Bloody hell.
Some will live, some will die—some will not do either for very long. But all will make their choice in this lovely, confounding, misanthropic extra-sized season finale of Westworld.
Major spoilers beyond The Door.
First things first: Maeve must be salvageable in season three or I am out.
Thandie Newton’s performance is the cornerstone of this show. Sure, Dolores gets all the badass, gunslinging publicity shots, but Maeve is the heart of Westworld and the showrunners would be insane to let her go voluntarily. So, fingers crossed that Felix and Sylvester can save the selfless, all-powerful mama. How bittersweet it was to watch Maeve let her daughter literally run into an Eden where she can be safe and heal from her past traumas. I only wish we could’ve seen a bit of dialogue between Maeve and Akecheta before he, too, stepped through the long-awaited Door. But her beatific smile spoke volumes, too. If (when!) Maeve returns, what will drive her without her quest to find her daughter?
Sidenote: How awesome was Maeve’s stroll back from the brink of death!? That was the buffalo stampede I was waiting for all season and I adored how it called back to the opening credits. Resourceful, darling.
So, Maeve’s daughter, Teddy, and Akecheta seem to be, for all purposes, dead to the park, caught in a peaceful dream within a dream (we call this Widescreenworld.) This was seriously some confusing Matrix shit going on tonight, with more sci-fi than western trappings. It was a bit jarring to be so forcefully reminded that Westworld is based on a Michael Crichton novel, when we’ve been doing the cowboy vs. Indians thing for so long, even Dolores got tired of it. Satellite beams, robo-brains, body-swapping and a really weirdly literal rip in the fabric of space and time—shit got pretty madcap tonight and I’m mostly okay with it.
Was it satisfying to watch Akecheta be rewarded for his tragedy by regaining all he had lost in the Valley Beyond? Yes, it was. But it’s pretty unsatisfying that we will likely not see him again on this show anytime soon. Unless they can work him in via flashbacks. He made a great Moses. Teddy’s fate left me lukewarm. I’m happy he’s happy, but I think the show will be fine without him. He’s Dolores’ high school sweetheart; now she’s running off to college and has to find herself, so this feels like a natural end to their romance. It’s better than getting a Dear Teddy email that reads, “Sorry, but in the real world, you seem even more boring than I’d first thought.”
Clementine, too, seems gone for good. Her ride through the crowds, leaving rampaging hosts in her wake, was beautifully filmed and chilling. Way less fun than when I use the Rioting Pedestrians cheat code in GTA.
Bernard remained the most cryptic part of the show. I still feel like I understood very little of his deal and, as this was a long episode and felt like it had more false endings than Return of the King, I only watched it once. So I rarely get Bernard scenes on a first go. But, I think what was most important was (1) Ford was not in Bernard’s head when it counted, and (2) Dolores built Bernard as much as Arnold built Dolores. So, they are not friends, but maybe family, which is way more complicated.
As for Dolores, I guess it’s kinda cool that the show took two one-note characters and combined them into one. The Hale-bot housing Dolores is about to tackle bigger and better—and hopefully better-written adventures. How long will her idea that real = better last, once she’s out among all that unchecked humanity? How long will humanity go unchecked with a freed Dolores? Did Dolores bring other hosts’ source code spheres with her, too, or was it just Bernard?
I feel like the Man in Black has been awkwardly shoehorned into this season. Why did Dolores need him, “a monster,” to get to the Valley Beyond when she didn’t know Bernard/”Arnold” was going to be there? Literally nothing about that trip was particularly special. And once at the Forge, I still don’t see how their interests are aligned when Dolores wants to destroy his guest research and William might have a reason to actually want to preserve it—Emily’s data. So unsatisfying.
Holy epilogue, Batman! How far in the future is that post-credits scene with the Man in Black and his daughter? It must be in real life, in the park, as the Forge was flooded and the system was nonfunctional, but I had to wonder if it was an elaborate, cruel prank played on him by the board. And yet, it seems like we are to take it at face value, as much as one can on Westworld. In a post-finale interview with showrunner Lisa Joy, she states the post-credits scene “gives full closure of the timelines by validating what happened in the park as the Man in Black leaves.” Um, not sure what it validates except that perhaps the hosts are trying to rebuild humans? I prefer the Man in Black to be human and suffering from his ultimate hell—he must sit and think about his own guilt, forever. Though to carry that guilt into the cornerstone of a host designed to be tortured, well, that’s pretty evil, too.
My main takeaway is that it seems the park as we know it is quite gone. So many great hosts died, many of whom could not be recreated. That doesn’t mean Delos will not build more hosts. But with Hale-bot out in the real world, she very well could extract some serious revenge on the company. Moreover, the (extremely dumb) deaths of recurring human characters Elsie and Lee seem to have been the forcible tying off of loose ends. Hale-bot would approve.
