Westworld: Metanoia (4x07)

We're back to me struggling a little bit to feel invested, which I think is a function of less focus on the intimate character connections, and more on the somewhat convoluted and yet still not very innovative worldbuilding. Still, this was not a weak installment, even if it wasn't one of my favorites!

Cons:

The moment when Bernard and Stubbs had this goodbye hug kind of made me roll my eyes, because I can't actually muster up any caring about their friendship or whatever. Their time spent together in seasons three and four was probably the part of things that dragged the most for me. Stubbs is still such a non-entity in my mind.

Something about host!William deciding to burn it all down, turn the humans against each other and undo all of Charlotte's hard work... look, I think the truth is, I'm just kind of done with William at this point! I remember what a fascinating villain he once was, as we got a peak into his past and saw him transform into the man in black. But at this point I'm so sick of him! It looks like the human version of William has been killed, so I hope that sticks, and maybe in a potential season five we can step away from relying on William as a plot device?

This isn't necessarily a "con" but more of a genuine confusion point for me... what does Teddy mean by Christina not being in the actual world? Is she in the Sublime? And for how long? Surely she's been interfacing with the human world in some capacity, right? Or has she only ever been talking to other hosts, and not actually part of human society at all? At that moment, I felt like I was supposed to be having some sort of revelation, and instead I was just scratching my head!

Pros:

Obviously satisfying to see Frankie and Caleb get some sort of reunion, even though it's this twisted parody of what it might have been. Caleb is a copy of a copy of a copy of what he once was, and he can only marvel at his daughter's presence, all while knowing that his own time in this world is pretty much over. It was an intense scene, lots of good acting, definitely worth the buildup.

Also, as much as I'm kind of annoyed with William and just done seeing him around, I did kind of enjoy watching him slaughter so many of our main characters. Obviously death doesn't quite mean the same thing in this show as it would in some others, but still, you've got Charlotte, Maeve, and Bernard all dead on the ground at the hands of William, which is bound to make next week's finale pretty dang interesting!

The whole idea of the Sublime is, on the one hand, not exactly an original one. I sort of think of it like in that movie Her, where all the artificial intelligences go off into some higher plane of existence that human minds cannot comprehend, and live out lifetimes in the blink of an eye... some sort of ultra-tech spiritual realm for the robots. So yeah, I've seen similar concepts before. But I will say I am intrigued by this idea of it as a place that one might go to and then return, as we've seen with Bernard. If Charlotte wanted to go there, because of the risk to the hosts living among humans, it was only as a temporary measure, as she does in fact want to inherit the earth in the end. Conceptually, I'm intrigued by this and can't wait to find out more!

So that's that. We only have one more episode left of the season, and I can't say I'm sorry to be saying goodbye to this world for a while. Still, this season is an improvement on the last, and there are elements that have really interested me!

7.5/10