‘Westworld’ Season 3, Episode 5 ‘Genre’ Review: Unleashed

With Westworld locking up one of its longtime antagonists, the focus shifts back to current reality. The hosts’ plan to overtake the world and get rid of Rehoboam finally approaches its first stage. By far, this episode is the season’s most chaotic one. Along with the narration of the main villain’s backstory, we experience their world through the eyes of a simple man, under the influence of a strange lymphatic system drug.

On Sunday’s episode of Westworld, Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) releases the Insight Profiles of every user worldwide. In the chaos, Caleb Nichols (Aaron Paul) survives despite being drugged. Meanwhile, Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) and Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) escape from Insight Headquarters. As all of this unfolds, Engerraund Serac (Vincent Cassel) returns fueled by anger and frustration.

Choose a Side

HBO

So far, Dolores’ plan work out flawlessly. Still, Bernard doesn’t know his place in it. He knows enough to determine that he is important, as stressed by fake Martin Connells (Tommy Flanagan). However, he doesn’t necessarily know what Dolores’ plans are or how it would affect him. So far, we know that all the hosts outside the park [besides Bernard, Ashley, and Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton)] are part of Dolores’ not-so Clone Army [or Squad], so it doesn’t look like she’s the good guy. Of course, releasing the truth worldwide narrows that down quite a bit but it also creates chaos. Unlike Dolores, Bernard doesn’t hate the humans but he doesn’t like being forced to play a role either. His choice of allegiance remains as the last we see of him is during his and Ashley’s escape.

Survivors

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A show isn’t complete if it doesn’t have an episode about the main villain’s backstory. Here we have Serac narrating his life story that led to Rehoboam’s creation. As a child, he and his brother, Jean Mi (Paul Cooper) were orphaned when their hometown, Paris was destroyed by an unknown catastrophe. Since then, he and Jean devoted their lives to developing a system that predicts the future of mankind. They have Liam Dempsey, Sr. (Jefferson Mays) invest in their project but Serac eventually kills him off when he discovers how Serac dealt with the problem of having people that the Rehoboam system cannot predict. Those people, which Serac calls as ‘Outliers,’ remain in captivity in an undisclosed location. Jean himself is imprisoned there as Rehoboam cannot compute his fate, either.

It seems like that is Dolores’ next target. The release of Outliers mirrors that of how she used Clementine Pennyfeather (Angela Sarafyan) in Season 2. What their world sees as weird will probably ironically help bring balance to their now-chaotic world.

Final Act’s a Bitch

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As Dolores pressed on with her plan to take over the world, Caleb takes the backseat when Liam Dempsey, Jr. (John Gallagher Jr.) injects him with a drug in an escape attempt. While Caleb did retain most of his sanity, the environment changes when he becomes the episode’s focus. Background music plays, the color scheme changes, and in some parts the lights dance with lives of their own. Watching the part where people receive their Insight Profiles through what Caleb sees adds further intensity to how devastating the situation is. Also, because of the drug, Caleb relives his partner, Francis’ (Kid Cudi) death. Although the episode can still flow without this part, it adds to the emotional turmoil Caleb experiences ever since his introduction to the show.

Host Revolution 2.0

By cloning herself to simultaneously capture Liam and release Insight Profiles worldwide, Dolores deliberately began a Human Revolution. Much like what she did back in Westworld Parks, Dolores brings the truth of the hosts’ existence to their knowledge which results in the Westworld Park Murders. This time, the revolution happens on a worldwide scale and the participants are humans, not hosts. Dolores doesn’t care about how the humans would react as long as they don’t interfere with her plans. Dolores’ intentional taking control away from people who create stories for other people sounds noble, but her ways of achieving them are rather questionable. The people who die working for Serac likely did not know the truth about Rehoboam but they die when fake Martin takes them in his final blaze of glory. The rest of the human population cope with the revelation by wreaking havoc. likely resulting in more casualties. It seems like an uncooperative president is the least of Serac’s problems now as Dolores changes the rules of the game.

‘Westworld’ Season 3, Episode 5 ‘Control’ Final Verdict

Westworld truly has gone away from the ‘park where you can do whatever you want’ premise. Now, it shows a possible reality of how deeply entrenched human society can be with technology. The world is practically owned and operated by two major tech companies. Also, it works along the lines of the ‘robots taking over the world’ scenario. Sooner or later, we may find ourselves watching as Dolores or Maeve uses non-host robots to serve their purposes.

Westworld continues Sunday, April 19th with ‘Decoherence’ at 9/8c on HBO.