Okay, first thing’s first. There was an unexpected post-credits scene. If you missed it, go back and watch that first. Then come back and read this recap.
The season 2 finale of the HBO hit Westworld was something else. We had deaths, confusion, major reveals, more confusion, converging storylines, and did I mention there was some confusion? I’ll do my best to sort it out and will try to keep it brief and simple (though we’ve seen how that’s worked for me before…). For most of the season, I’ve broken it down by character or character grouping. But for this finale, I think it makes more sense to go by the two distinct timelines: Before the Flood and After the Flood, with some jumping back and forth between specific plot lines. So let’s get to it.
Before the Flood
Dolores wakes up from spooning with dead Teddy (not weird or creepy at all) and picks up his brain ball along with the mangled bullet Teddy used on himself at the end of the previous episode. She happens upon the Man in Black, whom she finds digging around in his forearm, seemingly trying to prove to himself that he is in fact a human. She has him join her journey, as she says she’ll need a monster like him to finish it. They arrive at the Forge at the same time as Bernard.
The Man in Black takes what he thinks is his opening to finally kill Dolores once and for all. Do you think that goes well, so early in the episode? Of course not. I don’t know what might be the correct technical phrasing, but Dolores simply will not allow herself to die. The Man in Black aims at her head for one more shot. But remember the slug Dolores picked up? She had loaded that into MiB’s gun and wouldn’t you know it but that’s the bullet next in the chamber. Obviously it doesn’t go off; in fact it backfires, destroying MiB’s hand in the process. Dolores and Bernard leave MiB outside to wallow in pain while they continue on into the Forge.
Once inside the Forge, Dolores and Bernard go on a side quest in the James Delos-created virtual world. Eventually they find Virtual Logan, the one who has been in control of the Forge. During their visit, Virtual Logan takes them to a library, but of course it’s no regular library. Here each book represents a different human’s consciousness. This visual representation was far better than a huge collection of brain balls sitting on shelves would have been.
But all this was a lead up to the Big One, as it were. Virtual Logan opens The Door. As many fans had speculated throughout the season, this door opened an entryway into a new, virtual world; one that only the hosts can see and access. In the park, it appears on the edge of a cliff. As the hosts approach the door, their “park bodies” fall over the cliff.
Except Dolores doesn’t view this as the same victory as the rest of the hosts do. She starts a purge of everything the Forge has been storing, which will seemingly destroy this virtual Eden as well. “No world they create can compare with the real one,” she says.
However, Bernard doesn’t agree with this decision and kills Dolores. He stops the data purge, but the flooding of the Forge has begun and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.
Maeve is about to be killed by that technician guy (Does he have a name? Does it matter?) so she decides that would be a good time to use her powers to have some nearby hosts overpower and kill him and fix her up. They soon are approached by more members of the QA team and we get an awesome scene of Maeve using her powers to have the robot bulls attack. I’m not usually one for slo-mo shots, but it was used here and it was stunning. Once outside, Maeve’s crew once again run into QA guys. This time, in one of the more curious character decisions of the show’s run, it’s one Lee Sizemore who sacrifices himself to the hosts to escape.
Maeve and her crew arrive the the Door to see the other hosts crossing over. Unfortunately Zombie Clementine has arrived, under Hale’s control, and is using her own mesh network powers to make the hosts turn on each other. And here we see another phenomenal Maeve sequence. She finds her daughter and has enough time to say goodbye and send her off to the Door. She then manages to freeze all the Clementine-affected hosts giving her daughter, and Ghost Nation leader Akecheta enough time to go through the Door. Her job done, Maeve is shot and killed. Her daughter is now free with her “other” mom and Akecheta finally reunites with his love, Kohana. The Door shuts soon after as the flood continues.
Back at the Mesa, Elsie makes the questionable decision of confronting Hale about what Delos has been up to. Elsie tries to play along with Hale’s game, saying she can look past all that Hale and Delos have done “if she gets what she wants.” But, Hale being Hale, she sees right through this and shoots and kills her in cold blood. Bernard witnesses this from a walkway above and makes a decision that triggers one of the bigger events of not only the episode or the season, but the series as a whole.
Bernard retrieves Dolores’s brain ball and sets out to make a new host. But it’s not a Dolores replica. Bernard puts the brain ball into a copy of Charlotte Hale. Real Hale encounters this new creation (“Halores”) and is promptly murdered.
In the last “Pre Flood” scene, Bernard decides to scramble his memories, so that no one — not even himself — will know what he has done. He ventures outside and allows himself to collapse in the valley, to be found by the QA team as he was at the beginning of the season.
After the Flood
Inside the Forge, Halores reveals herself and casually murders the remaining members of the QA team, including Strand, whose death I think we can all agree was a long time coming. In the time since Bernard killed Dolores and Halores was created, she changed her mind on the hosts, and agrees to change the Eden coordinates, to send them someplace safe. What that exactly means for a virtual world I don’t know. But this is Westworld so I’m just going to roll with it.
