‘Westworld’ Season Finale Recap: Things to Come
Warning: This recap for the “The Bicameral Mind” episode of Westworld contains spoilers.
Bernard is Arnold. William is the Man in Black. Dolores is Wyatt. And Westworld is … in a whole mess of trouble. Last night, HBO’s hit fall series ended the way it began 10 weeks ago: with an extra-long episode that was alternately compelling and confounding and then climaxed in a stunning act of violence. The series premiere, “The Original,” concluded with Dolores taking her tentative first steps toward consciousness by swatting a fly that dared to land on her face. Now, the season finale, “The Bicameral Mind,” ends with a fully awakened Dolores shooting her creator, Robert Ford, before turning her firearm on the assembled crowd. It’s not just the end to her seasonlong story arc, it’s also the grand finale to Ford’s new narrative, the one he’s been teasing all season long.
Like the Delos board members and distinguished guests, many viewers probably assumed that fresh storyline — which Charlotte Hale made clear would be Robert’s swan song contribution to the park he created — concluded with Teddy cradling Dolores’s dead body on the beach. But that merely proved to be the entr’acte. Act 2 involves Dolores completing a three-decade journey by finding what exists at the center of the Maze: herself. It’s a realization that Arnold tried to force upon her all those years ago in the hopes that it would spark a robot uprising that would shut down Westworld before it opened. But when that didn’t take, he forcibly merged her personality with Wyatt’s and designated himself as the final victim of her shooting spree.
Related: Ken Tucker Reviews the Season Finale of Westworld
So it fell to Robert to complete his friend’s life’s work, constructing the specific circumstances that would pull Dolores to the center of the consciousness circle — not the consciousness pyramid that Arnold initially envisioned — instead of once again being sent spiraling out to the edges. Even black-hatted William (who, as we learn, killed his future brother-in-law, Logan, to cement his power over the Delos corporation) was an unwitting accomplice in Ford’s grand narrative; despite being repeatedly told that the Maze wasn’t for him, he went searching for it anyway in the hopes of locating Wyatt, the one Westworld character he had yet to confront. And, in the end, he achieved that goal, nudging Dolores along until her inner Wyatt awakened without the help of Arnold’s programming slab.
Now that we’ve reached the center of Westworld’s maze, the obvious question is: Where do we go from here? We’ve got a few thoughts about that. Here are four things we expect to see in Season 2.
The robots are coming! The robots are coming!
Playtime’s over, mankind. With Dolores as their leader, the Hosts are poised to repay Westworld’s guest for 30 years’ worth of pain and misery. It’s unclear how many humans are located within the park, but that train that Maeve disembarked will almost certainly be the last one that pulls out of — or into — Westworld for some time. So the guests who decided to catch a later train are in for a world of hurt. That said, there will certainly be a resistance force, one led by the park’s well-armed security team that, until recently, was headed up by Ashley Stubbs. With Stubbs still MIA after being captured by that Ghost Nation tribe, we’re assuming a new, heretofore unseen leader (one who will almost certainly be played by another big-name actor now that Anthony Hopkins is no longer on the payroll) will emerge to rally the flesh-and-blood parkgoers for a pitched battle against the robot insurgents.
Related: 5 Ways Beyond Westworld Is Just Like Westworld
The mother-and-child reunion is only a season (and several obstacles) away
Whoever preprogrammed Maeve with the desire — and intelligence — to escape the park probably didn’t count on her overriding her instructions and returning to Westworld in the name of parental love. Thanks to Felix, she now has a specific location for where to find the pint-sized robot daughter she was assigned in a previous life. But the path to her child will likely take her past the man that forcibly separated them the first time: William, who is sporting a serious wound but has yet to join Robert and Arnold in the Westworld cemetery. It’s also worth remembering that if someone intended for her to escape, she’s probably carrying information they hoped to transmit to the outside world. Now that Maeve has opted to hang around, that yet-to-be-determined person is still going to want what’s inside her data banks.
A commitment to the present tense
Having semi-successfully strung along the multiple timeline gimmick this season, it seems unlikely that the show creators, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, will return to that well the next time around. And while that means bidding a fond farewell to Jimmi Simpson’s young William (although we’re holding out hope for a flashback or two), it does feel as if Westworld’s future lies in its present, not its past. After all, why retread that familiar terrain when we now know there’s a whole new landscape to explore in the form of…
The land of the rising swords
As fans of the original 1973 Michael Crichton movie know, Westworld was always bigger than Westworld. Crichton’s theme park also made room for a Roman World and a Medieval World, while the sequel, Futureworld, introduced an outer space realm. (Think Tomorrowland, but with more gratuitous violence.) It stands to reason that a profit-savvy guy like William would see the benefit in getting Delos to built multiple worlds, thus achieving multiple revenue streams. And kudos to Billy for getting creative: instead of Roman World, guests can visit Samurai World, a picture-perfect recreation of medieval Japan. For now, Samurai World remains untouched by the robot violence being visited upon its Old West neighbor. Expect that to change early on in Season 2.
Season 1 of Westworld can be streamed on HBO Go and HBO Now.
