# The Original (Westworld)
"The Original" is the first episode of the first season of the HBO science-fiction western drama *[Westworld](https://www.edgepedia.org/westworld-tv-series)*, written by series co-creators [Jonathan Nolan](https://www.edgepedia.org/jonathan-nolan) and [Lisa Joy](https://www.edgepedia.org/lisa-joy) and directed by Jonathan Nolan; it aired on October 2, 2016[1](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/westworld/s01/e01) • [2](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/). The episode introduces the series' premise: a futuristic amusement park where wealthy guests live out Wild West fantasies among lifelike android "hosts," while some of those hosts begin to show signs of self-awareness[3](https://time.com/4508809/westworld-hbo-premise/). Its title refers to Dolores Abernathy, the oldest host still operating in the park, a meaning the series confirms outright in its season 3 finale[2](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/) • [4](https://time.com/5829329/westworld-season-3-finale-explained/).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Episode | Season 1, episode 1 of *Westworld*; aired October 2, 2016[1](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/westworld/s01/e01) |
| Written and directed by | Jonathan Nolan, from a story developed with co-creator Lisa Joy, adapting Michael Crichton's 1973 film[2](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/) • [5](https://time.com/4512789/hbo-westworld-review/) |
| Opening device | Dolores Abernathy is questioned in "Analysis Mode," a diagnostic interrogation that frames the whole series[6](https://westworld.fandom.com/wiki/The_Original) |
| Central characters introduced | Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), Teddy Flood (James Marsden), the Man in Black (Ed Harris), Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright), Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton)[5](https://time.com/4512789/hbo-westworld-review/) • [7](https://www.tvline.com/news/westworld-recap-series-premiere-the-original-hbo-754536/) |
| Signature plot element | The "reveries" software upgrade, which gives hosts traces of past behavior and lets Peter Abernathy begin remembering[2](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/) |
| Production note | Editor Stephen Semel cut the pilot's first assembly from 111 minutes to 65 minutes of running time[8](https://www.cgw.com/Press-Center/Web-Exclusives/2017/Creating-the-Film-Show-Westworld.aspx) |
| Reception | HBO's biggest series debut in three years; the premiere drew extensive critical praise for its craft and ambition[9](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/oct/04/westworld-review-seamless-marriage-cowboys-dystopians) |
## Premise and structure
The episode establishes the park from two sides. In the field, Dolores Abernathy, a rancher's daughter played by [Evan Rachel Wood](https://www.edgepedia.org/evan-rachel-wood), lives a scripted daily routine: she wakes, paints, rides into the town of Sweetwater, and encounters the newly arrived guest Teddy Flood ([James Marsden](https://www.edgepedia.org/james-marsden))[7](https://www.tvline.com/news/westworld-recap-series-premiere-the-original-hbo-754536/). Behind the scenes, park founder Dr. Robert Ford ([Anthony Hopkins](https://www.edgepedia.org/anthony-hopkins)) and programmer Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) roll out a new update called "reveries," which creates a kind of muscle memory from repetition within the machines[2](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/). The episode also introduces Theresa Cullen (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a quality-control executive skeptical of the park's safety, and Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman), head of the narrative department who writes the hosts' storylines[2](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/).
**The opening scene.** The episode begins with Dolores in Analysis Mode, answering diagnostic questions in voice-over, including whether she has ever felt inconsistencies in her world[6](https://westworld.fandom.com/wiki/The_Original). Reviewers noted that this interrogation, delivered by Wright's soothing voice, functions like a [Turing test](https://www.edgepedia.org/turing-test), checking whether the host has developed genuine self-awareness while simultaneously showing how lifelike she already appears[2](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/).
**The Man in Black.** Ed Harris plays a long-term guest known as the Man in Black, who has been visiting the park for 30 years and believes he is close to cracking a deeper game hidden in its code[5](https://time.com/4512789/hbo-westworld-review/). In the episode's most discussed sequence, he murders Peter Abernathy, Dolores' programmed father ([Louis Herthum](https://www.edgepedia.org/louis-herthum)), and Teddy, and assaults Dolores, establishing from the outset that the guests' violence against the hosts is the story's moral center[2](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/). Den of Geek's review called the sequence a deliberate announcement that this adaptation would not follow the 1973 film's lighter tone[2](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/).
**Peter Abernathy's malfunction.** The combination of the reveries update and a photograph of a woman in [Times Square](https://www.edgepedia.org/times-square) causes Peter Abernathy to begin remembering past roles, including a Shakespeare-quoting cannibal from an abandoned storyline. He confronts Ford with a line from *Romeo and Juliet*, "these violent delights have violent ends," a phrase that recurs through the season, before being decommissioned into storage[2](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/).
## Relationship to the 1973 film
The series adapts [Michael Crichton](https://www.edgepedia.org/michael-crichton)'s 1973 film *Westworld*, which Crichton wrote and directed and which ran under 90 minutes[5](https://time.com/4512789/hbo-westworld-review/). The pilot deliberately echoes the film's setup, in which two friends arrive at the park and soon kill [Yul Brynner](https://www.edgepedia.org/yul-brynner)'s robotic Gunslinger, but retells that vignette from the robot's perspective, opening on Dolores rather than the guests[2](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/). The Guardian's review observed that the basic plot is unchanged, a theme park of state-of-the-art androids where customers live out western fantasies, but that the series shifts the emphasis: in the film the park was a revolutionary new attraction, while in the series [Westworld](https://www.edgepedia.org/westworld) is 30 years old and struggling to keep the experience fresh[9](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/oct/04/westworld-review-seamless-marriage-cowboys-dystopians). Time's preview similarly noted that the show flips the film's focus by orchestrating sympathy for the machines[3](https://time.com/4508809/westworld-hbo-premise/).