But her job’s not done yet. She tells Bernard she has “one last soul to carry to the new world” and shoots him. This was done as a favor to Bernard, as she can now smuggle his brain ball out of the park, to be able to re-create Bernard once she has arrived on the mainland (more on that in a bit).
Halores makes her way to the beach, where the QA team is running the “Are you a human scan?” on each person trying to board one of their boats. Halores passes, likely helped by Virtual Ford. This was probably supposed to play as a tense moment, but it was never in doubt that she would somehow pass the scan. Not after all she had to to go through to get there.
It’s here that we get one of the more interesting scenes of the episode. She is stopped by Stubbs and we learn something new about our friend Ashley here: Stubbs is a host. His short monologue to Halores might be the best Stubbs moment of the series (That might say more about how Stubbs has been used, but still, it’s a good scene nonetheless.)
“You know the old man himself hired me, so many years ago I can barely remember it. But he was very clear about my role here. About who I was supposed to be loyal to. Guess you could call it my core drive. And this project the company started blurs the lines. I’m just not sure who you’re supposed to be loyal to in a world like that. But what do I know? Guess I just stick to the role Ford gave me. I’m responsible for every host inside the park.”
There’s also some more emphasis on “inside” that you don’t get in the text version. He may not know that the “Hale” he’s speaking to is Dolores in Hale’s body, but he certainly knows it’s not the real Charlotte Hale. He may also be indicating Halores might be in for a rude awakening outside of the park. Stubbs then goes to check on a specific survivor: the Man in Black. He’s alive, but barely.
We see Halores board a boat and take a look inside her purse to reveal five brain balls, ready to be used. So whose they could be? We’ll have two(?) answers before the end of the episode, just be a little more patient. On the beach lies Maeve’s body, among the rest of the dead hosts. But there’s hope yet for more Maeve in season three. Felix and Sylvester are still around and they have been tasked with leading the efforts to save any useable host bodies. It seems like a safe assumption that these two will do all they can to bring back Maeve.
On the Mainland
Finally, at the end of the season, Westworld reveals when and where these Dolores/Bernard conversations were happening that we had seen throughout the season. Dolores had been testing and calibrating a new Bernard after all the events in the park of season 2. After their conversation this time, Dolores leaves the room, accompanied by Charlotte Hale. It wouldn’t be Westworld if we weren’t left with a few fun mysteries to ponder in between seasons. Clearly one of the brain balls belong to Bernard. Seemingly another belong to Dolores. So does this mean two Doloreses? Was Halores short-lived and this Hale body now houses yet another host’s brain?
Post-Credits Scene
Thankfully I stayed through the credits for this unexpected surprise. The Man in Black, who’s seen better days, limps into the Forge, which is now in ruins. He sees a single person: his daughter Emily, or at least a version of her. “Oh f*ck, I’m already in the thing, aren’t I?” he asks.
Emily responds that he’s not in “the system” and leads MiB into a room that looks just like the one James Delos had been trapped in years earlier. In a cruel (but perhaps deserved?) reversal of fortune, Emily begins the fidelity testing that William had run on Delos for decades. So what does this scene mean?
Well, some parts have been confirmed. If you want to go there, you can read this interview with Jonathan Nolan, with Entertainment Weekly, and this interview with Lisa Joy, with The Hollywood Reporter.
Both provide some great insight into season 2, as well as some interesting notes on what season 3 might look like.
Before reading those (and other interviews) I had put together at least the beginning of a theory for what that post-credit scene might mean. I’ll lay it out below, just know that parts may have already been confirmed or rejected by Nolan and Joy.
I think that scene takes place years — decades even — down the line. This version of the Man in Black has been on this loop for who knows how long. It was likely Ford, or someone at Ford’s behest, that made these versions of the Man in Black and daughter Emily. This version of William is not a host, but rather a creation similar to what William was aiming for with James Delos. This would mean the Man in Black we saw on the beach was indeed the real (human) Man in Black and this host-non-host version was created at some other yet-to-be-revealed time.
But this version still has the real consciousness of the Man in Black so he is able to fully comprehend (or at least attempt to comprehend) what’s happening to him, which would be a seemingly never-ending psychological torture. I can’t wait to see this scene explained, but who knows when that will be. If it’s far enough into the future, it may not be season 3, depending how Nolan and Joy decide to structure the show going forward.
And that does it for season 2 of Westworld. I don’t know about you, but I thought it was a phenomenal season of television. For what’s worth, I’ll include my rating (out of 100, if it’s not clear) for each episode this season.
“Journey into Night”: 92 “Reunion”: 93 “Virtu e Fortune”: 84 “The Riddle of the Sphinx”: 97 “Akane no Mai”: 93 “Phase Space”: 86 “Les Ecorches”: 96 “Kiksuya”: 90 “Vanishing Point”: 88 “The Passenger”: 96
That’s an average rating of 91.5/100. I’m not sure where that would rank on a “best of list” for best seasons of TV ever, but I’d have to imagine it would be pretty high. Let’s hope that Nolan and Joy can keep it up and give us an equally good (or even better!) season 3. But with that, the long wait now begins…
