Slight spoilers from the first season of Westworld.
HBO's sci-fi western Westworld has yet to approach its potentially best storyline yet.
So far the show has focused on what goes on inside the park, specifically whether the host robots are becoming sentient and what that could mean to the guests of the park. But the most interesting part of the world within Westworld is what happens when it's guests go home.
Without giving too much away, there are no rules in the park. You can rape, murder, steal, do whatever you want to the park's robot hosts. The next day they'll just have their memories wiped and bodies cleaned up to get sent back out with no memory of what's happened to them.
And that's been the primary of focus of the shows for the first four episodes, what if the robot hosts start to remember what is happening to them. Because part of the park's allure is how lifelike the hosts are, how they're basically humans. The series starts with some of the hosts having side effects after being given some upgrades, slowly, and albeit fairly predictably, the side effects spread.
To me, the most interesting thing that the show hasn't touched on is what happens to the guests after they go home. Guests can do whatever they want in this world, good or bad, or as the show puts it, white hat or black hat.
So depending on how your stay in the park goes, you can see some things. Even if you play the role of a good guy, you might end up seeing a total blood bath.
So when you arrive home, are you able to just turn off the things that you've seen? There's a scene where a guest of the park faces a western death cult and watches the rest of her companions get brutally slaughtered in front of her. In the real world, she's probably facing some sort of PTSD when she gets home.
Now the quick answer to that is, "well she knows it's fake" and sure, that's true. But the point of the park is that the line blurs between reality and fiction. The goal is to lose yourself in within the park. So PTSD is a real thing that might, and should happen to some of the guests.
Or say you decide to play the black hat in the park. You want to see how dark you can play it in the park. But it's all just for fun right? Besides you probably won't do anything that crazy. But somehow you fall in with a gang of hosts who send you down the wrong path, you end up doing somethings that you in the real world would never do. But it happens in the park. You end up killing like 10 people as apart of a stage coach robbery, and again, the park is real to you as it's supposed to be.
You then go back home to your normal life and are struck with the realization and memories that you're a much darker person than you thought you were before you went into the park. You went into the park thinking that you were a good person, you knew who you were. And you come out with that confidence shaken, you were wrong. You had no idea why you killed those people in the park, that was never what you had intended on doing. But it happened, and you're not like one of the hosts who has their memory wiped clean
You're now living with the fact that you're a much darker individual than you ever thought.
That is the story that Westworld is totally missing out on. The show could be a super interesting take on what happens the guest psychologically after they leave the park but it's totally focusing on what is going on in the park. The show is only four episodes in, so that may change, but as of right now, the show hasn't even touched it's most interesting feature.