No, no, no.
“that was the line where I lost it.
Hosts are programmed to ignore certain information.
Credit: John P. Johnson/HBO
He’s in a flashbackwhich we’ll later learn is an implanted memoryvisiting his dying son.
His son passes and Bernard wakes in his Westworld bed.
He’s another host haunted by one of Ford’s cruelly effective tragic backstories.
“The gods require ablood sacrifice,” Charlotte says.
“We need to demonstrate just how dangerous Ford’s creations can be.”
As she says this, Cullen alarmingly glances behind her.
She thinks that Hector might be sneaking up to kill her.
NEXT: Clementine’s tech-crunch
In the park, newly wokeLimitlessMaeve returns to her saloon with a fresh purpose.
Maeve goes to the bar and Clementine starts spooling out her backstory.
The techs snatch Clementine to bring her backstage for a demonstration.
There, Cullen and Charlotte have gathered along with Bernard and Ford.
The trucks may have had a real safety issue, but the demo video was bulls.
The demonstration is brutal.
The burly host shocks us by beating the hell out of her.
Charlotte clearly doesn’t give a damn.
Ford looks tense and slightly amused.
Bernard is bothered by everything about this.
And how about us?
Is this a Voight-Kampff-like exam for us, as well?
Some viewers will be very pissed atWestworldfor this scene.
They will ask: Was showing this necessary?
Stubbs goes into her cage.
Charlotte gives him the opportunity to blame Ford instead.
But Bernard has too much loyalty to Ford.
He’s almost certainly programmed to be incapable of betraying his master.
Clementine is taken to be robo-lobotomized with nose-drill, which makes an awful crunching sound.
Afterward, Maeve tells the body shop dorks that she wants to escape Westworld.
“Everything is made to keep you here,” they explain.
I suspect those methods of control will become an important thread later one.
Then Maeve gets to deliver this great line: “You think I’m scared of death …
I’ve done it a million times.
I’m fking great at it.
How many times have you died?”
NEXT: Strangers on a train (a.k.a.
They start passing heads mounted on spikes.
Oh-oh, are they going to King’s Landing?
Dolores says she never wants to go back and longs to escape.
William says he’s falling in love with the park and wants to stay here.
Jeff Jensen and I get into this in some detail this week in our SiriusXM Radio show.
William reveals his backstory to Dolores: that he’s engaged to a woman back home.
Soon they’re in each other’s arms anyway.
But remember the first few episodes?
She thinks this is the way out.
Their train is stopped by some soldiers and there’s some cowboys-and Indians action.
NEXT: The Terminator
Bernard takes Cullen to Sector 17 and the Ford family cabin.
They go into Ford’s private host-making lab.
A new host is being printed.
Cullen finds sketches of early model hosts and sees one for Bernard.
Many fans have suspected Bernard was a host for weeks.
So some might see this confirmation as anticlimactic.
“But what about how he was chatting with his wife?”
you might fairly ask.
Plus, even if you were certain Bernard was a bot, you did not expect what happens next.
“I can’t be,” Bernard says.
I feel some frustration at this moment because I want this to be a bigger realization for Bernard.
I want to really see him process his true nature.
Instead, Ford quickly hits Bernard’s emotional mute button, which denies us some drama.
Maybe we’ll see Bernard’s awakening more completely in a future episode?
I haven’t really been noticing Sidse Babett Knudsen’s performance in the show up until now.
Anthony Hopkins and Jeffrey Wright are terrific in this scene, but you would expect them to be.
She’s the one mesmerizing us the whole time.
She says this with such an obvious shaky surge of relief and confidence.
Then Ford points out he ordered Bernard to bring her here.
Suddenly, Cullen looks really scared for the first time.
Ford gives Bernard a command to kill Cullen.
He takes off his coat and tie, Gus Fring-style.
As Cullen cowers and screams, he bashes her head into the wall.
Real consequences have arrived onWestworld.
What will Bernard think if he remembers killing Cullen?
Okay, onto some points and theories.
Could it be a new Theresa Cullen?
That’s how Ford might cover his tracks.
No corpse, no crime.
Which also means Sidse Babett Knudsen is still on the show, only in a very different form.
Our interview tonight with Jeffrey Wright, however, suggests this might not be the case.
Is she “dead”?
So I would assume Clementine will return as an entirely new character in the park.
Both “deaths” raise really intriguing possibilities about the nature of killing a character on this show.
Fake-out deaths have been a TV fad lately.
ButWestworldhas now established an environment where post-death returns can be unique.
Ford could make a robot version of Cullen.
The tech team could bring back Clementine as a different character played by the same actor.
I feel sad that Westworld’s Team Human lost its most sympathetic member.
And what about the still-missing Elise?
This week’s ending makes me hopeful.
First, I’m thinking Bernard-bot snatched her.
I think that’s a reference to Elsie.
Now here’s my newly updated theory.
Now I’m thinking its Bernard.
When Cullen looks at the Bernard sketch, the bottom is kept off-camera.
I suspect it’s hidden because that name on his sketch might be “Arnold.”
Notice we’ve never heard Arnold’s last name.
“Bernard Lowe” is an anagram for “Arnold Weber.”
Arnold is somehow orchestrating the coming robot uprising via Bernard or some other mechanism.
Elsie is not dead and will have several f-bombs for when she’s back.
Lee Sizemore will be brutally murdered by robots, and we’ll cheer.
At some point, we’re going to hear an orchestral version of Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android.”
