Previously: Bernard is Arnold 2.0 and Pants Dolores is Dress Dolores in the future and the Man in Black is….
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The Bicameral Mind
Marines: A lot has happened y’all, and I mean in the show and not because it took us forever to get through one season and the world is on fire. Okay, let’s wrap this thing up.
Jess: I’M READY.
Mari: We start with a Dolores Voice Over as she tells us that she is in a dream. She doesn’t know when it began or whose dream it was. She only knows that she slept for a long time and then one day she awoke. We see her face first and as the shot pulls out we see that she’s being assembled. There is only flesh on her face and a bit of her chest. It’s a credit to the storytelling that the show hasn’t been subtle about their frequent SHE’S A ROBOT! reminders but every time we see something like this, I’m like “oh no! She’s a ROBOT!”
Jess: I constantly forget so I’m glad the show feels it needs to remind me.
Mari: The voice over continues. She says that the first thing she remembers is Arnold’s voice. And now, she finally understands what he was trying to tell her all along. Arnold calls Dolores, and she opens her eyes and sits up, still very half done. Arnold welcomes her to the world.
William is still on his quest to find Dolores. He’s got Logan tied up and trailing the horse on foot. Logan is still on his YOU ARE CRAZY train and William is riding high on I HAVE TO SAVE DOLORES. Same ole, same ole. Logan says that even if Dolores is alive still, the park is huge. It would take an army to find her. William agrees, which is why they are here. They walk into a camp, men immediately training guns on them. But then Lawrences walks out, really not surprised to see William again.
Teddy is on a train again! It’s been a minute since he rode into town. He disembarks, smiling as he goes along, but the music goes screwy and he stops walking. Arnold’s voice tells him to remember, and now, all he sees is a town full of dead bodies. And Dress Dolores is walking amongst them. She smiles at him and leaves. Teddy gets literally knocked out of the memory when someone runs into him. The man reaches for his gun, but Teddy shoots him first. “Dolores,” he says to himself, and runs to get back on that train.
Jess: Finally, Teddy shoots someone first.
Mari: We have truly reached the end.
Dress Dolores visits Arnold in the Escalante church. She tells him that she knows where his maze is and grabs him by the hand to lead him. But then in the future, it’s Pants Dolores leading MIB to the graveyard outside of the church. MIB is like ….this is it? The center of the maze? Dolores is still nearly in a trance as she says that it ends in a place she’s never been, a thing she’ll never do. Dolores finds a paticular grave marker, and digs a little way down. There she finds a literal toy maze.
Jess: THE MAZE IS A LITERAL MAZE.
Mari: Plot twist.
Past. Dress Dolores is holding the maze as Arnold tells her she did good. She found it. She asks what it means. Arnold explains that when he first started working on her mind, he thought consciousness was a pyramid the hosts needed to scale. So he gave her his own voice to guide her along the way. Still, Dolores never got there, so he realized he made a mistake. Consciousness isn’t a journey upward, but a journey inward. Not a pyramid, a maze. He asks her if she understands what he’s trying to lead her toward, whose voice he wants her to hear. She says she’s trying but she doesn’t understand. Arnold says that’s okay. She’s so close. He has to tell Ford. They can’t open the park, on account of how Dolores is alive.
Jess: This is starting to make some sort of sense, it’s like on the edges.
Mari: For you and Dolores.
In the present, MIB snatches the maze from Dolores and demands to know what it means. Dolores gets very emotional as she says that she solved it once. She had the answer, and Arnold says that if she did, they would set her free. She flashes to being under the church, watching the Not-Arnold Engineer stomp out of the room as Ford calls for Arnold.
And then later, Dolores is sitting in their private interview room. Dolores is holding her maze while Arnold apologizes, saying that he’s failed her. Ford doesn’t see things the way he does. He shares with her the argument that Ford gave Bernard in the future, last episode (lol, got that?): humans wouldn’t accept them. They would only see them as the enemy. Ford wants Arnold to roll Dolores back, but he won’t. Their other option is to break the loop before it starts. Arnold hands Dolores a gun and tells her to kill all of the other hosts so that Ford can’t open the park. Teddy would probably help her if she asked. And suddenly this is seeming real familiar like, huh? The mass killing of a bunch of hosts?
