Who Are the Bad Guys Of Westworld, Really?

You could spend days trying to identify who, exactly, the villains of Westworld are and never come up with an entirely satisfactory answer. That's because in Westworld, there aren't good guys and bad guys the same way there are in fairy tales and even in Game of Thrones, where, despite some ambiguities, we pretty much know who's playing for Light and who's playing for Darkness.

Westworld, conversely, is a TV show dripping with ambiguous moral figures (as well as impenetrable plots that require multiple think-pieces to work through). Everyone's the hero of their own story. And one person's heroic quest might make them the villain to another person's quest.

That said, we can broadly identify characters' moral leanings by determining their motivations. What is their path of destruction in the name of? For Maeve (Thandie Newton), it's reuniting with her daughter. But for Dolores/Wyatt (Evan Rachel Wood), it's liberation and revenge. Their motivations impact their moral alignment, if you will.

To determine the villainy of each character, we'll be holding a little debate with ourselves. Please imagine two chairs set up like Dolores and Arnold's to set the scene.