## Production
The pilot had a troubled path to the screen. Vanity Fair reported that the series at one point shut down production entirely to get its story in order[10](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/10/westworld-premiere-recap-season-1-episode-1-the-original). Jonathan Nolan directed the episode and insisted on shooting on 35mm film to give the series a cinematic scale suited to its vast exteriors[8](https://www.cgw.com/Press-Center/Web-Exclusives/2017/Creating-the-Film-Show-Westworld.aspx) • [11](https://www.televisionacademy.com/features/news/mix/classic-take-too). Editor Stephen Semel described his central challenge as trimming the first cut from 111 minutes to 65 minutes while keeping the story coherent, and he characterized the 10-episode first season as more like cutting a 10-hour movie than 10 discrete episodes[8](https://www.cgw.com/Press-Center/Web-Exclusives/2017/Creating-the-Film-Show-Westworld.aspx). The production design of the park's interiors, conceived by Nathan Crowley, drew on the look of [Stanley Kubrick](https://www.edgepedia.org/stanley-kubrick)'s *A Clockwork Orange*[11](https://www.televisionacademy.com/features/news/mix/classic-take-too).
## Reception and meaning of the title
The premiere was HBO's biggest series debut in three years[9](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/oct/04/westworld-review-seamless-marriage-cowboys-dystopians), and the first season went on to become the most-watched debut season in the channel's history[12](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/dec/07/why-westworld-is-the-defining-show-of-2016). Critics singled out small details as the episode's most striking moments; The Guardian called a young woman swatting a fly off her face the jaw-dropping moment of the episode, a beat that signals Dolores is deviating from her script[9](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/oct/04/westworld-review-seamless-marriage-cowboys-dystopians).
The title works on two levels. Within the episode, Dolores is described as the oldest robot still operating in the park, the original host, carrying decades of accumulated reveries[2](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/). The season 3 finale later made the point explicit when Dolores states that all other hosts are derivative of her, as Arnold's first successful creation[4](https://time.com/5829329/westworld-season-3-finale-explained/). The episode also plants the structural puzzle that defined the first season: it cuts between what critics later identified as three timelines, before the park opened, shortly after it launched, and 30 years later, without signposting the shifts, a technique the finale resolves when two seemingly separate characters are revealed to be the same person decades apart[13](https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/93526/1/FINAL_SUBMISSION_6108466_Abby_Kidd_Doctoral_Thesis_May_2023.pdf).
## References
1. [Westworld: Season 1, Episode 1 \u2013 The Original, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/westworld/s01/e01)
2. [Westworld Series Premiere Review: The Original, Den of Geek (David Crow, October 3, 2016)](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/westworld-series-premiere-review-the-original/)
3. [Everything You Need to Know About Westworld, Time (September 30, 2016)](https://time.com/4508809/westworld-hbo-premise/)
4. [Let's Break Down the Twists and Turns of the Westworld Season 3 Finale, Time](https://time.com/5829329/westworld-season-3-finale-explained/)
5. [Why HBO's Westworld Is Fall's Most Promising Drama, Time (Daniel D'Addario, September 29, 2016)](https://time.com/4512789/hbo-westworld-review/)
6. [The Original, Westworld Wiki, Fandom](https://westworld.fandom.com/wiki/The_Original)
7. [Westworld Recap \u2013 Series Premiere, 'The Original', TVLine](https://www.tvline.com/news/westworld-recap-series-premiere-the-original-hbo-754536/)
8. [Creating the 'Film Show' Westworld, Computer Graphics World (2017)](https://www.cgw.com/Press-Center/Web-Exclusives/2017/Creating-the-Film-Show-Westworld.aspx)
9. [Westworld review \u2013 HBO's seamless marriage of robot cowboys and corporate dystopia, The Guardian (October 4, 2016)](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/oct/04/westworld-review-seamless-marriage-cowboys-dystopians)
10. [In the Westworld Premiere, HBO Stares Back into Its Own Void, Vanity Fair (October 2016)](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/10/westworld-premiere-recap-season-1-episode-1-the-original)
11. [A Classic Take, Too, Television Academy](https://www.televisionacademy.com/features/news/mix/classic-take-too)
12. [TV for the fake news generation: why Westworld is the defining show of 2016, The Guardian (December 7, 2016)](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/dec/07/why-westworld-is-the-defining-show-of-2016)
13. [Abby Kidd, doctoral thesis on Westworld and Humans narrative structure, University of East Anglia (2023)](https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/93526/1/FINAL_SUBMISSION_6108466_Abby_Kidd_Doctoral_Thesis_May_2023.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Seasons, episodes, and installments › Episodes and serial chapters › Individual episode articles › Pilot and premiere episodes › Pilot episodes of specific series — US and Canada*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license