In “Contrapasso” we discover more of Lawrence’s backstory in the town of Pariah. Ford and the Man in Black meet, and Elsie Hughes discovers something strange with the broken host body. Episode 4 recap here.
We switch this episode from the expected Delores and Bernard talk, to Ford and the previous old host from episode 1 talking. Ford narrates a story about a greyhound he once had that chased and caught a cat, then found he didn’t know what to do with the cat. The theme of that story shows up later in the episode.
Delores is still with William and Logan. However she is hearing voices, presumably Arnold’s. The trio stumble into the town of Pariah which is filled with debauchery. Logan talks about his buying out Westworld. He mentions that no one can find any information about Arnold. Not even a picture.
William and Logan Split up
We saw a lot of character development for William last episode. He’s taking a more active interest in Westworld thanks to his interest in Delores. In this episode his “friend” Logan taunts him until he snaps. He doesn’t actually hurt Logan, but their journey comes to and end as later in the episode he leaves Logan to get beaten up by a group of confederate hosts.
Delores also shows big character development. A part of the episode goes towards her hearing the voices and general mystic, mysterious things. However she later shoots a gang of confederate hosts when William tells her to run. William realises that there’s something different about Delores. We’re shown that she’s not actively trying to find the maze.
The Man in Black, Teddy and Ford
The Man in Black continues on his journey looking for the maze, with Lawrence still in his noose, and Teddy bleeding out. They stumble across the young boy we’ve seen Ford talking to in a previous episode, presumably a robot version of young Ford.
The Man in Black decides he needs Teddy more the Lawrence, and we see him cut Lawrence’s throat to drain his blood to give to Teddy. It seems obvious now that the hosts would share the same blood.
In a bar later one the Man in Black sits down at a table only to be confronted by Ford. The scene is fantastic. The two characters and actors have a good chemistry. The Man in Black believes himself to be a villain Westworld, and he perhaps sees Ford as his hero counterpart in Westworld. He wonders if Ford will stop him from finding the Maze. Ford however doesn’t reveal his feelings.
He does however show his God like powers. He demonstrates his control over all the hosts in the saloon, and he also controls Teddy. I believe he’s shown the Man in Black that there are cheat codes to the hosts, whether or not that helps him is another matter.
Lawrence’s backstory
We’ve come to enjoy Lawrence as the loveable bandit that has a noose around his head. In previous episodes he was hinted to be the most wanted man. After getting killed by the Man in Black, I didn’t think we’d see any more of him.
Instead he turns up in the storyline with William and Logan as “El Lazo”. We see him in his best criminal gang boss mode. The performance by the actor was great and he is quickly becoming one of my favourite characters.
Back at the Lab
In the lab we learn that there’s an order to the jobs of the employees of Westworld. The guys in charge of cleaning up hosts’ bodies refer to themselves as butchers. We meet Felix who is hiding a robot bird in his locker. In his spare time, he tries to program the bird into life. His partner finds out and reminds him that he’ll never amount to anything more than a Butcher. Felix seems like he’s going to be an important character, or at least get a bigger role in the next episode.
Whilst working on the bird after hours, he finds Maeve’s body awake. This time she isn’t scared, instead she sits poised and elegant. The episodes ends on that cliffhanger, but it seems Maeve is in the lead for the first robot to understand the truth about Westworld.
Elsie Hughes discovers hidden tech inside the malfunctioning host that killed itself in the previous episode. She shows it to Bernard, stating that it’s a transmitter that is sending information outside of Westworld. What data is being sent is unknown. Who the data being sent to is unknown.
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