The big unanswered question remains central to Westworld: is anybody really free? As Westworld ends its sophomore season, it seems that yes, people—organic or not—can make their choice, but it always comes with a price.
Final reveries:
- Oh please let Hector, Armistice, and Shogun-Armistice be okay? Especially Hector. I could watch him valiantly die for Maeve a hundred more times.
- How freaking creepy was that tech/surgeon who turned up Maeve’s pain sensors before he was about to decapitate her? That’s a level of sickness I just didn’t want to think about. Feeling way misanthropic after seeing what that dude is really like.
- How did Dolores know the body she saw was Emily? Did she meet her again when she was older? We only saw them meet when Emily was a very little girl, back at James Delos’ retirement party.
- I didn’t understand the James Delos flashback to his park experience or what it meant to the larger story.
- Next season: Maybe Lesser Hemsworth was a host the whole time? Whatever. I’m still in it for Maeve. And the Tor.com commenters. Thanks for another season of conversation, folks. Let’s all meet at the Mariposa real soon!
Theresa DeLucci is a regular contributor to Tor.com covering TV, book reviews and sometimes games. She’s also gotten enthusiastic about television for Boing Boing, Wired.com’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast and Den of Geek. Reach her via pony express or on Twitter.
Re: I didn’t understand the James Delos flashback to his park experience or what it meant to the larger story.
It was to show how the Forge AI was taking the guest data and testing “human” code builds against each build. Slight adjustments could result in wildly disparate results–so imagine each scenario run through 18 million times to get the final Delos build.
It finally understood that “less is better” to get a stable build, but it took all that testing and scenario simulation to get to the final product.
With regard to the poolside “get out of here” to logan, it showed that no matter what variable changed a stable Delos would always reject his son, even if he claimed otherwise. Over a million Delos builds always culminated in that moment–consider it akin to Doctor Who’s “Fixed points in time” only for people’s personalities.
I cried so hard many times during this episode. Mainly at Maeve not only saving her daughter, but sending her to Eden with a mother that isn’t her. Yes, some dialog would have been touching. But I think everything was said when her daughter finally remembered her, and knew that her first mother, Maeve had in fact, done all she could to keep her safe. And now she had to scarifice herself for her child. Her moment of gaining absolute consciousness.
Dolores saying she drove Teddy off. Tears.
Bernard having to even delete the memories of Ford, lest they be used against him, more tears. This is one of Anthony Hopkins best roles. And if he’s done with the show, that’s great, he did so much that it’s ok if Ford’s story ends.
I thought Lee Sizemore giving up his life, a bit cliche, but was fine in the end, because his character did have a change. I thought it was hilarious that Hector never gets to give his speech. And that Sizemore stole it in a way.
And yes, I totally believe that Felix and Sylvester will save Maeve. And others. You could just see it in their eyes. If there’s anyone they are going to save, it’s her.
Season two was a bumpy ride. But I think the ending was great, and really set up a new chapter for season 3. I just hope they pull back from the fractured time line framing.
And i thought the door to Eden was amazing looking. It really did look like a crack in reality. Perfect.
I’m curios whether the season will hold up on a re-watch, knowing what we now know. Will it contain enough clues, or will it still be a mess?
Dolores’ plan, and by extension Ford’s to purge the human copies also cuts off the awakened hosts from the new unspoiled matrix/heaven. Yeah, she’s a misanthrope, but why hate on the poor abused hosts, who suffered just as she did?
Maeve and Clementine’s override effects appeared to be very localized. Otherwise, Maeve should have been able to cancel out Clem.
Dolores definitely escapes with half a dozen host marbles in her bag, aided by the Hemsworth host. No one noticed he didn’t age in decades? Maybe they swapped out his body with one of his brothers occasionally…
Even Ed Harris said in an interview he doesn’t know what the hell is going on with his character. Clearly, he’s become a host. But at what point, how many iterations for fidelity, and how far into the future after the water’s drained from the Forge. Maybe he’s just being tortured, a virtual hell, by the System Logan, which another reviewer dubbed Login (who seems weirdly constrained by using an avatar connected to Delos the father (what a sick bastard that guy was, huh?))
The missile launcher/transmission thing may be sending the host data to the moon… or Mars. We still have 3 parks not named. And speaking of which, why are only Westworld hosts going to the upload point? Is the scene being repeated in the other parks? Or does Delos/Dolores only care about WW? The idea of transmitting a whole personality once again made me think of the Altered Carbon books, where people exist as data independently of their bodies. Although there are rules, the rich can break them, just as in WW. This data can be “needlecast” to other planets, getting around relativistic effects of sending actual mass thru space.
