If you thought Westworld peaked in season one… you’re in all probability proper. But if you happen to’ve been ready for Westworld to provide you an incredible twist once more, or maybe despaired that the present would by no means thrill you prefer it used to, or that it had fully misplaced its manner through the mediocre third season, tonight’s episode proved in any other case. And if it didn’t match the greatness of season one, it got here fairly rattling shut.

Attention: if you care in any respect about Westworld, I extremely advocate you not learn this or any recap earlier than watching “Generation Loss.” I’m severe sufficient to ship a second spoiler warning. (Also, attempt to keep off the web totally till you’ve considered it.)

Remember how I’ve been praising Westworld season 4 for being so refreshingly simple? I take all of it again. “Generation Loss” pulled off the present’s greatest twists because the near-perfect first season, together with a serious time-jump that pulled the rug out from the final three episodes. While it deftly edited the season’s three storylines collectively to provide its “holy crap” second, we will start with Christina’s, since hers nonetheless feels prefer it’s set in another world (and possibly it’s).

G/O Media might get a fee

22% Off

Google Pixel 6 Pro

Fancy telephone
Uses a strong Google Tensor processor for absurd speeds, has a sophisticated digicam with a 4x optical zoom, and a sensor that may seize extra mild than ever earlier than, has a fast-charging battery to let you keep on the go extra, and options a number of unimaginable photograph instruments.

After portray the enigmatic Tower, seemingly in a daze, Christina (Evan Rachel Wood) is dragged out for one more evening in town and one other blind date by her more and more fishy roommate Maya (Ariana DeBose). But this time, her blind date is Teddy (James Marsden)—or slightly, that man who appears to be like precisely like Teddy—and their dialog is completely dripping with barely disguised subtext about Dolores and the Westworld park. They each make a number of references to being trapped on paths, just like the routines the Hosts have been programmed to comply with. Maybe-Teddy says he was a “bounty hunter with a heart of gold,” which was his position within the park. Dolores even asks, “Have we met before?” But my favourite element is how the date begins; Christina drops her lipstick and Maybe-Teddy picks it up and palms it to her. It’s the identical manner Dolores and Teddy have been programmed to satisfy in Westworld, besides with a milk can. Suffice it to say, the date goes nicely.

The journey of Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth), in the meantime, will get stymied when C (Aurora Perrineau) and the militia chief J (Daniel Wu) argue about whether or not they need to go forward and homicide our dynamic duo. C desires the weapon Bernard says he is aware of learn how to discover, whereas J desires them useless. The compromise is that J takes Stubbs as collateral, whereas Bernard leads C to the weapon. (It’s a bummer that they’ve break up up as a result of Bernard continues to be being obnoxiously enigmatic and must be given crap for it.) After grabbing a automobile that has an enormous industrial fan on the again, Bernard and C set out into the desert.

The Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) and Caleb (Aaron Paul) storyarc is the place the actual motion is, actually and figuratively. After a flashback reveals that Caleb was certainly wounded when he and Maeve destroyed the final Rehoboam laptop, we’re again to the current, the place Caleb has simply been contaminated with a type of human-controlling flies whereas Hale (Tessa Thompson) gloats over him. The excellent news is that it takes some time for the parasite to seize the reins, so when Maeve makes a really damaging distraction by turning the bizarre sound-cone factor (that provides orders to managed people) to max quantity, Caleb grabs Hale, and so they and Maeve escape to Mobworld… the place the already contaminated park-goers have been ordered to gun them and seemingly all people else down. Although Caleb has an in depth name and practically shoots Maeve himself, the three of them handle to steal a automotive and drive out of the park to be rescued by an extraction staff. It might be value noting that Delos’ latest park went to hell and obtained many, many individuals killed on its very first evening.

During the drive, Maeve explains what occurred when Caleb obtained wounded through the last Rehoboam mission—regardless of it wanting like Caleb should have died in seconds, Maeve managed to get him to a hospital, the place she left him so he may get pleasure from a traditional life. Alas, years later, Maeve determined to test on him, which is when she wrecked the facility grid and alerted Hale and the Man in Black to their areas, as seen within the season’s first episode.

