Westworld: How Will HBO’s New Sci-Fi Thriller Depict Future Sex with Robots?

A futuristic theme park filled with cowboys, robotic women, and carnal pleasure. 

In October, HBO will release a new one-hour drama series called Westworld. Based on the Michael Crichton film of the same name, the television show is set to explore the sexual, violent, and other appetites of those who enter into an artificial world with a western cowboy setting.

As characters step out of their daily life and into the realistic, but artificial, Westworld, they are encouraged to indulge themselves in a place isolated from real consequences.

In fact, the people the characters encounter in Westworld aren’t people at all: they are sentient androids. HBO’s trailer depicts a world with no orientation, no guide, and no rules, alongside a montage of weapons and android women. Westworld acts as a place for escapism.

Westworld, an intersection of the near future and the reimagined past, is sure to explore how people might partake in sexual acts in the future: with sentient and sexually active androids.

The show seems to draw on two familiar tropes, violent men and sexy women. Combining these tropes will no doubt lead to sexualized violence. In the lead up to Westworld’s release, audiences are likely to question how many taboos will be explored and which actions characters are likely to participate in.

Will Westworld’s characters explore repressed sexualities, experimental sex, or sexual encounters inspired by violent revenge? It is a literally world of possibilities.

The trailer reveals several sex scenes alongside naked androids. The show depicts human-android encounters exactly like human-human encounters, but likely exaggerated with lust, curiosity, or violence to emphasize the dreamlike state of Westworld. The sentience of the androids might eventually leave the viewers to question if Westworld’s androids can be exploited or not.

For instance, in the trailer a man questions the so-called realness of a very human-looking woman:

“Are you real?” he asks.
“If you can’t tell, does it matter?” she responds.

Another character, Delores, reveals there will be consequences in Westworld as “violent delights have violent ends.”

Westworld will be premiere in October 2016.

Image source: HBO