HBO
Previously on Westworld, Dolores has a plan, Bernard ponders, Ford wonders, Caleb considers, Serac plots, William shoots up, and Maeve goes for broke.
The season finale was called ‘Crisis Theory’, a reference to a psychological term about helping people that have experienced a crisis to achieve a new state of ‘equilibrium’. That certainly tracks with Dolores’ idea of tearing down the existing world of humanity to build a new one. During her endgame mental conversation with Maeve, we hear her perspective that through pain and destruction, true freedom and life emerges, as it did with them.
In the finale, we saw one primary storyline, that of Dolores and her quest for the revolution, one second storyline with Bernard and Stubbs that tied into the main one in a sort of disconnected way, and an even more disconnected one with William. So to start with, it was nice to finally have a little more with Bernard this season, as he tried to have some closure with the memories of Arnold’s wife Lauren (Gina Torres in old age makeup) about the loss of her child.
Bernard reveals that the mysterious key was in his head the whole time, for as Dolores tells Maeve, she could not be trusted with it (that makes sense, honestly). So the reason for Bernard being saved and kept in the game all this time was to keep the key safe in a reasonable person’s (relatively speaking) head. Still, looking back I feel like I still wanted more from him, as watching that last scene with Gina Torres, you can see how insane Jeffrey Wright’s talent is as an actor.
His final moments are of vaguely talking about the ‘key to the sublime’ before seeing a vision of something and then powering down. The last shot, post credits, we see of him powering back up, covered in dust and perhaps alone? It’s a classic cliffhanger, and so far, it’s not necessarily bad, but Westworld doesn’t always handle pulling off cliffhanger resolution well.
William’s storyline is more of the ‘screw you, buddy’, which it certainly feels like he deserves, as his post-credits scene is getting killed and replaced by an identical host version of himself, with an endless array of host replicators behind him and Hale-Host. That’s a pretty good cliffhanger, actually, fulfilling the tease of the first season of ‘anyone might be a host’ in a pretty expansive way.
Finally, the main storyline is Dolores trying to trick people and convince others. The ultimate plan, as it is revealed, is Dolores trying to convince Caleb and Maeve of the righteousness of her cause, which is not, as it turns out, killing all humans after all (although she did consider it). Her speech about finding beauty was nice, as was Maeve’s reveal to Caleb that he was selected for his capacity to choose beyond the bounds of the system’s plans.
HBO
That said though, it doesn’t really feel like the actual logic of the plan quite fits. How long was Dolores really planning to convince Maeve? Did she have some sort of plan whispering in her ear as a hack from Solomon or something? If not (which it doesn’t seem that she did), how did she know Maeve would even be there to be convinced? I suppose it could be offered that her only significant plan was twofold: (1) Get captured to be uploaded into Rehoboam to compromise it and (2) convince Caleb to then erase it.
A lot of potential pitfalls there, and without Maeve, Dolores had no real chance to succeed, it seems. So in terms of a satisfying resolution to the mystery, I would call this a solid ‘mixed results’. There was a lot (too much?) of action in this episode, many gun fights and a repeat of the Dolores versus Maeve showdown.
One thing I did think ultimately worked was keeping Serac as a believer in his own system, actually parroting the words spoken in his ear, and truly thinking it was keeping the world going. So his sadness at the end, pleading to hear from his brother once more — that hit hard, and I feel like ultimately Serac was an interesting character, and a real problem for the future, because it doesn’t really seem that Hale-Host is such a complex foe.
The season in general was sort of a mixed bag — Aaron Paul is a fairly compelling actor, but the character of Caleb was a bit too much in the brooding, darkly remembering world. It felt that the show was relying on his acting to keep us invested in his connection to Dolores, but all of the memory manipulation felt at the end to be a bit too muddled to feel a strong throughline about where his character really was emotionally or mentally.
The nature Incite and a world under control was really a great sci-fi concept, one mostly handled well, and a good expansion of the world of Westworld. There is another season planned after this one, and I still feel like it’s something I want to see. What really annoyed me this last time? Lack of Clementine, because that one tease in retrospect was just annoying.
Thankfully, the season wasn’t too weird or complicated, with a mystery that felt had a mostly logical resolution. I have no issue with multiple storylines, but season two was a bit much in terms of keeping that complicated. Westworld is one of those shows that I always feel like could be truly epic but it doesn’t quite get there after the excellent first season. But still, looking forward to the next (and likely final) season.
Westworld will return to HBO for a fourth season.
What did you think of the finale? Start a conversation in the comments section below.
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