Westworld: 8 Flaws That Could Totally Ruin It
2. Character Motivations Are Loosely Defined
Every week Westworld's story gets larger and more grandiose. At the same time, some of its characters are becoming more difficult to fully understand.
The main offender is Dolores, who appears to be leading William on a quest fuelled purely by random, inconsistent memories (or fragments of memories, or flashbacks, or glitches...it's hard to completely make sense of it all unless you've checked out some of the fan theories online). What, exactly, is her motivation?
The same goes for the bumbling techs helping Maeve. Concretely establishing their motivation at this point would provide some much-needed coherence to their story. But there are other characters with limited motivation, too.
Is William's only motivation that he loves Dolores and wants to help her? What about Teddy? Is his current motivation to get back to Dolores? How about Logan? At this point his vendetta against work colleague William is practically sadistic.
Again, this comes down to the show's interest in vagary at the cost of establishing what makes the characters tick. Providing us with some of these details (and making sure subsequent new characters have their motivations clearly defined) would really help strengthen the show's overall feel.