There is a lot going on with Westworld right now. A whole lot. Too much, some would say, without being entirely unreasonable. Heading into the season one finale, we have open threads regarding (but not limited to) the following things: Ford’s mysterious new narrative; Dolores remembering that she killed Arnold; Maeve going full Neo; Teddy remembering his role in Wyatt’s massacre (which could be related to Dolores killing Arnold, maybe?); staff issues (two abducted park employees, one dead executive, and whatever will happen in the wake of Bernard’s “suicide”); whatever Charlotte and Lee are up to with Abernathy; and William quickly transforming into someone who sure behaves a lot like The Man in Black.
The producers of the show have promised that most, if not all, of these plots will be resolved in some way during the upcoming 90-minute finale, which seems like a noble and somewhat impossible goal. But there is another option here, rather than doing all the hard and potentially unsatisfying work of putting wrapping paper and little bows on a half-dozen interconnected plots and then gifting them to a fan base that will immediately rip them apart and dissect them to study them from every possible angle: They could just let Maeve kill everyone on the whole dang show.
Honestly, it would be fine if Maeve killed everyone on Westworld. It would be fine. Would it create issues for season two? Well, yeah. One imagines wiping out the vast majority of your cast and trying to explain away a tiny plot development like a self-aware super robot going on a murder spree in a glorified playground for billionaires could be a wee bit tricky. But that’s what writers rooms are for. Season two doesn’t premiere until 2018. You have plenty of time. It would be fine.
Think about it this way: Is there anyone on the show that you would be heartbroken to see Maeve kill in the uprising she’s been planning? I bet there isn’t! I touched on this in the discussion post for the most recent episode, but every single human character on the show right now is a duplicitous weasel at best and flat-out unlikable at worst. Let’s run down the list:
- Ford – Maniac evil scientist and murderer
- The Man in Black – Killed Maeve and her past-life daughter for kicks
- William – Dope who threw his entire life away for a troubled robot he’s known for a week
- Charlotte – Has an angle, don’t trust her
- Theresa – Cool but dead
- Elsie – Cool but possibly dead
- Corporate Hemsworth – I have no feelings at all about him, to the degree I refuse to Google his name
- Felix the Butcher – Gullible idiot
- Sylvester the Butcher – Deserves every bad thing that happens to him
- Lee the Writer – Only redeeming quality is sounding kind of like Jimmy from You’re the Worst
- Logan – Uggghhh shoot him into the sun
Not one keeper in the bunch.
It’s not much better on the Host side, either, should she just decide to wipe the slate clean. Bernard might be gone already, Original Clem was cool but has been lobotomized, and I could honestly do without Dolores and her whole deal going forward, if it came down to it. (Picture Dolores starting another monologue about dreams and Maeve rolling her eyes and pumping a shotgun. Feels pretty good, right?) And Teddy. Poor, poor Teddy. With everything The Man in Black and Ford have been putting him through, Maeve depositing a bullet between his eyes would be one of the best things to happen to him in weeks. A mercy killing, if you will.
(It’s dawning on me here that, in rooting for an A.I. being to wipe out a large swath of humanity a minute ago, I am basically siding with the enemy in a robot uprising. I feel surprisingly okay about it.)
And once we decide that this would all be fine, we get to the best part: This extended finale that right now has to walk a highwire to pull things together in a way that makes sense? Yeah, now it’s just 90 minutes of Maeve running around exacting revenge on everyone who has crossed her or who happens to be standing near someone who crossed her or who did nothing wrong beyond showing up at work that day, kind of like John Wick if John Wick had been about an oft-nude sex worker who has a dozen guns strapped to her corset. Hmm. Upon review I just described the Salma Hayek movie, Everly. Well let’s say this will be like that, but with… robots. And… in the future. And good! Who could say no?
Again, none of this will do anything to solve any of the mysteries the show has been spinning since the premiere (unless Ford takes Maeve hostage at some point and fulfills his Bond villain destiny by explaining everything to her and then letting her get away), so that could prove frustrating, especially for the subset of viewers whose clue-hunting and screengrab-making will have been for nothing. I’m not even saying Maeve killing everyone is my preferred development for the finale. All I’m saying is that, if it did happen, given everything that’s happened in the last few week and the whole crew of goons involved, it would honestly be fine.
It would be fine.