Dolores says that she can’t do it but Arnold says he’ll help. He does something to her programming and her face goes hard. We cut to Dolores firing the gun. And then back to Pants Dolores in the graveyard with MIB. He wants to get this maze solving show on the road, but Dolores is real lost in her confused memories. MIB tries to smack the truth out of her, but it just sends Dolores back into another memory: Escalante. Her and Teddy shooting all the hosts down. Teddy tells her something has gone wrong. How could he have done this?
Jess: HOW COULD HE?! But also, that was such an unnecessary, aggressive slap.
Mari: MIB is an unnecessary, aggressive dick.
And back in the present, MIB tells Dolores that all of this is her fault. She was the one who told him that this is the only world that matters. And she was right, so MIB bought this world. Or at least a majority share of it. Business is booming because the park feels more real than the real world, but it isn’t more real because the hosts can’t fight back and the guests can’t lose. It’s all a lie, but MIB wants to make it true. Dolores says she already has a true thing: someone who loves her. And when his path leads him back to her, he’s gonna kill MIB.
Jess: Did I miss it, who the hell loves her. Is this another vague mystery?!
Mari: We know no one loves her, but she doesn’t know it.
William and Lawrence sneak around to spy on a camp. Lawrence thinks they’ll either have Dolores or know where she is. William asks Lawrence to help him and he’s like ah, why not.
Jess: These punches to the face are becoming frequent.
Mari: HQ Train Station. Lee finds Tessa Thompson, having figured out that she’s trying to push Ford out, which means they’ll need someone to take his place. Just then, a train arrives with the Delos Board of Directors. Lee tells Tessa he wants creative control of the park. Tessa is down with that, as long as Lee makes the hosts and the narratives and everything simpler. (J: Tessa and I are on the same page.) Lee asks if she thinks Ford is just gonna roll over and let them take this. Tessa says it doesn’t matter as long as they smuggle all of Ford’s information out of the park.
Body Shop. Sylvester is too jumpy to assemble some bones. (J: I also feel jumpy.) Felix is with Maeve. He looks at her warily, clearly wondering if she’s there there. She is. And she’s got his tablet again and starts making changes to the park’s security and to her friends, Hector and Armistice.
Tessa visits Ford with the news that the board has unanimously voted him out. He’ll announce his retirement after he premieres his new narrative. Ford says he’ll see her tonight then, and the threat is enough to stop Tessa in her tracks temporarily. Yeah, girl, I’d be worried. (J: Yes, I would be scared, too.)
Body Shop. A McDonalds Rubber Suited Man comes in to collect Hector, but with added skeeviness about what he’d like to do to him while this robot is powered down. Skeevy puts his earphones in and gets ready to do whatever (J: He’s soooo creepy.) while his colleague keeps working on Armistice’s tattoos. Once he’s done, he reaches into Armistice’s mouth to remove her mouth guards and very unfortunately for him, Armistice comes to just then and bites his finger off.
Jess: The music was a big indicator shit was going to go down.
Mari: The Score Man knew that finger was coming OFF.
Armistice then goes ham beating him up, all while Skeevy doesn’t notice because his music is too loud and his pants are too down. It isn’t until Armistice sends the other Rubber Suited Man crashing through the glass that Skeevy realizes there is trouble. He barely has time to register shock before Hector stands up and stabs him straight through the chest. (J: Oh shit. This is INSANITY.)
Maeve walks in with Felix. Armistice comments on how these don’t seem like gods. Maeve says they aren’t, but they like to pretend they are. Hector is keen to get some eye for an eye, and Maeve says that’s fine, but the goal is to escape. She’d like to see the outside world. Sylvester walks in and Armistice is immediately just ON him. She charges, like she can smell that he has bad vibes. Sylvester swears his face isn’t suspicious, it’s just like this all the time.
