My thoughts on one of the best sci-fi series in the last 10 years
In the past, I happened to talk about the TV series “Westworld”
on FantascientifiCast (the link will take you to
an English translation on my blog). However, the podcast episode and article
only focused on the first season, as it was the only
one that had been produced to that point.
It was followed by three more seasons.
If you have not seen the second and third seasons,
stop reading, as you may find some spoilers. On the fourth, however, I limit
myself to making some considerations, but which only really make sense to those
who know what I’m talking about. In short, this article is mainly aimed at those who
have seen the entire series.
The second season represented a
true continuation of the first, since the story still took place within the
park. At the time, I found its ending exciting, because it would
have satisfied me even if they hadn’t renewed the series for more seasons. What
I wanted was for the story to continue outside the park, in the real world of
the future. An open ending like this, with the escape of Dolores (or rather her
artificial intelligence), was at least a promise of this continuation.
One
of the reasons I love open endings in stories where there’s a lot that is left
unresolved is that I can always imagine for myself what happens next.
But then the third season actually arrived,
and it was even better than expected.
What I appreciated is precisely the way in which it represents an
extreme take on our reality, in which everything we do could be
influenced by the data (information, advertising, etc.) that is shown to us
based on our browsing habits and on what we interact with when we are online. If
whatever manages what we are continuously exposed to was not an algorithm whose
final aim is only to induce us to buy products, but an artificial
super-intelligence, its ability to condition our vision of reality to
push us to become what it wants (or what someone else has
decided) does not seem like something impossible at all.
I must admit that while watching the third season, I
looked several times with suspicion at the cookie banner that appears every
time I visit a site for the first time!
For my personal taste, up to that point my
appreciation of Westworld had been growing, so
I was afraid of what I would find in the fourth season. After I finished
watching it, however, my first comment was: wow!
I have to say that I enjoyed every minute of all the
episodes and I can confirm that it is my favourite science fiction series after Battlestar
Galactica.
It is practically impossible to go into detail without
spoiling, so I will limit myself to a few scattered considerations.
After the finale of season three, which partly seemed
to take inspiration from the basic idea of the film “Futureworld” (the sequel to the
original film “Westworld” by Crichton), I didn’t know what to expect
from this fourth. I certainly didn’t expect to find myself faced with a real role reversal
between humans and androids. In reality, the theme of conditioning of
freewill by an artificial intelligence (metaphor of the
current algorithms that already influence our lives), which is dear to me (and
which you can find in some of my books), should have warned me. The evolution
that takes place in the fourth season, after all, seems like an almost natural
consequence, in terms of the logic of developing a story. Except that it is
taken so far beyond the initial premises that it leaves the viewer speechless.
Added to all this, there are the numerous elements
inserted into the plot that brought to mind similar elements I used in my books (I
can’t tell you what it is, because it would be a huge spoiler!), albeit in a
completely different context. Seeing my fantasies shown in a similar way by a science fiction
series of this level was truly exciting. It’s a sort of
creative convergence that made me feel in perfect harmony with this work of
fiction. At moments, it was as if the TV was reading my mind and showing me the
story I wanted to see. Crazy.
All this exaltation, however, did not prevent me from
pointing out some critical aspects.
First, I asked myself some questions that were not
answered.
Is
there only one city left in the world? Or are there others too, and are they all made
the same way? From what we see in the series, the first option seems to be the
correct one, but nothing is explained, which is undoubtedly a shortcoming.
If this is the situation, it seems a bit excessive to
me, even if 23 years have passed.
And, speaking of excesses, the events in the
last episode seemed a little rushed to me.
Honestly, I don’t like apocalyptic contexts,
because that’s what it’s all about, and in particular it bothered me that in a
certain sense the story, which, once out of the park, had opened up to a
thousand possibilities, is now tremendously closed in on itself.
These aspects, however, do not undermine the good
quality of the rest of the series, which deals with very current themes literally
surrounding us, and does so by reinventing them in a dystopian future through a very
complicated plot (another aspect that is particularly
congenial to me). In short, it forces us to think on multiple levels,
both to find our current reality in it and to put together the myriad of pieces
that are shown to us in non-chronological order, in order
to be able to get to the bottom of it. Its vision is a real challenge.
Furthermore, it must be considered that this story is not
over.
The
finale of the season, in reality, is not an ending. The authors deliberately
left it open in the hope of a renewal for a final season. Unfortunately,
however, a few months later, the confirmation arrived that the series had
been cancelled.
It’s really a shame, because I was really curious to
see what they would have come up with, since really, after the tragic events of
the last episode, they had got themselves into quite a mess. Of course, they
had the possibility of taking the story where they wanted, given that they had
practically made a clean sweep of everything else, but the risk of
coming out with an inadequate epilogue was very high.
In all honesty, if they had renewed it, I would never
have wanted to find myself in the shoes of the creators and screenwriters.
Who knows, maybe one day some production company will
acquire the rights to complete the story. Or I would like them to publish the
ending as a novel, so I could imagine it in my head with greater freedom, and
if I didn’t like it, pretend it never existed.
Or maybe it’s better to leave it like that, like
something that could have been perfect. Thanks to the absence
of a real ending, nothing will be able to deny this impression.
There is certainly one thing I hope for most of all,
that is, that they never make a reboot of it!
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