20 Of The Coolest Female Robots In Science Fiction

Thandie Newton in Westworld season 1, image courtesy of HBO

6. Maeve Millay (Westworld)

Dolores Abernathy isn’t the only host in Westworld who’s gaining something like a consciousness. In fact, she isn’t necessarily the first to begin questioning her reality. That dubious honor may very well go to Maeve Millay instead.

Maeve Millay is ostensibly the brothel madam of the Mariposa Saloon. She’s world-weary and suffers no nonsense, both attributes that would be highly useful to a 19th madam in a rough and tumble western town. However, we all know that her western-style life is far from reality. You see, just like Dolores Abernathy, Maeve Millay is another android “host”.

Thandie Newton, who plays Maeve, had much to do with the construction of her character. For one, audiences might preemptively cringe when it comes time to visit Westworld’s brothel. Presumably, it will be grounds for some terrible sexist tropes. However, said Newton in an interview with Moviefone, “it was fun because I knew we were going to be subverting it, and that it wouldn’t be these awful gender stereotypes and objectification of women, and exploitation of women, and precisely the reason we had to present them in their full, untarnished grossness was because we were going to be commenting on it, very quickly.”

Also, Maeve is one of the few women (or robots?) of color on this list. It seems strange that writers so often default to white androids, despite the fact that they’re often delving into heady subjects like the nature of consciousness and artificial intelligence. It is deeply refreshing to see a woman of color step into such a prominent and complex role.