Westworld: Que Será, Será (4x08)

It's already the finale, time flies!

Cons:

In many ways this episode almost functioned more as an epilogue, like, it wrapped up elements of the season, but we didn't really learn anything new except that final decision from Dolores. So there were things as I was watching that felt... redundant? Unneeded?

Like, okay, we have another showdown between Charlotte and William. We saw these two fight last week, and this time it's like "hey, round two, with a new winner this time." So it almost made last week's confrontation seem irrelevant, if they were just going to do a round two here. It also stalls out the impact of Charlotte's "death" last week; it's not that we didn't know it would be temporary, but to see her getting back up and getting a cooler more impenetrable body so quickly made the whole thing feel a little pointless.

Then there's Christina making up a black best friend to offer her sage advice? I don't know about that. We basically learn that Maya and Teddy and everyone else we've seen Christina talk to have been figments of her own imagination, her mind's way of processing things so she can wake up and remember the truth of what and who she is. I feel like they wanted there to be some huge impact to the discovery that Christina's roommate was entirely fictional. But I had to look it up to even know this character's name. She had no real personality of her own, so the impact of learning she was fake didn't do anything for me!

Pros:

Despite some problems that stem from the overall pacing of the season, I still did think this was a relatively solid finale.

I haven't talked about the visuals enough this season, probably, but let's just say by and large the visual and special effects go in the "pros" section virtually across the board. It's the uncanny valley horror of Charlotte's skull splitting open on smooth mechanical hinges, it's Teddy inside Dolores/Christina's mind, fizzing out with strange red electrical signals bubbling under his skin. It's the whole opening title sequence, with a synthetic skeleton playing a piano. It's Central Park, it's Times Square, all the strange glitching wonder of the environments and settings. All of that is very cool to see.

I also ultimately enjoyed Hale's fate, that she chooses to pass the mantle, let the story be told by someone else. The pieces of what Dolores once was have splintered into Charlotte Hale and Christina and whatever else, and now we're getting some synthesis, some cyclical storytelling, where as a function of Hale choosing her own end, and Dolores (Christina?) choosing her own continuing, we are seeing how things circle back to the park for which the show is named. It's a cool concept, and it also gives me hope that maybe a fifth (and likely final) season can narrow the scope, keep things where they're more interesting and contained, and give us a satisfactory wrap-up to the proceedings.

While Maya being fictional did nothing for me, I will say that Teddy's presence this season greatly moved me, and the revelation that he's entirely a figment of Dolores's, while unsurprising, was still a bit gut-wrenching. I love the idea of her creating the original park again within the Sublime. It's meta and twisty and circular in a way that this story, a story concerned with the gamification of the human experience, really justifies.

Then we've got the beautiful tragedy of Caleb and Frankie. Stubbs is killed (at least for now) in the escape effort, but an injured Frankie and a slowly dying Caleb manage to escape and get all the way to a boat that is going to take them away from the chaos. But Caleb decides not to come along, given the limited life he has left in his body. Their goodbye is tender and emotional and the perfect kind of cathartic tragedy. What a gorgeous end for Caleb's character, to be able to get this one final dream of seeing his daughter grown up, and be able to help her escape to fight another day.

That's what I've got! I hope that season five of Westworld, should it materialize, will be the show's last. I think this show ultimately suffered from an abundance of ambition, the world-building breaking out of its confinement and taking the story in directions too convoluted to be compelling to me personally. But this season was an improvement on season three, and I think they could stick the landing in an interesting way with one final chance!

8/10