Westworld has certainly left us all with a lot to think about. Photo / Supplied
Westworld has certainly left us all with a lot to think about. Photo / Supplied
Chris Schulz: Give it a season. Wait till you've seen all 10 episodes. Please, just wait. That was my rule from the start. After all, Westworld was always going to be a full season experience, one that was probably best devoured over two or three binge sessions, not week to week.
HBO, take note: it's time for weekly TV instalments to die. So it's time for full disclosure: after a great first four episodes, I struggled during Westworld's weak middle period, as the show got bogged down with too many storylines about fake robot love and made-up battles that seemed endless and repetitive.
I nearly gave up. But there was so much to love: Anthony Hopkins' droll generalisms about the human condition, Evan Rachel Wood's slow awakening from a buttoned-up farmgirl to a wisened assassin, all those mother flippin' robots standing around creepily in Hopkins' basement, and Thandie Newton's dominant, career-defining performance was total class.
For me, after that gotcha finale, it reminds not of Game of Thrones, which Westworld was initially compared to, but Lost, another time-shifting show with multiple plot strands that required hours of dissecting after each episode. Internet chat rooms, here I come.
James Marsden and Evan Rachel Wood as Teddy and Dolores in Westworld. Photo / Supplied
Rachel Bache:Westworld completely hooked me in. For the last 10 weeks it has consumed me. Monday nights became a ritual: turning all the living room lights off, putting away the iPhone and laptop and just letting myself get absorbed in this world of cowboy robots.
I went deep into the weeds reading up on fan theories and binge-listening to thought-provoking Westworld inspired podcasts. At times I was a little concerned that learning about the potential 'big reveals' ahead of time would ruin the show for me, but I couldn't help myself and what I found was that it actually made the watching experience all the more captivating.
Even when the popular theories of Bernard being a host made in the image of Arnold, William turning out to be the Man in Black from 30 years ago and Dolores secretly being the big baddy Wyatt turned out to all be true - I didn't feel like I had lost anything because for me, the way the show unveiled these twists still worked - the suspense was still there. And the show still managed to surprise me at times, especially in the finale with the death of Ford.
There's so much to love about Westworld. Not only was the big budget series visually beautiful but it starred exceptional acting - Thandie Newton deserves all the awards for her portrayal of Maeve.
The mysteries, the complexities, the action, the romance, the existential crisis, the brilliant lines ("What door" is the new "Hold the door") - I loved all of it. It was like watching Lost but actually getting some satisfying answers. Yes, I still have a million questions, but that's half of the fun of watching Westworld - and that's what the showrunners hoped for - even the fake Westworld destination website is glitching out now that the robot uprising has begun. Bring on season two!
Siena Yates: I wasn't as quickly sold on this show and I still have my issues with it.
It is slow, in every sense of the word. The pace is slow, the reveals all built up to the end giving barely anything to tide us over in the mean time, and in a world where everyone is binge-watching full releases as soon as they come out (a la Stranger Things) waiting week by week for the next tidbit was a total drag.
The thing that really drew me in was Maeve (Thandie Newton) and her quest for freedom, because she was entirely relatable. A woman who has survived hardship and does what it takes to get by, who questions everything and won't take no for an answer, and who gets all the witty lines and sexy scenes. Her mystery was the only one really driving the show for 80 per cent of it while the other storylines all slow-burned nearly into oblivion.
But when those final few episodes finally started to weave together everything we'd learned previously, the payoff was massive. We were jumping timelines and confusing reality with AI and there was blood. Lots of blood.
On the plus side: the female characters have their own storylines and are driven by far more than love or relationships, the sex is never gratuitous (though the one exception is that four-minute orgy...), sexual violence is only ever implied not shown, and the violence strikes a balance between giving gore-lovers what they want and not going over the top.
According to Evan Rachel Wood, the trick now is apparently to go back and binge-watch from the beginning knowing what we know now. I would still argue they should've just released all the episodes at once so we wouldn't have to.
Karl Puschmann: If you're gonna go, then go out with a bang.
While Westworld wasn't perfect, the class of its season finale more than paid off the time investment I'd put into it.
Every episode I struggled with the exorbitantly high levels of suspension of disbelief the show required - the whole 'resetting the robots each night' thing just bugged the heck out of me for not making any financial or logistical sense!
But when I pushed real world concerns out of my sci-fi show and just rolled with what was going on then Westworld was great viewing.
And when it came to its season finale, Westworld delivered one of the best.
Not just of the year but of all time.
Running a cool 90 minutes the episode kept you on the edge of your seat. It had mystery, it had action, thrills and excitement.
It also had the one thing I didn't expect: answers. Thank gawd for that.
After committing to the show for ten weeks I couldn't have been doing with any of that 'keep them guessing,' big cliffhanger bullpaki that plagues a lot of end-of-season episodes.
So, the decision to solve the puzzles, to lead you to the centre of the maze, is to be applauded.
As I'd purposefully not got myself bogged down in theories and forums the episode's big reveals of duelling timelines and the man in black's true identity were true 'whoa!' moments that made me feel like a dunderhead for not clicking sooner.
Which was, of course, the point.
So as William recounted his life's journey I dived back into my own mind maze to recall how at the very start of the season he'd chosen the white cowboy hat before entering the Westworld theme park and how he'd gradually picked up darker and darker hats as his journey to the dark side progressed. That, I thought, was neat.
I also dig how things have been set up for the second season. I very much hope to see more of Samurai World, no matter how "complicated" that may be...
