Thandie Newton compares Maeve's surgical procedure scene in Westworld episode 2 with death penalty

HBO's latest science fiction thriller Westworld has enchanted viewers with its unique theme and the plot twists that impose more questions than answers. After host Dolores' uncanny behaviour, experts at the Western-themed amusement park are at work to find the reason behind her increasing human-like attitude.

In the second episode, Dolores whispers something to Maeve's (madam of Westworld) ears and after that she starts behaving weird. On noticing the change, the staff decides to decommission her. While doing so, she starts to reminisce her past lives and sees her daughter in it. But soon her dreams turn into nightmares as she tries to save her young daughter from a group of native Indians. She tries to save her daughter's life by hiding in her house, but encounters a mysterious man in black who is approaching to kill her.

As the horrific dream ends, she wakes up to a living nightmare and finds herself on an operating table in the midst of a surgical procedure, while her stomach is cut open. Thandie Newton, who plays Maeve on the show, has compared the scene to death penalty.

"I've read quite a lot about the death penalty and how barbaric it is," she told Hollywood Reporter. "Every time I read about someone who has been executed, it's a botched execution, and it happens again and again. It's supposed to be a humane way of dying. That's the whole point — it's supposed to be humane. One guy that I'm reading about in Bryan's book, it took him almost an hour to die. I feel like the word 'humane' needs to be rethought quite seriously. If that's supposed to be our standard for goodness and ethics, we need to change it."

Like the premiere of the series, the second episode titled Chestnut will also have its major share of violence and nudity. In the theme park created by Dr Robert Ford, guests are free to be their inner self, which most of the times ends up in murder or rape.

Addressing the violence and nudity on the show, creator Jonathan Nolan hinted at a riot that would be initiated by the androids, who are slowly getting affected by a contagious disease that makes them recall their past life.

"The sort of disposable and repeatable nature of the violence in our show, in which hosts can be brutalized, victimized, killed, then reset and put back into their world, it presents two ideas. One: Wow, that's f—ked up, and I hope they get a chance to escape, or that the guests at least get some comeuppance.

"But also, there's a strange kind of strength in that. There's something that [one of the robots] says in a future episode: 'I've died a million times. I'm f—ing great at it. How many times have you died?' That question, to me, the idea that the hosts are simultaneously the perpetual victims of this place but also that it gives them a certain strength and marks them as qualitatively different than us, is very exciting on a character level," Nolan told the website.

Westworld will return with episode 3 titled The Stray on 16 October.