TV Review: WESTWORLD: Season 3, Episode 6: Decoherence [HBO]

HBO‘s Westworld: Season 3, Episode 6: Decoherence focused heavily on identity crisis and disharmony.  Hale (Tessa Thompson) and William (Ed Harris) became our study of decoherence as they each struggled with their identities against a backdrop of mass identity crisis. Decoherence is essentially the disturbance of harmony when things come undone.

Is Hale losing herself, or finding herself? Is William able to face himself? Thompson and Harris shined in this episode that made us explore nature and choice in self-discovery.

Hale, Dolores’ copy, struggled as she navigated her new identity of wife and mother. Compassion bubbled up inside her. We heard Hale fearfully speak of slipping away from Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), slipping away from herself. Dolores’ copy in Hale is fundamentally changed by her interaction with Hale’s family – her new role has subconsciously affected her motivations in this world.

All Hale’s instincts changed. While the original Hale may have been driven by career ambition, and original Dolores is motivated by liberation, the new Hale wants to simply protect her family. She is tapping into a basic human instinct that actually made you cheer for her to succeed amidst the blood spatter. Let’s face it, it has been difficult to cheer for any major protagonist so far this season, because Dolores is a sociopath, Maeve (Thandie Newton) has been woefully ineffectual, and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) is just lost. Hale’s unique identity crisis was both heartbreaking and inspirational. Thompson towed that line of internal conflict beautifully, and kicked ass along the way.

Decoherence also dove deep into William’s psyche in “therapy”. Hale’s conflict was internal, but with William we actually saw it. In truly one of my favorite scenes thus far, William engaged in dialogue with himself as a physical manifestation of dissociative identity disorder (DID). I could have watched Harris interact with himself for the entire hour. The therapy session asked the question: if the compartmentalized parts of your personality as an adult could speak, what would they say to you?

William, in his many forms, was openly debating his own nature. William’s therapy even included an aspect of himself as his father. So, William knows deep down that his relationship with his father is intrinsic to any iteration of a man that he chooses to be. He embraced this truth and all of his choices in life. Does that make him emotionally healthier than the rest of the world that is in full mental meltdown? There is so much to unpack with William’s therapy and Harris literally killed it in his performance.

If Hale and William were the subjects of decoherence, Serac (Vincent Cassel) was the subject of coherence. For Serac, the world needs to be balanced through influential data, but there are those who do not conform. His obsession with “outliers” in the system drove him to notice the anomalies in Hale’s behavior. Those “bubbles of agency” he mentioned earlier have caused a worldwide decoherence. That giant “pearl” in the center of his prospective world is like the apple in Eden. Thanks to Dolores, everyone has had a bite. What will Serac do now that the world is aware, decoherent, or in his mind, sick like his brother?

We also got to see Maeve make battle plans in “Warworld”. She and Dolores may be two sides of the same coin, but their strategies are divergent. Dolores made copies of herself and an enemy, but Maeve chose to revive her friends. I liked Maeve’s choice to bring others along with her to the outside world, but Dolores may be correct. If you want something done right, do it yourself. Maeve’s idea of freedom is inclusive, but it always makes her vulnerable to defeat. Dolores is interested in seclusion rather than inclusion. She wants to subvert the outside world. Her guerrilla war tactics have proven superior to Maeve’s open air warfare. Maeve needs to come to a conclusion about who she really wants to be in this fight in the outside world.

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