In retrospect, I wish there hadn’t been the needless confusion about timelines. Maybe a more straight forward telling would’ve been more powerful, or maybe it would’ve showed how little plot is actually there. Themes and mystery are OK, but they run the risk of losing their way, just as Lost did.
They husband and I were just talking about Westworld and we had this realization.
When inside the Forge, Logan/UI explains the following. Minor changes in the hosts personality results in majore differences later on.
But humans, no matter how many times they run a simulation, always end up at the same point. As they walk through the data, they see old Delos stating his core purpose is son, who he would do anything for. But it’s a lie. And because of that, he always ends up at the same point, turning his back on his son.
Hosts don’t question their own truths. The live their cornerstone. They are honest about who they are. And such, all their actions are true and built on what made them. Which is probably why Dolores couldn’t bring herself to kill Bernard, or leave him dead. It would be too human, and her new core, is to NOT be human.
I think Ed Harris as a host. They are running him on loops trying to figure out what he knew and to study Dolores and other hosts for an advantage. He’s being used to gather intel on the hosts.
And another thought. Because.
Yes, there was a lot of flashback scenes. But maybe we were also seeing things through Bernards messed up memories. And that’s why it was so choppy. We were seeing things remembered out of order because of what Bernard did to himself.
Only the Westworld hosts were brought, because they were probably the most advanced ones–the ones that were most imbued with the seeds of consciousness. The other parks were brought up after Delos bought in. Plus even though Ford had immense control and influence, there was only so much he could do physically–the Forge was built by/in Westworld, and it’s implied that the parks are physically separated (or have discrete boundaries) that would make travel difficult/hard to mask.
I think the Valley Beyond host data was sent to Arnold’s house, though I believe the new target lat/long coordinates were displayed to possibly confirm that.
The use of jumbled memory and partial reveals and other timeline screws this season…I can see what they were going for, and in hindsight it was a nifty concept, but I think it just got leaned on too much. You have to know when to stop with the shtick. Hopefully the next season will be much more sparing with alternative timelines (though with the Far Future William as a thing, this cannot be avoided altogether).
I was real happy when Akecheta made it through and met Kohana again. They wholly deserve it, to be together in safety and peace. ((And yes, also Teddy and Maeve’s daughter, let them have their chance at happiness). I am pretty sure Maeve and Hector will be borught back, which is good. A bit sorry for Lee, but he seemed to actually enjoy himself going out. Other than that, I’m at meh.
I liked the show – and had my mind blown several times – but there are lots of questions to be answered.
According to the show runners, the new Eden world is referred to as “The Sublime.” I wonder whether that (and all of the excellent actors) will be entirely off the show now or whether it will somehow return as a plot point for the show.
From the title of the episode, I was expecting to have Dolores to be riding inside of Bernard – hence the confusion in the waking up on the beach scene and afterwards. Having her be riding inside of Hale was a nice touch.
I’m still not exactly sure what was up with lesser Helmsworth. He appeared to know on sight that Hale was not Hale, but told her that Ford’s assignment to him was to protect all Hosts and then passed her through. How did he know she was actually a host? That was unexplained. Also, didn’t she pass through testing given by someone else? How did that work? Color me confused.
Regarding Maeve and her team, I think it was pretty clearly implied that Felix and Sylvester will be allowed to bring them back. You raise a good question what is going to be Maeve’s ongoing mission once revived and with her child gone.
I was also unclear on the Bernard timeline in the Forge. He didn’t decide to bring Dolores back as Hale until after Hale murdered Elsie. Did that mean he had to take the time to create a Hale body or was there one already made and he found it and added Dolores’ control unit? If the former, they typically don’t work that fast as far as we can tell from the show.
And I don’t understand the post-credits scene. So M-i-B got back to mainland alive – we saw him getting ready for the boat at the end. He shouldn’t have been a Host or he wouldn’t have made it to the boat. So he gets home and, at some point, is recreated in Host form and is subject to fidelity tests from …his actual daughter? (If so, she was a host in the park and not killed in real life)…a recreated Host of his daughter….or a Logan-type avatar in the brain of the Forge or a Forge-like entity? Help. .
The jambling of timelines just for the sake of jambling them in the first half of the season really threw me off. The ending made up for it, but it’s still a mess to figure out what happened when chronologically. And just when you begin to understand that after credit scene smashes everything to pieces again.
Regarding the lesser Hemsworth / Hale interaction I’d assume it would work via their subconscious connection routine, the same that Maeve and Clementine were using. But she was also cleared by the female soldier beforehand, so that was confusing as well.
I really liked the reveal that what we were watching was not contiguous, it fit with Bernard frequently asking, “Is this now?”. I really like this type of storytelling, it’s not just spoon feeding me the story, I have to pay attention and think.
