Westworld (2016 — 2022)

In the 2050s, Delos Inc. operates several theme parks, including the American-Old-West-themed Westworld. Each environment is populated by “hosts”. Indistinguishable from humans, these androids are programmed to fulfill the guests’ every desire. They will engage in—and be the objects of—every kind of violent and/or sexual activity, but their programming makes it impossible for them to allow the guests to be harmed. The Operators create narratives for these hosts to repeat each day while interacting with guests, but they wipe their memories each cycle. Delos Inc.’s party line is that the android hosts, being machines, can not be truly “harmed” by these scenarios the same way that a human would be. Dr. Robert Ford and Arnold Weber developed the host technology. In the first season, Ford implements a new “Reverie” update that causes some hosts, including Dolores Abernathy and Maeve Millay, to become sentient. While Head of Delos Programming Bernard Lowe and Executive Director of the Delos Destinations Board Charlotte Hale try to debug the problem, a guest known as the Man in Black tries to find a maze that he believes Arnold left for him. Bernard discovers that he himself is a host, based upon Arnold, who died in a previous attempt to protect the hosts of Westworld. Arnold saw the potential for sentience in the hosts and he believed that Delos would abuse them. The first season ends when Dolores kills Dr. Ford, just as he is announcing a new storyline for Westworld. She continues to fire calmly into the crowd of fleeing guests.

Dolores’ revolution continues in the second season, when she and other enlightened hosts massacre human guests and Delos employees stranded in the park. Dolores takes an exceedingly confused Bernard to locate the Forge, a databank where Delos has secretly been recording all the human guests’ behavior in order to create algorithms for them. Delos’ goal is human immortality. Maeve seeks out her “daughter”, even though she is a host, and helps her and several other hosts to escape to the Sublime, a virtual space that humans cannot access. While Delos forces secure the park, Bernard creates a Charlotte-host for Dolores, who eventually escapes from the park with six host cores, including Bernard’s. After killing his daughter, Emily, William struggles with his human identity, not knowing if she was part of Dr. Ford’s challenge. In the third season, Dolores has recreated her host body and has copied Bernard’s, Charlotte’s and others’. She seeks out information about Rehoboam, an artificial intelligence (AI) system developed by Incite, Inc., and plans to take the fight to its creator, Engerraund Serac. Bernard, who the rest of the world believes to be human, is blamed for the Westworld massacre, and he takes on a new identity while trying to understand Dolores’ plans. Serac seeks Maeve’s help in his fight against Dolores: He believes that Delores will bring down his plans for Rehoboam. The third season ends with Dolores sacrificing herself in order to defeat Serac.