‘Westworld’ Series Premiere Recap: ‘The Original’

Westworld, HBO’s long-awaited adaptation of Michael Crichton‘s 1973 movie, introduces the eerie hedonistic adult theme park, its immortal inhabitants and its pleasure-seeking visitors.

Westworld Premiere Recap

In the opening scene, Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) is seated naked in a chair in a sterile metallic room. Upon waking, she pays a visit to her father and then heads into  Sweetwater, a wild west town. There, she reunites with her boyfriend Teddy Flood (James Marsden) before returning home to find a gang of outlaws murdering her family. The chain of events is Dolores’s every day, which is modified by actions of park guests.

Park guests fork over $40,000 a day for visits to Westworld, a park that is located in an unknown state in an unknown year in time. When a train of guests arrive to Westworld, one boasts of having a two-week trip to the theme park and the evil that ensued. Another individual on the bus is Teddy. Upon arriving in the fictional town of Sweetwater, Teddy heads straight to Maeve Millay’s (Thandie Newton) saloon. According to Dolores’ story, Teddy takes her out for a horseback ride.

When Teddy brings Dolores back to the Abernathy ranch, the outlaws are killing her parents. Teddy kills the outlaws, but then faces off against a guy dubbed the Man in Black (Ed Harris). He soon realizes that his gun doesn’t work on the Man in Black, body shots only stinging him and head shots disallowed by his own firearm. Defeated, he drops to his knees and accepts his fate. The Man in Black, a longtime visitor of Westworld, then drags Dolores off by the hair, seemingly to rape her. He later captures and scalps a Native American host in a quest to get to a secret level in Westworld.

Meanwhile, all of the machinations in Sweetwater are being controlled in a command center. There, they work on the robotic horses and even play with new characters to introduce. Among the staff at Westword are programmers Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and Elsie Huges (Shannon Woodward), who have taken note of changes in hosts caused by park founder Dr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) addition of memories in a host update.

Outside of the command center down in cold storage there’s some sort of problem. Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth), the security chief, is worried about a “critical failure” with the robots and heads to the subterranean Level 83 armed to check things out. It’s soon revealed that Level 83 holds the “dead” hosts that are no longer of use in Westworld. There are hundreds of them. At least for now, though, there is no rebellion.

Writing the Sweetwater stories is Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman), who later tells operations head Theresa Cullen (Sidse Babett Knudsen) that he fears that the updates to the robots are making them too real. Sizemore also says that he fears that the Delos corporation’s plans for the robots goes beyond the theme park. But, when pressed by a knowing Cullen, he can’t pinpoint exactly what the sinister plans might be.

As the day unfolds, a number of the Westworld robots begin to malfunction. The sheriff host gets buggy in front of guests, an outlaw host slays a bunch of other hosts and seems to remember his past deaths, Dolores’ dad sees a picture of the future and becomes transfixed. Bernard believes that the glitches are to do with Dr. Ford’s “Reveries” update.

With 200 out of the 2,000 hosts in need of getting the “Reveries” update uninstalled, Sizemore needs a new story and quick. So, he decides to have a massive saloon shootout. The bots then go into Analysis Mode to be reprogrammed via interviews. Abernathy seems too far gone, making threats at Dr. Ford, so he’s sent down to Level 83 with the outlaw. The next day, Dolores, who was interviewed as well, wakes up with a new father.

Westworld airs on HBO Sundays at 9 p.m. EST.