Jess: My face would also look constantly stressed if I worked with those robots.
Mari: Sylvester appeals to Maeve for help, but she wants to know if anyone is going to stop them on the way out. He stumbles over his answer a bit and then outs with it: he looked back at her code and noticed that someone else had accessed it and gave her the ability to wake herself up out of sleep mode. Someone named Arnold. Sylvester has no idea who that is, but Maeve knows who might.
Teddy gets off the train, a Spanish soldier calls him cabron, wow. Teddy kills a the soldier and steals his horse.
Jess: WHO IS THIS TEDDY?!CABRON.
Mari: Teddy 2.0 is definitely TeddyCabron.
Dolores is crawling on the ground, trying to get away from MIB. He asks where this newfound stoicism has come from, which is horrifying when you consider that he’s basically saying, “you usually scream more.” Dolores credits her true love…. William.
Jess: WE KNOW.
Mari: We head back to that camp in the past, now just a pile of dead bodies. MIB’s voice over tells us that William didn’t have a taste for fighting, but now he had a mission: find Dolores. And along the way, he found he did have a taste for killing. William is dragging along one alive soldier who swears he didn’t do anything to the girl. Williams asks what he means, and Logan is there to sing song for him to wake up. What do soldiers do to a girl? The soldier says that Dolores was maybe still alive when they left her. And then he shoots him and shoves his knife into the man’s throat. Even Logan is like JESUS CHRIST. And that’s saying a lot. (J: William got with Logan’s program.) William grabs Logan’s rope and says they have to keep looking.
MIB voice overs that William retraced his steps, but Dolores was gone. We watch as the photo of Wililam’s fiancé falls out of his jacket pocket and gets lost to the desert. MIB tells us that William couldn’t find Dolores, but out amongst the fringes of the part he found something else: himself. We watch as William grabs the BLACK HAT off the body of a dead man. We also see that he now has Logan riding naked on horseback. Logan loses his shit as he realizes that this was William all along and he never really cared about Dolores. William says that the park is truly remarkable, and he’s going to make sure their company increases their holdings in it. Logan is like OUR company? Delos is his company! William thinks that Logan’s dad is going to want someone more stable to take over. And then he smacks the horse on the butt and it takes off with a naked Logan half laughing, half crying.
Jess: This is poetic. Logan riding off in the sunset, naked.
Mari: I mean, this isn’t exactly riding off into the sunset. He was more launched. And, listen, I just want to say that I was a hipster of hating William’s stupid face.
In the present, MIB tells Dolores that William kept looking for her. And he eventually did find her, right back where they started. We see as William spots Dolores in her blue dress. She’s in the loop we got to know so well at the beginning of season 1, dropping her canned good. Dolores looks up at William and MIB tells us that she was as beautiful as ever. But another park guest picks up her can. And William is hurt. And in the present, we see it dawn on Dolores that MIB is William.
MIB has been chasing his memories and his loops, but Dolores has been trapped in her memories and loops, too. Dolores shakes as she considers what William has become. She thought he was different, but he’s just like all the rest. William in Black thinks he’s nothing like the others because he owns this world and he knows its every trick, except for this one last thing: the center of the maze. Dolores sobs, but she’s not crying for herself. She stands and says she’s crying for him. Time undoes even the mightiest of creatures. Just look what it’s done to William and his wrinkly face.
Jess: THIS WAS AN AMAZING TWIST. The other twist is that I DON’T CARE FOR DUELING TIMELINES. WITCHER AND WESTWORLD NEED TO STOP IT.
Mari: I loved it in both. Sprinkle my stories with confusion, let’s GO.
William in Black is still like take me to the maze! Where’s Wyatt? Maze! Maze! Maze! Dolores tells him that the maze wasn’t meant for him. He grabs her, but that’s it for Dolores and being grabbed. She punches and pushes him real good. And then we see her grab him by the neck and drag him the same way we watched him drag her all those episodes ago. She breaks him arm and easily swats his gun out of his hand, pulling her own gun out and putting it up to his face. She hesitates to pull the trigger, and gets a blade in the belly for her trouble. She stumbles back and falls, blood blossoming on her shirt. MIB starts speeching about how he’s disappointed in her and now he has to find the maze! maze! maze! and Wyatt! all by himself. He doesn’t get much farther in the speech because Teddy comes riding up like a bat out of hell, and shoots him A LOT. GOODBYE WILLIAM IN BLACK. SEE YOU NEVER.
