HBO Westworld Recap: Live Blog

ComicBook.com is live blogging the premiere of Westworld, HBO's ambitious new sci-fi/western series. Many critics are calling Westworld the next Game of Thrones, so keep on refreshing this page for all the action.

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The premiere opens with an unseen person interrogating what appears to be a dead body (Evan Rachel Wood) in a cold metal room. The scene quickly flashes to Westworld, a hi-tech amusement park where tourists mix in with very human-like looking androids called "hosts".

One of those tourists is Teddy Flood (James Marsden), who heads straight to a sloon and orders a whiskey. As prositutes solicit him, he sees Dolores (Wood's character) walking past the saloon. Dolores and Teddy are in love and Teddy offers to accompany her home.

They ride off into a gorgeous wilderness, surrounded by steppes and mountains, to see Dolores's herd of cattle. That evening, they return to Dolores's farm, where they realize something's amiss as the herd is still wandering. Bandits have raided Dolores's farm and have killed her parents.

After Teddy kills the bandits, a mysterious Man in Black (Ed Harris) arrives and confronts Dolores and mentions that he's met her many times before. When Teddy tries to shoot the Man in Black, his bullets don't do a thing (since the Man in Black is actually a human). The Man in Black shoots Teddy and then drags Dolores into the barn, presumably to rape her.

The opening scene then immediately begins to replay, but the camera pans out to show Westworld (or a hologram of Westworld) in a large room, surrounded by people. We then see the innter workings of Westworld, with humans building and testing androids. Two Westworld employees, Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) and one of his assistants, discuss a new update added to the androids by Westworld's mysterious head, Dr. Robert Ford, before Lowe is called away.

Lowe is asked to respond to a possible disturbance in cold storage, as every update means the possibility of the androids rebelling. He and a security team head into one of the sub-basements to investigate, but discover that Ford (Anthony Hopkins) is sitting in a room talking to one of the older androids. Ford pauses down the android with a catchphrase and tells it to put itself away.

Back in Westworld, Dolores has a touching conversation with her father and promises to be home by dark. Meanwhile, Teddy goes through his morning routine and quickly tries to meet up with Dolores, but gets interrupted by a group of tourists. The Man of Black takes Teddy's place and says hello to Dolores, but says he has other plans and then walks into the saloon to stake out one of the hosts.

Two tourists head to confront some bandits in the woods, but the sheriff starts malfunctioning, causing the tourists to freak out. The malfunctioning sheriff is taken back to headquarters, where Lowe fears that the new update might have caused the malfunction. Theresa Cullen, Westworld's head of operations, recommends pulling all of the androids that have the update, but Lowe convinces him that the androids can't hurt anyone.

We see Teddy sitting outside of a whorehouse as his tourist "friends" enjoy the prostitutes inside, while Dolores interacts with a family as she paints some horses by a river. The youngest boy tells her that she's "not real" but Dolores just brushes him off and heads home.

Dolores's father finds a crumpled photo in the dirt and shows it to Dolores when she arrives home. But Dolores seems content not thinking about it and dismisses him too before heading into the house.

Lee Sizemore, the head of Westworld's creative team, tries to convince Cullen to roll back the most recent update and make the androids less human. He also implies that he'd have her back if she tries to push Ford and Lowe out of power.

Inside of Westworld, the Man of Black captures an android and drags him off to parts unknown.

Lowe is alerted to another one of the hosts going rogue again. This time, a host has had a psychotic break and has shot up a saloon all while guzzling down bottles of milk. Lowe and the security team heads into Westworld and shuts down the faulty android, and Cullen orders a full recall of any android that has received the update.

The next morning, the Man in Black interrogates the host he captured the night before, and says there's a deeper game to Westworld than what most people think.

Meanwhile, Dolores starts her morning by going outside, but she notices that her father is still sitting on the porch looking at the photo from the night before. He starts rambling about hell being empty, which leads to Dolores riding into town to find a doctor. She can't find a doctor, but she does find Teddy. Before they can leave, a group of bandits head into town and start a shootout.

When Dolores tries to get back to her father, one of the bandits shoots Teddy in the knee. As the whole scene plays out, Hector tries to get away with a safe, but one of the tourists shoots him in the neck and then kills his accomplice. Meanwhile, Teddy dies in Dolores's arms. That evening, Dolores continues to cry over Teddy until a Westworld employeee shuts her down and takes her back to headquarters. It turns out that the entire shootout was staged to give Westworld a chance to recall all the possibly infected hosts.

Back at headquarters, Dolores is interrogated about her father and the photo, while Ford interrogates Dolores's father. Ford restores the android's previous programming, but the android then starts promising revenge against Ford. Ford realizes that the android is accessing a prior programming stream (from when it was a cultist in the desert), which was somehow caused by the most recent update.

While Lowe shuts down Dolores's father, it's revealed that Dolores is the oldest host in Westworld. The next morning, Dolores wakes up in her bed and greets her father, which is now a different android. Meanwhile, the Man in Black rides off into the wilderness and looks down at a map tattooed onto the bottom of the scalp of the android he had tortured the night before.

The episode ends with Dolores looking at the sun rise before killing a fly that had landed on her neck, which represents that something in Dolores's programming has changed. Whereas Dolores's programming previously wouldn't let her hurt a fly, now she has no problem killing one.

That was a pretty cool first episode! Let us know what you think in the comments below!