Westworld recap: Power bellies and secret robots

What's tricky about Westworld the show is what's tricky within the park itself: separating the intended storylines from the "mistakes"

The darkly joyful conclusion of tonight's episode of Westworld — Maeve's realization that "none of this matters" — made me really take stock of an aspect of the show I hadn't fully appreciated: namely, that we'll never lose a character for good. I still don't like watching the hosts suffer, but this show is desensitizing me to footage of them dying. When Armistice took those bullets, I happily clicked over to Ingrid Bolsø Berdal's IMDB page, relished how many episodes she's listed in, and looked forward to seeing her again next week.

It's a canny move for HBO mere months after Jon Snow's controversial resurrection, and it's one of many comments the show makes about itself: As the Man in Black explains, without death, the stakes of an enterprise like Westworld are absent. It's not just likely that there's some deeper meaning; there has to be, or else it's all for nothing. An exercise in excess.

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.