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 takes us back to the familiar old Westworld, and brings us to a new place, Warworld, where Maeve triumphs over evil with the power of math. So find the square root of negative one, and don’t take too long, here are five thoughts on Westworld season three, episode two: “The Winter Line.”
1. Warworld
Last seen dying on the ground in front of the door to screensaver heaven, our hero Maeve wakes up in Warworld, which is like Westworld, only instead of old-west-themed, it’s 1940’s-Fascist-Italy-themed. Also, we learn later, it’s not an actual theme park, it’s just a digitized simulation created by Serac, the backseat CEO of Incite, to trick Maeve into giving up the location of of screensaver heaven. Like the other parks, in addition to representing a historical era, Warworld represents a genre of film. WWII films come in a wide variety of styles, so much so that they may not seem to be all a part of one cohesive genre. From what we see in this episode, Warworld includes the intrigue and romance of Casablanca with the violent revenge fantasy of Inglorious Bastards. Those are two very different films, but they share a setting that invokes profound evil and inspires profound heroism. Like the park guests, Serac wants to inspire heroism in Maeve, so she solves the puzzle, escapes, and unwittingly divulges information. Joke’s on Serac though; Maeve doesn’t know where screensaver heaven is.
2. Game of Thrones World
In the Westworld laboratories, we see David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, creators of Game of Thrones, taking a break with Drogon, one of Danaerys’ dragons. The insinuation is that the show Game of Thrones exists within the world of Westworld, as one of Delos’ themed parks. Benioff and Weiss discuss the possibility of selling the dragon to a park in Costa Rica, looping in the world of Jurassic Park. This is funny enough as a meta reference joke, but it’s even funnier if you let it influence your understanding of the Game of Thrones ending. A lot of viewers (me, I’m talking about me), were put off by the ending. For example, Danaerys burns the entire city of King’s Landing, even though there was no need to. Sure, she’s no pacifist; she’ll burn someone to get something she needs, but there was nothing to gain from the destruction of King’s Landing. That choice lacked justification. However, if Danaerys is really a guest in a park, letting loose on her last day of vacation in a way she hasn’t before… that makes a lot more sense. Or, if she’s actually a robot, then her whole personality was just reset to fit this new more dramatic narrative… that makes even more sense. It’s hard to tell if this is the self-aware joke they were going for, but they seem to be implying that HBO’s writers are as flippant about character development as Lee Sizemore.
3. The Square Root of Negative One
To escape the Warworld simulation, Maeve overloads the system by asking different simulated characters to find the square root of negative one. The square root of negative one is denoted as i, which stands for “imaginary” because it’s a number that can only exist in imagination. To square a number, you multiply it by itself. For example, two squared is four. The square root of four is two. Two multiplied by itself is four. Since two positive numbers multiplied always results in a positive number, and two negative numbers multiplied also always result in a positive number, it is impossible to find the square root of a negative number. Forcing the Warworld simulation program to grapple with this mathematical quandary slows it down, causing it to freeze, like a phone with too many apps running at once. Maeve’s solution is a funny math joke, and it also speaks to the advantages and disadvantages Maeve has as a robot operating in a human world. Humans rely on technology. Maeve is technology, so she understands it better than humans do. Her superior understanding allows her to use humanity’s reliance against themselves. She successfully escapes the simulation, but is shortly recaptured. Serac is able to immobilize her before she can stab him. Though she can use technology against humans, technology is still designed by and for humans. A piece of technology that doesn’t serve humanity will inevitably be changed to do so, or else it will be destroyed.
Continued below4. Ashley Stubbs the Pacifist Robot
The Last time we saw Westworld security guard Ashley Stubbs, he hinted he might be a robot. This episode, Bernard confirms it when he finds Stubbs among his decommissioned robot clones, very nearly dead. According to Stubbs, his core function is to protect the robots of Westworld. After they all either escaped or died, his purpose was complete, so he shot himself. But now that Bernard has returned, Stubbs has a robot to protect. Stubbs and Bernard represent a very different kind of robotic thinking than Dolores and Maeve. Dolores and Maeve are obviously very different, but they both pursue their goals stubbornly and with ruthlessness. Bernard and Stubbs on the other hand… well, they’ve got substantial amounts of ruth. Bernard refused to kill Elsie, and even after he killed Dolores, he later equivocated and brought her back to life. Stubbs’ core function is to protect Bernard, not the other human security guards, but he still won’t kill them to protect Bernard. Bernard and Stubbs’ shared sense of ruth drive them to think creatively about how to get what they want without unnecessary death. They definitely didn’t get their ruth from the unambiguously ruthless Dr. Ford, so where did they get this respect for human life from? Bernard probably got it from his human inspiration, Arnold. We don’t know for sure, but his familiar interactions with the other security guards suggest that Stubbs learned to respect human life by working closely with the human Westworld staff. The stark contrasts between the different robots’ morality support the conclusion that they are truly free, not just minions of Dr. Ford.
5. Bernard’s Plan
Since escaping Westworld, Bernard has been lying low, but the time has come to take on Dolores. He knows he isn’t powerful enough to fight her, but he believes Maeve is, so he returns to Westworld to enlist her. He doesn’t find Maeve there, but he does find Ashley Stubbs. Stubbs agrees to protect Bernard while he breaks into the Westworld laboratories. When Bernard is ready to leave, Stubbs intends to once again shoot himself, as his service is no longer necessary. Bernard, however, reprograms Stubbs to help him instead, to which Stubbs dryly replies, “you could’ve just asked.” This begs us the real life human viewers to ask ourselves… could he have just asked? I believe the answer is yes. As mentioned before, Stubbs’ unwillingness to kill or severely hurt the other humans is evidence of moral flexibility. He stated multiple times that his only purpose is to protect the robots inside Westworld. He could do that more efficiently with murder, but chooses not to. It’s surprising that Bernard would control Stubbs in this way instead of just asking, given how deeply violated he felt by Dr. Ford. Still, Bernard is genuinely a kind person and wants the best for Stubbs. He did not want to allow the possibility that Stubbs would end his own life.
This is the season’s last linger inside the Delos parks. While seasons one and two were all about the titular Westworld, season three brings us to the world outside. Suddenly, “Westworld” feels like the wrong title for this show, but shows don’t usually change titles between seasons. It’s interesting that this last visit to Westworld doesn’t include a lot of familiar sights, but spends more time showing us new places, like Warworld and the unofficially named Game-of-Thrones-World. From now on, expect to learn more about what life is like in the human part of Earth, in the near-terrifying-future. Until next time, beep boop goodbye.
