[Warning: spoilers abound for those who have not seen Sunday’s series premiere of Westworld.]

For the first three episodes of Westworld, we’ve talked at length about how the show functions not only as a thrilling science fiction story but also as a tale about storytelling. Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s subversions of Western tropes and multilayered dialogue has both deconstructed and critiqued the ideas of long-form storytelling in a way that resonates with the Golden Age of Television, where serial dramas hold sway with bold (and sometimes controversial) choices. To be honest, it’s the kind of thematic material that a TV critic like myself dreams of because it approaches itself in the same way that we do, dissecting the different subplots in a way that seems almost (but not quite) too self-aware for its own good.

“Dissonance Theory” still has plenty of that. However, as any show approaches the middle part of its first season it becomes time to expand its world and thus its themes. In Westworld’s case, that means pushing out into explorations of storytelling in different forms of media. This week’s episode takes a close look at the video game storytelling mentality as it jumps deeper into the storylines and starts to achieve some real forward momentum.

It’s an interesting sort of coincidence that Westworld leans this heavily into gamer allusions less than a week after Red Dead Redemption 2 was officially announced by Rockstar Games. Red Dead Redemption is one of the most critically-acclaimed sandbox games in recent years, praised for its lush visuals and story arc and the fact that it takes place in an Old West setting just serves to heighten the coincidence. While there has been a certain element of gaming built in since the show’s premiere “Dissonance Theory” examines it in more specific and overt ways — particularly through the players.

This is a somewhat tricky tightrope for the show to walk. Hollywood has often tackled the gamer mindset, and they generally don’t do it well. Whether it’s Law & Order: SVU’s hack job on Gamergate, Gamer’s ADHD-ridden energy drink ride of a plot or countless others, big-budget films and television are generally disdainful in their depiction of gamers. Westworld offers a far more nuanced take through its exploration of three characters: William, Logan and the Man in Black.

William is the easiest place to start, as he basically represents where we’ve all been; the newbie gamer. Anyone who’s played games for any length of time knows the tendency many of us have to jump into games with the character that most represents how we idealize ourselves. It’s fair to say that William, the repressed man who spent his orientation in episode two asking his guide what’s proper to do as opposed to “what can I do,” is drawn to the heroic ideal because that’s how we like to imagine ourselves. William is the guy who wants to follow his way through the storylines and experience every bit of dialogue, get lost in the characters and pretend that it’s all real. In this case it’s obviously much more real than in our world, but the point stands. As William gets himself deeper into the world, he’s quickly drawn to Dolores because that’s who he would be drawn to in the outside world.

Similarly, when he is presented with a situation where he can turn “go black hat,” he doesn’t. There are several potential reasons for this, but it seems to come down to two things. First is the fact that William still wants to be the hero of this story. He’s found a narrative arc that he likes and he’s sticking with it. Logan can chastise him for not being willing to step out of his comfort zone, but the truth is that right now at least, this is what is emotionally engaging to William. His emotional connection with Dolores feels very real to him and he’s interested in seeing how this plays out. On the other hand, it can also be chalked up to the fact that William wants to do this because it’s what he’s “supposed” to do. It’s how society tells him to behave, and he’s naturally bringing his real-world morality into his recreational activity. He’s going down what he believes are the appropriate quest lines because that’s what a good guy should. It may lack a bit in imagination but there’s nothing wrong with that; it also happens to make him the most sympathetic of the guests so far.

And then there’s Logan. Logan is the guy we’ve all encountered in gaming, who’s been through this before and isn’t interested in sticking with the lines. The primary conflict between William and Logan has been their aims within the park; where William wants to explore this fantastic new world, Logan’s already bored and wants to drink, kill and screw to his heart’s content. Many of us have been him too, because there is a certain level of fun in racing through Grand Theft Auto games and seeing how many cop cars you can get chasing you on your wild rampage, or seeing just how evil you can make your character in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

That’s all well and good and as someone who loves playing there’s a lot of creativity in exploring different moralities or just going on a rampage to blow off steam after a long day. But it becomes something different when you’re in a multi-player game (to say nothing of a world where the mobs are actual realistic approximations of people). It’s funny to watch Logan race his way through the storyline of the bounty hunt in this episode. He cuts off the bounty hunter’s speech like he’s skipping a cutscene, essentially saying “Yeah yeah, get me to the gameplay.” But he’s also a griefer to some degree, stealing William’s kill when he hesitates and completely sidetracking the storyline that William initiated when he decides it’s time to shoot the bounty hunter and go black hat. Logan is lacking in empathy — not just for the hosts, but for what William wants to do in the game. That leads to them splitting off, which is probably in both of their best interests.

