Westworld may have finally solved its dinosaur problem

Westworld returns for its second season. Their slaughtered robots have become killer robots, and the endless timeline tricks and show narrative puzzle boxes are still on the rise. And although the second episode of the second season, "Reunion", may have finally begun to answer some of the most important questions surrounding the park, it may also have solved one of the most annoying aspects of the series (for me, of all modes): the problem of dinosaurs.

Spoilers for season 2 of Westworld, episode 2 below

As we've pointed out earlier, Westworld is almost incredibly boring as a theme park. It has been demonstrated that the park's parent company, Delos Inc, has the almost divine capacity to create perfect and biologically accurate replicas of almost all living beings, from fully intelligent human beings to the smallest bird. Then it is assumed that Delos could make dinosaurs if he wanted to. But somehow, the best idea that came to Delos management was to recreate the Wild West? The imminent war between humans and robots and all the corporate conspiracies that led them to this side, Westworld is nothing more than a costly and elaborate larp ranch, which is something that already exists without robots.

That's obviously a bit reductive. Previous episodes that show the park's "normal" operations suggest that users should explore and enjoy immersive narratives in the most realistic interactive story in history. And with the growth in popularity of immersive entertainment in our own world, it's easy to see why the move to a different era may be worth the price of entry to the idle rich. (Not to mention the darker side of Westworld, which presumes that people really want to kill and / or have sex with robots without consequences or social rules, and that's a decidedly nihilistic view of people)

But if the elites of this world are so tired and thirsty for emotion, would not it be more interesting to live fantasies through stories with dinosaurs? Or foreigners? Or Harry Potter? Spending $ 40,000 per day to pretend to be a worldly cowboy when cowboys already exist is a strange niche for a theme park. So I ask again: where are all the dinosaurs?

As "Reunion" is finally confirmed, there seems to be no dinosaurs at Westworld because building a successful theme park or a series of entertaining narratives is not the objective. As James Delos (Peter Mullan) points out in a flashback to the young William / Man in Black (Jimmi Simpson), the park is deeply in the red, with two, maybe three years before he goes bankrupt. But William convinces Delos that he must invest a lot of money in the park just because of what people do when they think no one is watching. Westworld has not yet explained what Delos is doing with the things it learns from the park about people's private behavior and secret motivations. But it is clear from the premiere of the season that the company is still secretly recording the activities of park visitors and even DNA for some nefarious (and presumably profitable) purpose.

(A side note: William goes on to say that the past park is spending half of its marketing budget on figuring out what people want.) That means Westworld's marketing department must be even worse at its jobs than the " Make Sure the Robots Don "& # 39; Murder all the guests & # 39; department .The company is on life support, and not even have tried to make dinosaurs yet? But I digress.)

Photo by John P. Johnson / HBO [19659013] In any case, if the hidden goal is to catch guests doing the unseemly things that Westworld allows or if the goal is to see how people behave without the usual limitations and judgments of society , then it is understandable that the park focuses on attractions centered on realistic people and realistic behavior. The promise of "living without limits" of sex, murder and sexual murder that the program constantly reminds us of seems to be a temptation.

So, why offer that temptation? There are still many options, ranging from standard and ordinary blackmail to more ridiculous sci-fi schemes, such as Delos Inc, which learns people's personalities and biometrics, and then secretly replaces them with easily controllable hosts. Later in "Reunion," James Delos intimates that the goal could be some sort of Altered Carbon -scheck the immortality project. None of these things can easily be achieved by seeing how people behave in a completely unlikely fantasy scenario, such as riding dinosaurs or fighting wizards with magic.

Photo by John P. Johnson / HBO

It is also possible that Westworld is simply the most boring of Delos parks. Perhaps the other five with whom we have been bothered are incredible experiences. If Maeve had opened the correct door at the end of season 1, she could have come face to face with a stegosaur instead of a samurai, and then this season could have ended up with some kind of … Jurassic World make fun. After all, Westworld must have done something under the new ownership of Delos after William's visit and the subsequent investment to rescue the park. And, as a quick glance at the Hollywood box office results, they will tell you, people love dinosaurs. (There is also the added advantage that dinosaur robots that walk like riders probably do not traumatize them in the development of consciousness and uprising against their human masters, as did the endless cycles of violence and assault by Westworld).

Of course, there is a simpler reason Westworld has no dinosaurs: the author Michael Crichton wrote a separate science fiction theme park full of dinosaurs in his series Jurassic Park and Universal He probably has lawyers who they would like to keep. his two similar ideas separated. I'm still waiting for Dolores to meet a dinosaur someday. After all, if the other famous theme-park-gone-wrong of the genre has taught us something, it is that life finds a way.