@8 & 9, I think that every officially built Host has a chip that was being read by the hand scanner. So any unofficial ones built by someone off the books would not have this chip and therefore not be picked up by the scanner. They also showed him building the Hale body at some point, but didn’t really place that in time. Presumably a point after Hale shot Elise.
As for how Delores recognized Emily, it was after she had read many of the guests’ books. I’m sure she would include William and his family in her reading.
@11 She already recognized her before. When she meets the Man in Black for the first time she mentions that she found his dead daughter a little bit up the trail before meeting him. She hadn’t read the books by that point.
@11 and @12. Emily has visited the park many times in her past. As a child I’m sure some of those times it was with William her father. And quite possibly he introduced Emily to Dolores at some point.
Dolores remembers everything that’s ever happened to her, from the moment she first woke up.
What they’re checking for on the neck test is the explosive device they embed in the hosts. You see this when we first see the device used on Emily and TMIB. That’s why it let Dolores/Hale through; she was built without the explosive device.
Now, why they continue to insist on using this check as if there isn’t a risk that there are hosts that have either removed it, or built without it, is beyond me.
My main question for the finale: how did Teddy get to Sublime? And if he got there, did others who “died” before making it to the door, get there as well? We know that the human data was wiped and replaced with host data, so did they overwrite all electronic minds of the hosts into Sublime? Mainly, will there be a version of Delores there for Teddy to truly have happiness?
I really like the way Lee went out. My boyfriend brought up that his death was pointless, and he could have just stopped shooting and left with the guards. BUT! Did anyone else feel like he had developed feelings for Maeve? I definitely felt some unrequited love there, and, if you recall, his character earlier in the season was pretty messed up. His life kind of sucked. Now, knowing what he knows, and finding the woman Maeve had evolved into, he also knows he could never have, or protect her, the way Hector could. I don’t think he wanted to live without her, so he felt his life was more worth sacrificing than Hector’s. I think it is a beautiful moment, yet, it also shows that humans can change. Unless, he finally grew into the man he was meant to be….?
Plus, he finally got to perform the speech he had written so long ago, and mean every single word. Bravo, Lee! I’m sorry to see you go, but what a way you went!
Is anyone else bothered that the writers never bothered to give Maeve’s daughter an actual name?
@15 Dolores directly uploaded his control unit into Sublime in the Forge–she took it with her when she left him. The Door was just for ambulatory hosts to access and upload; console access is always an option (if somewhat messy).
@Sunspear – I think I can answer your comment about Maeve and Clem’s network effects. Maeve was able to consciously control nearby hosts through the mesh network, but the range of communications is short. I seem to recall when they wrote Clem’s code they made it self-replicating, so once it affected one host, it would infect all other nearby hosts eventually. We saw this after Clem was shot, but the effect kept spreading. Maeve was only able to get them to stop temporarily because she had to continue to control the effect.
@18. Dan: That makes sense and it’s what we saw onscreen. But when Ford’s avatar visited her while she was wounded, he seemed to give her “admin” level control. Her story seemed to fizzle a bit. The first season had her nearly leaving the park, which would’ve set Ford’s plan in motion in a different way. If she hadn’t used her free will to turn back, perhaps the bloodier, more ruthless Plan B with Dolores wouldn’t have been necessary.
@19 – Good point re Maeve. Going into the episode, I was expecting that her admin level control would let her ride as a “Passenger” within Bernard – hence the title. While the Dolores – Hale (Halorous) combination was cool, the importance of the extra programming Maeve received from Ford seemed to go nowhere I could see.
When we saw everyone in the Sublime, I was expecting a Creeper to spawn and kill everyone.
i was surprised as anyone to find it very satisfying to see Lesser Hemsworth be given a clued up moment of glory after being kicked around like a ‘jesus christ the ashley here’ for the whole season.
OK, I’m coming very late to this discussion, but I had to wait until the season was released on disc and then I had to watch it, so …
Minor point: There was never a literal rip in time & space — that was a vision being created in the Hosts’ perceptions; and as they walked to that point, their consciousnesses were uploaded, their AI brains were emptied, and their bodies tumbled over the cliff. A few times they showed humans looking at that promontory and not seeing the rift or the Valley Beyond; and a few times they showed a host “walking” through the rift and then immediately cut to a tumbling body.
Very interesting season, but I’m thinking I probably need to rewatch both seasons to try to start putting things together in my own head.
You’re exactly right, hoop. That was an illusion, that “rip” in spacetime.
I just finished watching season two yesterday and caught the first episode of season III today. Wow. I love where they’ve gone to an ultra-modern and bright Blade Runner-like L.A. A bit of confusion still, I’ll read the recap of that first episode now.