Why Everyone In 'Westworld' Seems to Be Dropping Acid Before Bed
Westworld has finally returned for Season 3.
In the opening episode, we get a peek at some new tech, including “implants” and a strange bedtime tablet drug.
Here’s what we know about implants on Westworld.
Westworld Season 3 is upon us and so is another array of confusing companies, tech, and scenes with Bernard having conversations with himself. One new piece of technology are the “implants” and the acid-looking drug tablets that characters take before sleeping.
Our first look at the new Westworld drug occurs in the opening scene, where Delores visits “Jerry,” a German tech giant with a fancy house and a short temper—making his inevitable head bashing a little too cathartic. Chekov’s golf club also makes clear that we’ve got a new theme this season and that's class. The rich (Jerry). The poor (Caleb, played by Aaron Paul). And the human-killing arbiters (lead by Delores).
And as with all class-based sci-fi, we’re getting a fair amount of sleep and drug imagery. Right before bed (and death), Jerry opens up a small bottle containing acid-looking tabs. He takes one and settles into a multi-billion-dollar slumber. Meanwhile, Caleb watches his hospitalized mother take a similar drug and also go to sleep.
We then hear voice-over phone conversation between Caleb and an old military friend, Francis. “You ever think about having your implant turned back on?” Francis asks. “Smooth out some of the rough edges.” Caleb: “No, some people need it. But for me, I guess the rough edges are the only thing I’m hanging on to.”
What are the implants in Westworld?
Given the conversation takes place directly after Caleb’s mother doses, it’s likely the “implant” somehow activates the tablet, allowing the user to enter some kind of meditative state.
The trope is classic sci-fi: populations living in vaguely dystopian worlds, using tech to distract themselves from vaguely dystopian problems—it’s the opiate of the masses, the blue pill from the Matrix. Take it and remain asleep, ignorant, but safe. Refuse it and wake up.
That both Jerry and Caleb’s mother take the tab before going to sleep makes the symbolism obvious. That Paul’s character refuses to use his, that he prefers the rough edges of existence, that we only ever see him wake up (just as we see Delores wake up in Season 1)–all this–suggests that Paul is essentially Neo. (It’s also interesting to note how the tablet Jerry uses with his sleep acid looks an awful lot like a certain streaming service. Notice all the red. The new opiate of the masses, perhaps?)
The glasses, on the other hand, seem to act as the antidote just as in the 1988 film They Live; the glasses show us what’s true, but also what we refuse to see.
Later we find Caleb at an art exhibit-like nightclub approaching a screaming man who slaps his tongue. The man was given some kind of tab he couldn’t handle. (So there's a company developing and testing these tabs, apparently.) He’s also said to have a “terminal” somehow connected to his implant. Terminals are used to program and assess hosts, implying that the same technology is also somehow connected to non-hosts. Another way of controlling the masses.
It remains to be seen how Caleb forgoing his implant “treatment” plays out. But if it’s like any sci-fi movie we’ve seen, chances are it will probably end in a revolution.
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