Jess: There’s no way this is the end of him WHEN I FINALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT’S HAPPENING. But honestly, get me to this freaking maze already.
Mari: I have bad news for you and William about this maze.
Teddy goes for Dolores. He wants to get her to a doctor, but she says no. She wants to go to the place he promised: where the mountains meet the sea.
As they ride off, William in Black opens his eyes. I already said see you never though so this is profoundly unfair.
Jess: He’s the only thing that makes sense, I need the marker!
Mari: Basement of Don’t Go In There. Felix and Sylvester accompany Maeve, Hector and Armistice. Maeve sees Clem in the back operating room and there they also find Bernad’s dead body. Maeve asks if he can get him back online, which surprises Felix. So much so that you can see him questioning if he’s a host too. Maeve is like LOL NO. Fix Bernard.
Mari: Allow me to quote Maeve: for fucks sake.
Felix does. Maeve orders him to wake up and he’s real upset about it, because he can still remember everything. Bernard says this isn’t the first time he’s woken up. And this isn’t the first time Maeve has either. This gets her. She looks out into the Basement of retired hosts and wonders how many hosts are out there like her. Bernard says it’s been a handful every year over the years. Maeve is disgusted that they just wipe them clean and send them back out to get fucked and murdered. Bernard is like “actually, most of them go insane.”
Jess: What is that they say? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over?
Mari: A hosts’ entire life.
Maeve Bernard to remove the memories of her daughter, but Bernard says he can’t without destroying her. Memories are the first step to consciousness.
Jess: ARE THEY?! Just ask Dolores.
Mari: Her memories are as patchy as her consciousness, but she’s TRYING.
Parkside, William in Black is indeed still alive, and he’s made it back to the little toy maze. Ford is there and says he sees that WIB found the center of the maze. WIB thinks this has to be a joke, but Ford says it isn’t. WIB was always looking for the park to give his life meaning, but it’s a game. What was he expecting to find, exactly?
Jess: Ok, thank you, because that’s what I’ve been thinking this whole time. THIS IS JUST A GAME WILLIAM.
Mari: William In Black [WIB] wanted the hosts to stop playing by the rules. He wanted the hosts to fight back, but he should’ve known that Ford would never let them. Ford tried to warn WIB that the maze wasn’t meant for him. It was mean for the hosts. Anyway, he thinks WIB will find the new narrative more satisfying. Ford invites him to join the celebration, especially considering he owns most of this place.
Jess: This feels ominous.
Mari: Anytime Ford says he’ll see you somewhere, maybe RSVP no.
Basement. Maeve tells Bernard about how someone altered her code before she did. Maeve wants to know who and why. Bernard takes a look at the tablet and then shows Maeve. She didn’t make this choice all on her own. These aren’t her decision. Someone altered her story and gave her a new one: escape. Maeve refuses to believe that and says she’s leaving. She’s in control. (J: NO ONE IS IN CONTROL MAEVE.)
Hunger Games Room. They are getting the readings of a temperature spike in the Basement of Don’t Go in There. They start scanning HQ to see what the heck is up.
Teddy and Dolores make it to the ocean. He holds her in his arms and they repeat some of their rote lines. Everyone has a path and Teddy’s leads to her. Some people choose to see the ugliness in the world, but Dolores sees the beauty. But beauty is a lure and this place is a trap. She dies and Teddy cries as he says that maybe they will find a way eventually, because maybe this is…. the violins swell… the beginning of a brand new chapter. APPLAUSE. (J: UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.)
