I'd take the cowboys in a heartbeat. Happy to explain my reasoning if you want to nerd out over this, but history is filled with examples of disciplined, trained warriors with incredible morale but no firearms fighting against (often outnumbered) dudes with guns.

Why would you think any of that? People have some weird notions about samurai.

Mounted archer samurai predate the Edo era by quite a bit, I'm fairly sure, and "dead-eye aim even at a gallop" is unlikely. Even if you assume super robot reflexes and whatnot, bullet beats arrow all things being equal.

Also, based on the amount of whisky in Westworld, it looks like the hosts are Futurama-style robots.

Surely you mean a certain Ken Watanabe film. After all, as Tom Cruise himself pointed out, Ken Watanabe's character is the Last Samurai. Because anything else would be pretty comically racist, right? Practically a Paul Mooney joke.

I assume the basketball court is above the courthouse, the same way that the U.S. court system's is.

I think you're projecting a little. I did not feel "tricked" at all, and enjoyed piecing together the connection between the multiple narratives. Similarly, I think the complexity of the show is interesting, even if I'm not sure it's meaningful yet. I love the metaphor of a prelude and fugue—the way that the host…

Do you have to justify it? Having the two timelines run in parallel allowed for some meaningful juxtaposition to occur without being too painfully on-the-nose. Even for those of us who figured out the Bill in Black point months ago, the ambiguity in the earlier timeline created dramatic tension. Would it really…

Ford lead William by the nose back to Escalante (which he unearthed over the course of the season) so that he could betray Dolores and kickstart her sentience. He directly intervened by revitalizing Teddy when they stopped in a bar, and by introducing the "new narrative," that gave Teddy memories of Wyatt.

I think people are being unfair to the show because of the reveals. If you provide enough information for people to figure out the story, then you will be pilloried for "pointlessly" hiding the ball. If you do not provide enough information for people to figure out the story, you will be lambasted for non-sequitur,…

Probably the better side of the argument can be determined by rewatching and screencapping the tablet Bernard was reading off. As I am at work, and unable to do that, here's my rationale for why Maeve being programmed to go back in makes sense.

Definitely a Jurassic Park/Michael Crichton shout.

She doesn't have to change her name—it's not like she was Armsistice before.

If I hadn't wasted so many hours of my life playing CS back in the day, I would still think that was just a stupid-looking prop gun that mysteriously gets used in a ton of movies.

Roman World was one of the three parks in the movie. So, could happen. Fuckin' XIIIth, eh?

Uh, I'm not sure that Chinese tourists wouldn't rather go to an English-speaking, U.S.-themed park rather than a Japanese-speaking (?), Edo Era-themed park. Just sayin'. Also, there were some Chinese guests in Maeve's in one of the earlier episodes.

I'm actually pretty pleased and surprised at what a self-contained unit the season is. If WW doesn't get renewed (or hasn't already been?) this season still tells a complete story. I actually think the greater danger is that they drag it out longer than it should go. I could see this being a tight two or three…

I thought the implication was pretty clear that William killed Logan and made it look like an accident? "Oops, crazy Logan fell off his horse and broke his neck. You guys know how he acted when he was here—drinking and whoring like no tomorrow."

It would be a hard argument. He's clearly been engineering a robot insurrection from the beginning, since he's the one who modified Maeve's code, and he's the one who revived the "Wyatt" storyline that leads to Dolores's re-awakening, and he's almost certainly the one who arranged for the disappearance of the main…

I kind of suspect that Felix was in on it with Ford.