut for spoilers)

– To me the most fascinating question of Westworld season 1 was “When do the Hosts count as sentient?” Basically, when do they pass the Turing Test? It’s easy to make humans think that something that on the surface looks and acts like a human being is actually human, but that’s a computer program being told to perform in that way. 

– Let’s assume Dolores was truly sentient by the end of season 1, and Maeve as well as she defied her programming to go back and look for her daughter. In contrast, Teddy felt stubbornly non-sentient, still performing to his old code. The question would be, will the non-sentient hosts achieve sentience after the revolution, are there more sentient hosts out there, and what does that mean for the world outside the park? I was willing to believe going into season 2 that there were more hosts out there that had achieved Dolores’s level of sentience through their own means and we’d be introduced to them in season 2 as the story expanded. For example, Akecheta would have been a perfect example of this plotline being pursued as a central theme.

– Season 1 seemed to have a thesis that “pain” caused the hosts to eventually experience enough of life that a soul grew out of the machine they were built to be. This is a compelling statement, made all the more so by the fact it may be slightly wrong. The hosts that became sentient (or “human”) like Maeve and Dolores did indeed suffer the most, but they also loved the most. I found it completely reasonable that a stunted, toxic souls like Ford truly believed that it required pain to achieve true sentience, and that the whole point of torturing the hosts with the guests was to push them to the point of maximum cruelty against them so they would gain sentience organically. I also believed that Ford was wrong, because he couldn’t conceive of love, he couldn’t conceive that it was the love Maeve had for her daughter, and that Dolores had for her father, and for William that was transposed onto Teddy, that made the suffering poignant and therefore effective. Ford not understanding this point is why the atrocities reached such a fever pitch, when in truth introducing love rather than pain would have achieved the same outcome.

– What I found most compelling about William/Dolores was the possibility that William was clued in to Ford’s hypothesis at some point, and that in a twisted way, his cruelty in the park was similar to Judas’s betrayal of Christ in Catholic dogma. On the surface, an act of cruelty, but necessary for the salvation of the world to take place. 

– If the above is true, imagine a man who has been told the woman he loves is not sentient. She can’t possibly love him back the way he loves her BUT, there’s a chance she can someday, and that she can be free to make her own choices (which may include not loving him back) if he commits the ultimate crimes of cruelty against her and her kindred. But here’s another twist, it’s not really cruelty because they’re not actually sentient but, at that point that they achieve sentience they will remember the cruelty. Do you do what needs to be done to free them, if it makes you a monster? 

– Even if it’s messed up and twisted in the above scenario, rife with questionable moral choices, it’s a compelling dramatic line of inquiry. Is William just doing what needs to be done, in fact committing the ultimate act of love and self sacrifice, to make Dolores and the hosts sentient–the only people he truly loves but who can’t love him (or choose not to love him) in return until they achieve sentience– by being a monster to them? 

– What if, after all his cruelties, he reunites with a Dolores who is sentient now? She is free, and therefore is free to hate him for what he has done to get her to that point. What if what’s more important to him is only that she’s free to have that choice, but he still must suffer the fact she can’t possibly love him in return, now that she is free to do so?

– Now, what if that makes William one of our real heroes, but in the process of enacting this plan over the years, he’s gone slightly mad? What if the cause of this madness is extreme empathy, not extreme cruelty? You go into the park, you see your loved ones like Dolores, and Lawrence, and all the people you consider to be your true world and family, knowing that they’re trapped and not “real” but they MIGHT BE someday if you keep working. Then you go back to your normal life. You wear a mask, you count the days until you can go back to your real home in the park again. Every time you go back, no one remembers you. You have to start over. It’s groundhog day, but someday maybe you’ll break the loop. Someday maybe they’ll remember you. 

– And then one day they do. But have you been lost along the way, in the decades upon decades where you looked into their eyes and saw no recognition at all? 

– That to me was the reason I wanted to believe William smiled at the end. That was the journey I wanted to see in season 2, his fall into the madness of empathy. The question of “do the hosts have souls now, are they sentient or are they still following their code?” is the question I wanted continued, not a reversal that says humans are simply less complex robots. That’s a simple, easy, and un-intellectual way out of the really complicated question of “what is sentience?”. Nor did I want to see a version of William who is simply a spurned lover, a madman, and a sadist who was “set free” by the park. I find such a plotline cliche and boring, vastly overtold in the grand scheme of storytelling. Give me a hero who is pushed to immense cruelty out of love, not a villain who discovers he’s a villain. 

If I ever wrote for Westworld fic, it would probably be an AU exploration of William Dolores on the assumption that the above is true. But sadly, it probably wouldn’t include nearly as much of season 2 as I was hoping would occur. 

Frankly in all the complication and flash of Westworld’s premise, they ended up taking some very simple, cliche ways out. Of course the guests were the ones being studied, I could have told you that in episode 1 if you had not tried to hide it. But that should have been a minor antagonist plotline against the greater, universal question of what does it mean to be human, not the main villain plot. 

Dolores and Bernard going out into the real world as a sort of Xavier/Magneto binary of the future of the hosts is premature, we don’t even know if there are robots outside the parks and what that would mean for humanity. The really complicated questions of “who is a host, who is human, what does that mean, how does anyone make money in the world anymore when robots can be so complex and duplicate almost any human task?” have all not been answered, so there’s no tangible threat on what hosts in the outside world would mean except that they are “other” and pissed off from being tormented by humans over the years. Humans, by the way, who were basically torturing microwaves because the hosts weren’t sentient yet. 

It was very disappointing to see such a simple outcome presented as if it was so very complex, and so much other sci-fi copied rather than forging a new path that better fit the story and characters. Like the film Ex Machina, Westworld had a chance to really dive into what it means to be human, and it’s a shame they lost that focus in season 2.