Westworld - Season 2

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garbage season as a whole.

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Like I say, I havent really heard anybody elses opinion on the season, what makes you say that?

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Westworld - Season 2

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complete garbage save for 1 or 2 eps. obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation is

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obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation is

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Honestly, this was the name of the game for the first season, as well.

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Not really. For the most part it was purposely done to hide the identity of MIB.

There was no real justification for it at all in S2.

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Like I say, I havent really heard anybody elses opinion on the season, what makes you say that?

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It started out pretty strong and had some high points.

It then devolved into a pretentious WTF-fest just for the sake of being WTF. They want viewers to question everything and the un-grounded, constant when? where? are we gets old after they just keep doing it, and when you finally start to put the pieces together, they throw another WTF-wrench in the plot.

I like the first season ALOT, and some parts of S2.

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Honestly, this was the name of the game for the first season, as well.

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it was well-done in S1. people were predicting the reveal early on. It was very easy to follow.

no way anyone could've predicted anything in S2. it was written specifically to confuse you. ill find that article and repost it

ETA: LINK

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For all the subterfuge and narrative pivots, fans managed to crack nearly all of Westworld Season 1's mysteries. Bernard is a host replica of Arnold? There were two timelines and William is a young Man in Black? Maeve is basically God? Everything was pieced together from some very early clues, meaning that the final stretch was for many less about being surprised than it was being validated. That didn't mean anybody enjoyed the season less - there was a sense of satisfaction in figuring it out rather than the stomach pit of being spoiled - but somebody evidently forgot to tell that to Jonathan Nolan.

From when Season 1 first aired, it was clear that the Westworld co-creator was irked by how fans had cracked his mystery box with so little effort. He repeatedly bemoaned the practice in interviews, alleging it ruined the experience for others, and as Season 2 developed his core drive appeared to be to write a new story that the fans wouldn't guess. This unquenchable distaste for this small-but-key part of Westworld fandom reached the apex when, in the lead up to Season 2's premiere, he trolled the internet by saying he'd spoil the entire show to preserve the experience free of guessing, then releasing a highly elaborate Rick Roll.

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Now, this reaction is understandable to a degree. Westworld knows it's "smart" and so wants to deliver the purest version of that - which, when dealing with twists, comes from a successful rug pull. Additionally, Nolan's experience with twisted narratives comes from less-mainstream shows like Person of Interest (that thus have a less-sizeable fanbase) or movies like The Prestige (where there's no time to speculate on the turn); the latter even preaches wonder coming from the trick. Westworld Season 2 is thus, from its very first episode, made to correct the "mistake" of Season 1 being guessable; a mistake that wasn't actually a problem.

It was so focused on making sure the obsessive one percent couldn't guess where it was going that it lost sight of everything else. Storytelling devices that had been carefully integrated in the first year were pushed to their extreme as anything approaching genuine evidence was backloaded and entire narrative diversions were introduced to throw off the scent (see everything in and around Shogun World). Looking back over the season, for everything that gains new meaning (future Charlotte is really Dolores in a replica body), there a counter clue that has next-to-no purpose in the story and is there just to distract.

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This is why Westworld Season 2 was a chore despite making sense; the big picture was purposely and inorganically obscured. The characters always knew substantially more or less than the viewer, so there was no entrance point. The resulting conversation was unsurprisingly weak, with any theories springing out now incredibly broad and not awfully developed from the hiatus: Was Dolores still on a narrative? Is William now a host? Nolan tried so hard to ensure the show could not be guessed that he made it utterly unwelcoming.

What's happened to Westworld isn't just unclear multi-season planning or naked doubling-down of what worked before. It's being hyper-aware of the fandom to the point what worked and failed is skewed, then overcorrecting with that in mind. It's not dissimilar to Sherlock's Season 3 & 4, where Steven Moffat began playing with the show's online fandom to the point that what had initially been a modern-twist on Arthur Conan Doyle classics lost all sense of realism or telling simple mysteries stories. The biggest difference is that Westworld went the other way: the show didn't buy into the hype, it tried to fight it. It had to be smarter.

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At the end of The Prestige, which Jonathan Nolan co-wrote with his brother Chris, it's revealed that the two warring magicians played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman have both been living twisted dual lives to become the best. However, the pair are still ideologically opposed. Bale believes that art is for the artist - "sacrifice, that's the price of a good trick" - but Jackman is more beady-eyed:

"You never understood why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple. It's miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you... then you got to see something really special. You really don't know? It was... it was the look on their faces..."

The film's overall conclusion is that neither way is intrinsically wrong - art cannot belong to just the viewer or the creator - but either is self-destructive if followed to its extreme; both characters lose so much in their quest of violent one-upmanship. With Westworld Season 2, Nolan ascribes all too readily to Jackman's monologue, believing that the only way to conjure wonder is to completely wrongfoot the audience.

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this guy's comment was great too

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Let's face it... Nolan is so desperate to create some cerebral existential masterpiece that outfoxes his audience and the Reddit community, but he doesn't have the chops to weave the philosophy into a compelling story.

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I enjoyed True Detective Season 2 quite a bit more than Westworld Season 2 fwiw.

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Storytelling devices that had been carefully integrated in the first year were pushed to their extreme as anything approaching genuine evidence was backloaded and entire narrative diversions were introduced to throw off the scent (see everything in and around Shogun World

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Well season one obviously your getting to know the park in general and certain narratives, I dont see how it's a downfall in season two to see new naratives introduced. Sure it might not have had much to do with the end game but it was a nice reveal that the park is much larger than we thought and that there were a lot more naratives than we thought.

I didn't take Shogun World as a "wait what's going on here" type story but just a nice mix up that told you more about the park than the actual end game itself.

The fact that they combined two of the best genres into one show seamlessly is pretty impressive. I thought that was easily a few of the best episodes in the season.

That article just seemed like somebody with blinders on that was just looking to criticize every detail just bc they didn't like the season. He nitpicked stuff and was off base on most of it.

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There was no real justification for it at all in S2.

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They turned off a lot of people with the way they told the story in season 2, but it's still an interesting story IMO. People have complained about not caring about many of the characters and that's fair, but at it's heart it's a robot rebellion story. I find those fascinating considering where we are technologically.

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great show, garbage season as a whole

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How can it be a great show if 1/2 of the seasons are "garbage [] as a whole"?