Episode 6 of Westworld “The Adversary” follows more on Maeve and her interactions with Felix. We also find out more about the boy robot, Teddy’s backstory as well as discover more on the industrial espionage. Previous episode recap here.
I loved the piano song for this episode which was “Fake plastic trees” by Radiohead. A perfect background to Maeve’s arc, as she is the fake plastic girl in a sense. We left Maeve last time sat upright in the lab. We now visit her in the saloon where she convinces a guest to choke her to death. Waking up again in the lab, Maeve picks up her conversation with Felix the butcher, proving that she is keeping memories that are meant to have been wiped out already.
Maeve convinces Felix to give her a walking tour of the facilities, and discovers more about the hosts, how they are designed and created. Later she convinces Felix and his coworker to tweak her programming, lowering her loyalty and increasing her intelligence. Why the butchers agree is a bit of a plot hole but apparently it will be explained in episode 8.
Industrial Espionage
Elise is determined to track down who is sending out information on Westworld. She and Bernard are apparently the only two people who are aware. Bernard goes down to B82 (are there really 82 basement floors?!) to connect to some of the park’s older computers. It’s interesting that Westworld still keeps the lower floors, which seem to be abandoned and unused. Electricity still works, although the lights flicker horror movie style. It does bring up questions as to why Westworld still has these levels in use.
Elise tracks the signal to a terminal in a creepy building filled with clowns and dolls. This episode definitely had the horror movie vibe. She calls Bernard and tells him the data is being sent out by non other than Theresa Cullen, operations manager as well as Bernard’s lover. A the end of the episode Elise is grabbed from behind from an unknown assailant.
The 5 anomalies
Bernard has found 5 more anomalies on the old computer systems that aren’t registered with the new computer systems. When investigating further he finds a family of 4 hosts and a robot dog. The host father attacks him and does not respond to his voice commands. Ford comes and stops the host, who does respond to his commands.
The anomalies are robots from the 1st generation created by Arnold. They were a gift to Ford, and yes, the robot boy is meant to be Ford. The others are his brother, father and mother, as well as their pet dog.
Bernard retreats. His story arc is interesting, and I imagine now he is full of conflict. There’s a lot that Ford hasn’t told him. He has very few people he can trust. I’m interested to see what his actions are from now on.
Ford later interacts with the young boy robot. The boy kills the pet dog and then lies to Ford about killing it. However in analytics, he reveals that he was told to kill the dog by Arnold’s voice in his head. It seems that hosts being able to lie is more common spread than just Delores. We don’t see Delores in this episode.
Teddy’s backstory
Firstly Teddy and the Man in Black continue on their hunt for the Maze. They come across soldiers who’ve set up camp outside an entrance they need. The soldiers recognise Teddy and the two are quickly caught and tied up. The majority of the action from this episode comes from their part in the story.
Teddy is able to free himself from the ropes, and upon doing so launches an attack on the soldiers. He uses a wind up machine gun like weapon (I don’t recognise it) and mows down everyone in the camp. It’s probably his most bad ass scene yet. Even the Man in Black was impressed.
Flashbacks show us that he helped Wyatt betray and kill their fellow soldiers before. Maybe Teddy isn’t the good boy we’ve all been used to? Either way I think he’s linked a lot more to the Maze than we had been previously led to believe.