[Lightspeed]

It had some cool moments, but it seemed to negate or ignore earlier set ups.

They basically ignored what was going to be really interesting, which was the AI encountering the rest of humanity. Up until they escape the Westworld AI mostly only encounter a super-rich niche. We do get a window into the lives of the less privileged, by way of Felix and Sylvester, so we know this world exists, we know there are socio-economic pressures Maeve is able to leverage to compel behaviour. I think it's Sylvester who stresses they can't lose their job.

But that goes nowhere. Maeve's recognition of Felix, Sizemore's sacrifice, that didn't seem to enter in the AI's worldview. We certainly don't see any response from the AI to learning anything new about humanity, discovering the sheer diversity of experience, values, culture that exists, that's constantly created fresh.

I suppose we can take the symbolism of the nuke on France which was the trigger for the creation of Rehoboam, along with William's question about being hit by a nuke and having the electrons knocked out of your body. That by the time the Westworld AI emerged into the world, humanity was already dead, spiritually murdered by Rehoboam, the electrons knocked from humanity's body. The Westworld AI were only fucking the dead corpse of the species. But that has holes in it. I think we're expected to believe that Hale wiped out humanity without ever actually encountering it. She never felt the need to take the time to see what was there. No idea what she actually did with billions of people.

The writers have basically just brushed away the existence of humanity, beyond what their execs are familiar with.

Which was boring.

The only kind of interesting thing was the idea of nested simulations, which alludes to the human mind.