Westworld Season 2 Review: 10 Spoiler-Free Reactions To The First Five Episodes

2. The Character Journeys Carry More Emotional Weight

The hosts are free of their narratives and instead able to make their own decisions, which makes their journeys so much more interesting: whereas Season 1 was about questioning what's real and what makes us human, this year further explores that discovery of consciousness and the ability to make one's own decisions, without an enforced story to play out.

That adds a lot more weight to the journeys of the main characters, and with so much of the setup out the way there's further room for exploration of who they are and what they want.

We now get to see the paths they desire to take, rather than the ones they're forced to, and in the big cases - with Dolores quest for vengeance, Maeve's search for her daughter, Bernard coming to terms with being a host - there's a lot of true emotion that helps raise the stakes and allow us to invest more deeply into the characters beyond the more superficial levels we were presented last time around. That goes for William/Man in Black too, with the various flashbacks allowing us to better understand that particular transformation, and serving as perhaps the most fascinating story across these opening instalments.