A mind-bending finale with major consequences ends a brilliant debut season
The robopocalypse begins!
The episode was titled “The Bicameral Mind.”
We have so very much to discuss tonight.
Credit: HBO
The more you think about the mechanics in this episode, the more brilliant it is.
We open with bare-chested Dolores.
Our heroine is stripped to her most essential parts, all unnerving exoskeleton, right as she’s born.
Do we accept her as she is?
The image is fitting because the episode starts with Dolores' incomplete birth and ends with her fully developedrebirth.
“Your voice is the first thing I remember,” she says.
We think she’s talking about Arnold, this voice she’s been hearing all season.
But as we’ll learn later, the voice is her ownwhich is the entire point of her development.
Out in the park, The Man in Black makes Dolores shave him.
It’s an act of dominance showing his confidence in his power over her.
She can’t hurt him even if she desperately wants to.
We’ve been wondering what this grave marker meant since it was first shown in a flashback weeks ago.
Was Dolores once a real live girl?
But no: It’s the location of the maze.
At first, we get excited.
The maze is a real thing after all!
Then they dig and find… a toy.
The Man in Black is annoyed.
He speaks for the viewers: “What is this?
What does it mean?”
There’s something about reducing a long-teased grand element to a metaphorical trinket that’s inherently disappointing.
It’s like when Kate onLostrobbed a bank and it all ended up being for a toy plane.
It’s like: “Oh, you expected a maze?
Here’s your maze!
In a 35-year-old flashback, Arnold quickly explains via expositional sketching.
He thought consciousness was a pyramid that the hosts climb.
Instead, it’s a journey inward.
In the flashback, she still doesn’t get it.
Ford doesn’t agree to Arnold’s proposal, so Arnold puts into action Plan Bsabotage.
Dolores goes on a wild west rampage, capping her fellow ‘bots left and right, a stone-cold terminator.
We’ve been wondering who is Wyatt.
She’s clearly Wyatt.
Back in the present, the MiB is outraged.
The MiB pauses from his abuse because she’s got him curious.
Who she’s yammering on about?Teddy?Nope.
“William,” she says.
And the MiB laughs.
Everything in the William scenes has been taking place in the very distant past.
This is likeWestworld’sEmpire Strikes Backmoment:No Dolores …
I am your lover.
Ranch-girl Dolores is horrified, just as farm-boy Skywalker was.
That’s not true, it’s impossible!
But oh it is, just go back and watch the previous episodes.
The MiB fills in his William backstory.
But of course, she was reset each time and didn’t remember him.
The MiB became increasingly embittered, and rather rich, too.
He became the park’s biggest shareholder, the guy basically owns Delos.
Dolores goes full Skynet
Dolores puts it all together.
She references a line that’s long been attributed to Wyatt.
That it belonged to something that had yet to come.
That it belonged to him …
He’s not a man, but he is not a devil either.”
That’s Dolores and the hosts.
She then proceeds to beat the hell out of him.
Not hugely subtle, perhaps, but it’s some violent-delights fun.
The MiB has a trick of his own, however.
He stabs her in the gut with his knife.
It’s just like what Logan did to Dolores all those years ago that horrified William/young MiB so much.
He rescues Dolores and carries her off.
Backstage we get a couple quick beats with Charlotte Hale.
First, she informs Dr. Ford he’s being pushed out.
She says this sexily.
Charlotte seems to do everything vaguely sexily, including firing people.
“Aren’t you concerned I’ll smash my toys?”
And he won’t.
His take-this-job-and-shove-it exit plan is much a grander f-you than merely wiping data.
Later, Charlotte meets with Lee.
She promises he can take over for Ford once he’s gone.
But she wants him to make the hosts a bit simpler, easier to control.
“This place is complicated enough as it is,” she says.
Oh, Charlotte, you don’t know the half of it!
We can’t wait for them to spring to life, and we’re given exactly what we want.
Maeve and her renegade bots find Bernard and repair him.
I like the moment where Felix suddenly wonders if he’s even real.
Maeve wants her hurtful memories of her daughter destroyed, but Bernard says it’s not possible.
“How can you learn from your mistakes if you’re free to’t remember them?”
Bernard asks in a neat line.
Bernard then makes a huge discovery: Maeve’s entire rebellion has been scripted.
“I’m leaving,” she declares.
“I’m in control.”
And: The use of the term “mainland.”
This could be the biggest hint we’ve gotten yet about the park’s location.
Is the park on an island?
“I wanted the hosts to stop playing by your rules,” the MiB says.
“I wanted them to be free, free to fight back.
I should have known you’d never let them.”
“I think you’ll find my new narrative more satisfying,” Ford teases.
It’s a beautiful and romantic setting.
Then Dolores perishes, once again.
And Ford pulls back the curtain on his heroesand on theWestworldviewers.
The lights come up.
The park’s board of directors and VIPs are all watching this scene.
How much of what we’ve been seeing is Ford’s new narrative?
Is the entire present-day story line this season, up until this point, Ford’s new story line?
It seems that way.
Ford’s new narrative takes our already meta TV showWestworldand goesultra-meta.
Italicized programWestworldand theme park Westworld are one.
Backstage, the control room figures out that hell is breaking loose.
An armed response team.
We get some action.
“The gods are pussies,” she declares.
Seriously, where has this character been all season?
They run into an area we haven’t seen before.
“SW” on the doors.
We see hosts dressed like they’re in feudal Japan and wielding swords.
“It’s complicated,” Felix says.
To paraphrase another meta-fantasy tale:There are other worlds than these, gunslingers.
But what’s down inside the Samurai World hatch?
Are they eating Dharma-brand food?
Maeve ditches Hector and he goes out in a blaze of bullets.
Back in Ford’s lab, the good doctor repairs Dolores one last time.
He points out her favorite paintingMichaelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam.”
The message: “The divine gift does not come from a higher power but our own minds.”
We get another flashback.
A broken Arnold, shattered by the loss of his son, committed suicide-by-host by having Dolores kill him.
“Do you understand who you will need to become if you ever want to leave this place?”
“Arnold didn’t know how to save you.
Time to understand your enemy, to become stronger than them.”
Ford also shakes Bernard’s hand.
The shot lingers a bit.
Is he transferring his power to him, somehow?
On the train, Maeve is set to leave the park.
Instead, she decides to embrace her past and gets off the train to go search for her daughter.
And yet, she’s also honoring a pasta love of a daughterthat was scripted by Ford.
It’s hard to know how to feel about this.
At the gala, Ford takes the stage to give one final speech.
The Man in Black goes off for a stroll rather than listen to Ford lecture.
Dolores is there and reassures worried Teddy that everything is going to be all right.
Ford says this will be his final story.
Charlotte smiles because she thinks Ford means he’s announcing his retirement.
His new narrative has only just begun.
They’re all sacrificial goats for his Dolores T-Rex and host velociraptors.
She then just starts firing indiscriminately into the crowd.
The Man in Black sees an army of hosts coming for him.
One shoots himreally shoots him, wounds his armand he looks pretty thrilled.Bring it!
This is going to take a while to sink in and process.
Overall, the episode was hugely satisfying.
We got robo-rebellion mayhem.
Other elements felt more uneven.
And were Elsie and Stubbs benched from the final episode because they didn’t fit?
Related content:
Later: Our finale edition of ourWestworld: Analysis Modepodcast.