Arriving at a demolition web site, Caleb drags Hale to a management room and calls his staff, however the Man in Black (Ed Harris) arrives and battles Maeve. Caleb is once more ordered by means of the sound-thing to shoot Maeve, however to Hale’s disbelief he manages to withstand the order once more and opens fireplace on the MIB. Although shot himself, the MIB additionally manages to shoot Maeve, who takes management of the close by explosives and detonates them, sacrificing herself to take Hale’s most formidable minion off the chessboard, so to talk. Caleb blacks out.

Wild, proper? The (obvious) deaths of two of the present’s most vital characters are nothing in comparison with what’s subsequent. When Caleb awakes, Hale is free and smug, asking him, “Do you even remember how you got here?” The confused Caleb all of the sudden remembers getting gunned down by Hale’s goons in that very management room. “You died,” Hale confirms. Meanwhile, Bernard and C drive into the identical demolition web site, now barren. As they dig, it’s revealed that C is looking for her father in that very same location, though she doesn’t consider he’s really useless. “They say it happened here,” she says. “If it’s true, there’ll be a body.” My associates, C is Caleb’s now-adult daughter Frankie, and time has formally jumped.

“Generation Loss” nonetheless isn’t carried out. Hale reveals that that is the 278th time Caleb has gone by means of his tried escape from the park. Why? Fidelity, after all. Yes, Caleb is now a Host (making me retroactively right, which I’ll take), and Hale goes into true supervillain mode. Gloating, she reveals it’s been 23 full years since the actual Caleb died, and Hale now controls the world. Especially the kids, since their rising brains have been so malleable. Some adults are outliers, which clearly make up the militia. In this current, Bernard uncovers the weapon, buried within the sand. It’s Maeve’s physique.

Caleb wakes up in a testing space and runs exterior right into a plaza solely to see a tower—the Tower—which accommodates an enormous model of the sound-cone machine. Just in case there was any doubt, Hale prompts it and each single human being within the plaza freezes in place. “You won,” Caleb croaks. “Welcome to my world,” Hale replies, relishing his despair. Oh, by the best way, that testing space? Why, it’s inside Olympiad Entertainment, the identical place Christina works at, writing narratives about aspect characters in video video games. And one among Hale’s masked minions? Why, she’s one of many bartenders who served Christina and her roommate throughout her date with Maybe-Teddy.

Damn. Excuse my breathless pleasure, however “Generation Loss” had so many main revelations I all of the sudden favored final week’s uninteresting episode as a result of it gave this episode much more influence. And to assume we’re solely midway carried out with the season! I can’t think about what surprises are left, aside from the Christina scenario, however I all of the sudden have a variety of confidence Westworld has extra secrets and techniques it’s hiding. Maybe that is it and the present received’t have the ability to stick the touchdown, however I’ll nonetheless admire how typically this episode blew my ding-dang thoughts. In the worst case, Westworld made me really feel how I did after I watched that first magical season. And I’ll admire that it doesn’t matter what occurs subsequent.

Assorted Musings:

• It makes a ton of sense that there can be back-up Rehoboam computer systems scattered all through the world, however that fully contradicts Serac’s devastation when Caleb erased one among them within the third season finale. But I suppose it’s finest to not consider season three in any respect.
• Caleb’s voice when speaking to Hale within the lab beneath Mobworld is so low and gravelly it’s absurd. He would possibly as nicely have been dubbed by Christian Bale doing his Batman voice.
• The cause Hale saved Caleb alive, then bothered to show him right into a Host, is as a result of Dolores and Maeve have been so focused on him that she “wanted to see what all the fuss was about.” That tracks.
• This means Bernard and Stubbs’ storyline is ready 23 years after what we thought was the current, which actually explains all that mud. That additionally meant Bernard basically spent 23,000 years attempting to determine methods to cease Hale, together with discovering Maeve’s physique by “trial and error.”
• Bernard endangers himself to save lots of a bug. If this seems to be a key second within the mission to save lots of the world, I cannot be happy.
• It has come to my consideration that the town Mobworld is ready in known as Temperance, which suggests the park I’ve been calling Mobworld could possibly be named Temperance. It’s not used a lot these days, nevertheless it means a capability to average your self, significantly in regard to complete alcohol abstinence. Definition apart, it’s my opinion that it’s a dumb title for the park and Mobworld it shall proceed to be.

Want extra io9 information? Check out when to count on the most recent Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on movie and TV, and every thing you might want to learn about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.