Beep boop hello, fellow humans who are definitely not robots who just think you’re humans, and welcome to our review of HBO’s science fiction series, Westworld. This episode delves deep into guilt, identity, and escapism. It delivers a strong mid-season twist that is sure to surprise and delight, and underlines the ultimate question that is the beating heart of the whole show: does free will exist? So wrestle with the demon in the mirror, and put your trust in each and every one of your selves, here are five thoughts on Westworld season three, episode three: “The Mother of Exiles.”
1. The Man in Blame
William (presumably the human version, but who knows?) has returned home and has lost his proverbial shit. He shoots all the mirrors in his house because he can’t stand looking at himself. He sees blood dripping from the chandelier, reminiscent of the water that dripped from the chandelier the night his wife, Juliet, died from suicide. He imagines himself drowning in the tub where she died. He screams out loud at voices in his head, questioning the nature of his reality. He envisions his daughter, Emily, whom he murdered, castigating him, voicing all of his doubts and self-hatred. These are all manifestations of his guilt. He blames himself for the deaths of Juliet and Emily. While he was certainly complicit in Juliet’s unhappiness, he isn’t truly responsible for her death, but he did actually murder Emily, so… yeah, he is morally and legally responsible for that one.
William struggles to cling to the idea that he is a real human person in control of his actions and emotions. He also insists it’s not his fault he killed Emily, because he thought she was a robot. Emily questions him, (really, he questions himself), “Are you free and evil, or blameless and helplessly enslaved?” If he is in control of his actions and emotions, then he is an evil person. If he is not an evil person, it can only be because he’s not in control of himself. Either way, he can’t face it. Emily (really, he himself), points to the card containing all his data gathered in Westworld. She (he) calls it, “your nature etched in ones and zeros.” This is what Juliet discovered the night she died. Emily’s knowledge of it was the final straw that convinced William she was a robot, and when he found it on her corpse, he knew he had just murdered the real Emily. The physical representation of his own identity is linked to both Juliet and Emily’s deaths, embodying his culpability.
2. I Thought Your World Would Be So Different From Mine
Dolores, Caleb, Bernard, and Stubbs come to a head at a party that can only be described as: if the Met Gala was also a brothel. Sex workers half-dressed in haute couture stand on pedestals while the one percent walk around in masquerade masks, sipping champagne, tripping on a brand new designer drug called “genre,” and making bids. As Dolores enters with Caleb, she says to him, “I thought your world would be so different from mine.” Aesthetically, this is a very different place from Westworld, but there are deeper similarities. Like Westworld, this is a luxurious escapist destination for the ultra wealthy. The masks may or may not be monitoring the party guests, but they play a similar role as the Westworld black and white hats in that they allow the wearers to manifest a different identity. They hide their true selves, or, depending on your perspective, they reveal their even truer selves. Though the third season of this show called Westworld takes place almost entirely outside of Westworld, we the real life human viewers are begged to question if we ever really left. All the world’s a stage. All the world’s a Westworld.
3. Who’s Inside Charlotte Hale?
This episode gives us the ultimate mid-season twist. We thought the brain driving the Charlotte-Hale-shaped body might be Teddy because of the deep intimacy Dolores and Robo-Hale displayed for each other. For a brief moment, Maeve thought Teddy’s brain might be driving the Musashi-shaped-body, because it would make sense for Dolores to want to bring her most devoted partner with her. However, the brain inside Charlotte Hale couldn’t be Teddy, because Teddy doesn’t enjoy murder, and it definitely doesn’t “remind him of who he is.” Who’s the only person who is both dearly loved by Dolores, and is proud of their own ruthlessness? It can only be a copy of Dolores herself! On the one hand, this displays an extraordinary selfishness and egotism on Dolores’ part. In search of a trusted partner-in-crime, she can only trust herself to be her own right-hand-woman. Given the opportunity to rescue people she loves from the park, she chooses herself. On the other hand, at least in Teddy’s case, she has made a selfless decision that is only in his best interest. She probably does want him to be with her, that’s why we all thought she’d bring him along in the first place, but she allowed Teddy to stay in Screensaver Heaven because that’s what he wanted. She let him go because she loves him.
Continued below4. Everyone’s Dolores!
But wait! There’s an even bigger satisfying mid-season twist! All five robot brains Dolores rescued from the park are copies of Dolores! The robot brain driving Martin, Liam’s fixer, is Dolores! The robot brain driving Musashi is Dolores! Everyone’s Dolores! At least, all the robots who aren’t Maeve, Bernard, or Stubbs are Dolores. This discovery seems to solidify Maeve’s dislike for Dolores. The way Maeve sees it, this proves that Dolores doesn’t actually want freedom for the whole robot species; she only wants freedom for herself. Dolores actually does want freedom for the whole robot species, but she only trusts herself to help her bring down humanity. Maeve doesn’t see it that way because she has such a drastically different approach to freedom and interpersonal relationships. Dolores can’t allow people to choose a life that doesn’t feel free to her. That’s why, at first, she altered Teddy’s personality rather than let him go his own way. Maeve believes in letting people make their own choices, even if they choose not to be free. That’s why Maeve didn’t stop Akane and Musashi from remaining in Westworld, where they were presumably killed by the human security team shortly after the season two finale. Dolores did eventually let Teddy choose to live in Screensaver Heaven, even though she described it as another human-made prison, but Teddy is a unique soft-spot for Dolores, and she doesn’t treat the rest of robotity that way. Dolores’ love for robotity is separated from her love of individual robots. Maeve’s love for robotity is inextricable from her personal relationships.
5. Mulores Questions Musashi’s Sentience
This difference between Dolores’ and Maeve’s philosophies on love and freedom are put into stark relief when Maeve encounters whom she believes is Musashi, but who is actually Mulores. Mulores briefly pretends to be Musashi to mess with Maeve. She accuses Maeve of choosing Musashi’s fate for him… himself… his other self… you get it, probably. Of course, this immediately breaks the illusion for Maeve, because Musashi did choose his own fate. Maeve knows this because she was there and she tried to talk him out of it. Mulores doesn’t know this because she wasn’t there. She assumes Musashi wouldn’t choose to stay in Westworld because she doesn’t believe that choosing to stay in a prison counts as a truly sentient choice. Dolores is way off the mark thinking that Maeve would want Musashi to stay in Westworld, but it’s not unreasonable to question whether Musashi stayed because he was programmed, manipulated by humans to have this strong emotional connection to a land that was manufactured to trap him. Then again, isn’t that true for any human’s hometown pride? No one chooses the place where they’re from, does that make their connection to that place less real? Does that make a choice to stay less of a choice? Then again, again, not everyone’s hometown was manufactured to trap them. Dolores and Maeve are the most amazing foils to one another because they represent two opposite sides of the ultimately unanswerable question: what does it mean to make a choice? Does free will exist, or is it a collective delusion?
This episodes title, “The Mother of Exiles” refers to the poem “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, which is engraved inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. In the poem, Lady Liberty, as the statue is sometimes called, welcomes exiles from other countries into the United States. Dolores sees herself as the mother of exiles, making a place in the human world for her robot brethren. The twist on this reference is that Lady Liberty is welcoming rather than destructive. The much funnier twist on this reference is that the only exiles Dolores has mothered are copies of herself. Until next time, beep, boop, goodbye.
