“You had to be there” has become an effective shorthand for the chronically online and the cultural moments that unfolded largely in cyberspace, but it’s hard to think of a modern show more deserving of that phrase than Westworld. You couldn’t enjoy a leisurely scroll back in 2016 without running into post after post trying to make sense of the HBO series. “What the heck is going on with Westworld?” was the phrase on everyone’s lips and at the top of every headline; in turn, it became the show’s biggest draw. A mystery box of such heady proportion hadn’t graced our screens since Lost — and though plenty have sprung up and even surpassed Westworld since it premiered 10 years ago, the rush its first season gave us has yet to be replicated.
Despite rebooting the 1973 cult classic of the same name, which was itself based on a novel by Michael Crichton, Westworld felt fresher and more novel than any genre mash-up that’d come before it. Series creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy changed very little about Crichton’s original premise, which imagined a near-future theme park populated with lifelike animatronics in cowboys-and-natives cosplay. This realm is a perverse pleasure ground for the wealthiest of the wealthy: for the small fee of $40,000 a day, patrons can dress up in Old West costumes and release their inhibitions. The android “hosts” live to serve — they’re anything from cannon fodder in a shootout to a warm body for guests with love on the brain.
