Spoilers ahead for everything in Westworld through the end of Season 2.

The second season of Westworld came to a close last night, and while there are still loads of questions to ask and theories to devise, one constant of the show – especially in its second season – is that the showrunners have a fairly bleak view of humanity. They have essentially given up on us and cast their interest on the hosts. The logic goes that because the guests treated the hosts like chattel, humanity deserves the retribution it receives. That dim view of our species was further hammered home in “The Passenger,” which sees humanity as a failed waypoint in evolutionary development, with hosts as the next stage and worthy of becoming the dominant species. However, because Westworld spends so much time mythologizing and world-building, it forgot to make the case for why hosts rule and humans drool, instead relying on a couple “good” hosts, some lazy sociology, and strawman villains. And even if Westworld had somehow earned its cynical stance on humanity, that’s not really the best view to take right now.

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Image via HBO

Defenders of the hosts will likely point to Maeve and Akecheta as the reason for the hosts to become the dominant species. They were both able to break free from their loops, and evolve (thanks in part to the graciousness of their creator/god-figure Ford) so that they were driven by love: Maeve for her daughter and Akecheta for his wife (I’ll give you a shiny nickel if you know the name of the daughter or the wife without looking it up). These relationships work in the broad strokes of a driving force for the plot. Even “Kiksuya,” arguably the best episode of the series thus far, has to take Akecheta’s love story for his wife and load it down with explainers on how the mythology functions. There’s more time devoted to why the maze symbol appears in scalps than anything specific to Akecheta’s romance. In the world Westworld, love isn’t something that has specificity as much as it provides character motivation.

This kind of generalization isn’t too surprising when you see the rudimentary view of humanity revealed in the “The Passenger,” in which The System, represented by Logan, says that humans don’t change and are fairly basic. Even if you agree with the fact that humans are relatively simple creatures, the notion that people don’t change is utterly ridiculous. There are some people who do, and some people who don’t. As people grow older, they become more fixed in their ways, and others change drastically. Broad generalizations make for easy drama, but Westworld never makes its case, simply taking the view of a snotty Sociology 101 student. But the fact that people change is a core facet of humanity, and one of the reasons we have conflicts and our relationships change. Additionally, some aspects of us change and others remain the same. To view it as binary is to miss the nuances of humanity.

And humanity seems to be something that the showrunners don’t really understand, setting it up as a villain rather than a concept worth exploring in detail. Is there any character who represents the depth of humanity on Westworld? Not really. That kind of care and detail is provided to some of the hosts, but most humans are just callous villains who want to take advantage. Even a “good” human like Elsie realizes that she has to remain on the top of the food chain. But that’s also because of the way she’s written. Despite multiple episodes of her spending time with Bernard, they never bond or form a real connection. It’s a strawman argument, which prevents us from feeling conflicted outside of “I’m a human, so I like humans.” But there’s not a single human character on the show where you care about their fate and feel conflicted about the host uprising, a fact that drained Dolores’ arc of its tension and simply made her a bloodthirsty maniac minus the cost of bloodshed.

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Image via HBO

When you look at this bleak view of humanity, we’re left to wonder: to what end does this serve? And why are the showrunners so down on our species when the arc of human history has both good, evil, and shades of grey in between? Here’s how co-showrunner Jonathan Nolan views humanity (via EW):

No, it’s a f—ing disaster. It’s a f—ing total disaster. And every time I turn on the news I’m provided with fodder for our discontent. I think our timing might have been exactly right on.

 

Listen, I’m surrounded by the wonders of the creations of human beings. I have children and [co-creator Lisa Joy] and I are reminded daily of how much beauty there is in humanity. But yeah, you turn on the f—ing news and it’s a s—show. And I’ve been reading a lot of history this season, a little bit connected to the show, but also just following the train of things I’m interested in, and it’s depressing to realize how familiar some of these problems are, right? It’s like we just can’t figure these f—ing things out. We come back to them again and again. It’s as if there’s a flaw — and this is very much the premise in our second season — there’s a flaw in our code and it follows us around. Wherever we go, there we are. And we just can’t get out of our own f—ing way. All the beauty and incredible things we brought, and we just consistently find a way to f— it up.

 

Much of [dramatic storytelling across the ages] has concerned itself with “how will we overcome?” and personal growth and change. At a certain point you gotta f—ing call it. We’re not going to fix this s—, we’re not going to figure it out. But there’s an opportunity for the things that replace us to do so. And that’s the dream of every parent, right? That their child doesn’t face the same things they do, that they make better choices? But there does seem to be a pattern of behavior that follows us, that history echoes from the past, the same mistakes, the same foibles. So you say: At what point does this fix itself? Or are we just stuck this way?

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Image via HBO

Setting aside the fact that Nolan thinks there’s a “a flaw in our code” (which is totally how I relate to my fellow humans), it’s a sad, pathetic, and most of all, narrow, reading of history. But even if you believe that’s the case, then you need to make the case for what’s next. The Planet of the Apes movies are not pro-human, but they thoughtfully wrestle with what society means for ape-kind, relying heavily on textured relationships and conflicts. By comparison, Season 2 of Westworld stuck Dolores in the wilderness for an entire season and just had her murder a lot of people while giving ominous speeches. Westworld did a lot of mythologizing and lore-humping in its second season, but it never took the time to make us care about humans or hosts.

And when you don’t put the effort into either group, I can’t really take your critiques of humanity seriously. If you can’t engage with complex, difficult ideas and instead run away to your little mythmaking, it says your priority is coming up with puzzles rather than storytelling. And puzzles are fine! There’s nothing wrong with games. But games aren’t stories, and Westworld can’t help but keep playing games rather than do the tough work of writing compelling characters. Instead, it twiddles its thumbs, setting up grand thematic battles without interesting opponents. Dolores and Bernard are on opposite sides of a conflict regarding humanity—do you really care who wins?

Perhaps we’re meant to side with Bernard because he doesn’t want to wipe out humanity and since we’re humans, we’d like to stick around. But the real reason we should want to root for him is genocide is bad, and if you’re Team Dolores, then you really have nowhere to go and nowhere to grow. If there’s a reason we don’t have a rooting interesting in Team Bernard, it’s because Westworld hasn’t bothered to make its case for humanity, and judging by Nolan’s comments, it probably never will (Westworld also strikes me as the kind of show that’s going to end with some platitude about the power of storytelling rather than anything thoughtful or profound). Rather than seeing his timing as “right on,” I see it as "America is fading,” but America doesn't represent all of humanity, and a Western-oriented view is incredibly shallow.

Sadly, for all of its expansive storytelling, Westworld has shown itself to be shockingly narrow-minded about the past, present, and future of the human race. But even if the showrunners believe that humanity is doomed and that the story they’re telling is built on pessimism, they would do well to remember that even Pandora’s Box contained hope. And yet after spending twenty episodes on this show, they’ve given us little reason to hope for the hosts or for humanity. And without hope as a counterbalance, cynicism rings hollow, the braying of a petulant child rather than a thoughtful observer.

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