The robots of Westworld have discovered their true nature. And, reasonably, they’re more than a little upset. So it’s time for a good old-fashioned war between the robots and the humans in season two of HBO’s wild west science fiction series.
If you’re unfamiliar, the basic plot of Westworld is that “hosts,” robotic life forms, serve in a sort of luxury hedonistic theme park for the super-rich. Since the hosts aren’t able to kill a living human, but the humans have no such limits, it’s something of a nasty, violent place. As their programming is disrupted and they figure out what’s going on, they naturally are not fans of being murdered and raped, only to potentially repeat it all the next day. So, an uprising has begun, and the humans are reacting sensibly and rationally. Just kidding, they’re sending in the troops to put down the rebellion, because that always ends well!
Glib summaries aside, the show’s main draw was its thoughtful consideration of how morality applies to an individual (or robot) who can get up from a murder and act like nothing’s happening. Are violence and amorality inherent traits in humans, or do we encourage them as a society provided they go into certain channels? We’ll get to think more about this April 22nd.