And then there’s the Man in Black, who has surpassed where Logan’s at and has gone into a full dive. He’s the achievement hunter operating with cheat codes, who no longer cares about the storyline in any sort of meaningful way except as an end to his means. He drags Lawrence completely out of his storyline to tag along with him and takes shortcuts in freeing Hector so he can get to exactly what he wants. He’s looking for, essentially, the Easter eggs and Hot Coffee of Westworld and that means going through the long, complicated quest lines. While the Man in Black has been portrayed as a villain up to this point, it’s important to note that Logan is far more of a hateable character than he is right now because — at least from the guests’ perspective — what the MiB is doing isn’t openly disrupting the fun of any of the other guests. We see that when William, Logan and Dolores show up in the town that the Man in Black massacred this week; he leaves carnage, but it’s respawned by the time he’s back. And that’s the mindset that allows the MiB to think of himself not as a monster, but instead as the man who just wants to get something new out of the game that he’s been playing for so long. It’s an interesting and more layered representation of gamers than I think we’ve seen on a show in some time.

Of course, that all gets complicated by the fact that the hosts are in fact being portrayed as their own people. This episode’s title takes its name from cognitive dissonance theory, a psychological theory that basically argues the idea that our desire for everything to make sense can give rise to irrational, sometimes self-destructive behavior. To put it a clearer way, when reality doesn’t meet our expectations, we sometimes rationalize doing harmful things to close that gap. This applies to our guests in some sense too, but the focus of this theme is on the hosts as they continue to slip further into their own cognitive misalignment and find themselves getting more and more out of whack to justify it.

While Dolores has a bit of that going on in how she’s gone off her path (as allowed by Bernard, but not the security teams), Maeve is the clearest example of this. It’s not surprising, as she is the most proactive of the hosts that we’ve seen thus far and was probably the worst host from what the park’s perspective would be for Dolores to have “infected.” Seeing things that she can’t explain and flashing back to previous memories where this has all happened again, Maeve decides to figure out whether she’s going crazy. That leads her down a road where she discovers that the techs she’s remembering are very real, and more importantly that her visions of being shot is too.

In itself, this wouldn’t necessarily be self-harm. In fact, you could even argue that it’s the opposite of cognitive dissonance because instead of trying to rationalize her repeating of a victimizing cycle, she is taking active steps to move forward and uncover the truth. But this is where that blurry psychology of being a host comes into play. Dolores is certainly becoming sentient (and indeed is even being guided by the NPC serving as the gatekeeper for the maze), Maeve hasn’t been tweaked in the same way as Bernard nor personally guided in a way that eases this transition for her. She’s still programmed in certain ways and thus she’s betraying the core of what she is meant to do. This leads to her telling Hector after he’s pulled a bullet out of her, “None of this matters.” While Ed Harris’ character started off looking like the clearest analogue for Yul Brenner’s murderous black-clad android gone wild, this is a sudden mark in Maeve (and perhaps Hector’s) column for that role and that changes the game in interesting ways.

While chaos is starting to unfold in the park, it’s also going on behind the scenes as Ford starts upending things in a big way for his new storyline. Again, credit needs to be given to Anthony Hopkins for making Ford such an interesting and well-shaded character. Just as he completely tears up the ground in a very real and physical way, he’s ripping things apart in a less literal sense with Theresa, the mysterious board and all the other little political factions in play among the employees.

This isn’t a focus of the show yet and that’s perfect, because the gods of Westworld probably shouldn’t start going to war until their creations get a little more haywire. But that scene between Ford and Theresa at the place young Theresa once dined is a well-staged move by Ford and plays up the tension nicely. It’s emblematic of the way things are starting to get out of alignment all over that tensions are just starting to come to a head between Ford, Theresa, Bernard and the rest of the people at the park, something I expect to see play out more and more as the season progresses.

Some Final Thoughts:

• Apologies for the lateness this week, it was unavoidable due to unforeseen circumstances.

• Man, I haven’t mentioned this before but the opening credits for this show really are amazing.

• One of my favorite details this week is getting a look behind the curtain at how the Man in Black’s plans at the prison are put into play by the park. There’s obviously no way that any guests would be given actual explosives, so throwing that little attention to explaining how that all worked was a nice touch.

• Clementine has yet to stand out as a character to me, but “Most things that touch the tip of my tongue, I’m happy to forget” was one of the best laugh lines this week and her delivery was pitch-perfect.

• This week’s anachronistic song was one of my favorite songs from The Cure, the ominous and Halloween-appropriate “A Forest.”

• Vincenzo Natali (Splice, Cube) directed this episode and you could definitely see his influence here, particularly in the way some of the action scenes were shot. Between his work on this, Luke Cage, Orphan Black, The Strain and Hannibal I’ve found I like him far more as a TV director than I do when he directs films — and that’s coming from someone who’s liked all his films I’ve seen.