BECAUSE THIS IS FORD’S NEW NARRATIVE? Ford comes out and thanks them for being there to celebrate the beginning of his new narrative, Journey Into Night. In the back, Tessa calls the story sweet. Lee says it was morbid, but Tessa doesn’t care. She tells him to get going and do that thing he’s supposed to be doing.
Jess: I don’t know what it is but I’m siding with Lee.
Mari: You… always pick the worst people to side with.
As the party breaks up, Ford gives instructions to HQ people to get Teddy cleaned up and to get Dolores to the old field lab.
Hunger Games Room. One of the QA techs found something: the footage of Armistice putting that guy through the glass room. As soon as they start to dispatch security, the systems power down and they go into a lockdown. The map of the park goes dark.
Jess: But did they find the footage of the other guy lubing himself up?!
Mari: That guy is dead now, so probably there are more pressing concerns.
Maeve and Co. make it back to the body shop, but QA agents are there. Hector and Armistice hide amongst the powered down hosts and take down a bunch of the agents, absolutely DELIGHTED with their automatic weapons.
Parkside, the new narrative party goes on. Bernard is in attendance.
The escape continues, complete with a break for Armistice to wonder at the size and scope of the building. They also reach a place where we see hosts dressed as Samurai.
Hector and Armistice volunteer to stay behind and keep shooting at agents while Felix and Maeve keep working towards the door. They take down a bunch, but one manages to hit an emergency button and Armistice gets her arm trapped in a door. She tells them to leave her and Hector leaves her with a “die well.” If anyone were to tell me to die well on my deathbed, I would revive long enough to punch them.
Jess: Hector did what he could, ok.
Mari: Felix grabs a stash of supplies he squirreled away at Maeve’s direction and gives it to her.
Jess: But also what the hell does Maeve know about what to get for the outside.
Mari: Maybe her upgrades came with Google.
Hector shoots the receptionist on the way out and they make it to the elevator. Hector tries to get on, but he can’t. Maeve says she hasn’t authorized him to come along. She kisses him goodbye and tells him to kick up a row, which I guess is better than “die well.” He tells her he’ll see her in the next life and the door closes between them as we hear him shots ring out.
Jess: I will give it to Maeve, that is definitely a better parting line.
Mari: Ford works on patching Dolores up and then starts talking to her about her fondness for painting. Bernard joins them and Dolores thinks he’s Arnold, obviously. Ford introduces them properly. Bernard accuses Ford of killing the real Arnold, but he says he didn’t. Did he, Dolores? Dolores remembers something and grief crashes over her.
Ford’s voice over flashes us back to Arnold, playing with the little toy maze. Real Arnold really lost his son and he channeled some of that loss into Dolores, and into creating a test of imagination and empathy. A maze. Dolores did solve the maze thanks to the reveries Arnold developed. He wanted to close the park, as we saw, but Ford wouldn’t allow it. And so, Arnold merged Dolores with a new character they had been developing: Wyatt.
Jess: OHHHHHHH, OH SHIT.
Mari: Hence the shooting in Escalante. We flash there, and this time we see that as the shooting happens, Arnold is in the bar playing with his toy maze. After the shooting is all done, Arnold comes out. He apologizes to Dolores, saying that the stakes have to be real and irreversible. Ford can bring the hosts back… but not Arnold. He hopes that it’s some solace for Dolores that he’s left her no choice.
Jess: Side note, I’m a fan of Dolores’ fanny pack. The show did so well on sets and costumes. Really helped solidify the confusion.
Mari: I was like, “wow, a positive comment from Jess,” and then you suck in the confusion at the end.
Arnold plays Charlie’s favorite song and sits in front of Dolores as he says he wants to see his son again. Dolores places a hand on his shoulder, which Arnold grabs and kisses. Arnold wishes her luck and his final words are “these violent delights have violent ends.” Dolores shoots him, and then shoots Teddy, and then shoots herself.
Ford tells us that this almost worked. Obviously, Ford still opened the park, mostly because Dolores found a new investor for Ford in William. At the time, Ford told himself that Dolores wasn’t really conscious. She didn’t pull that trigger; Arnold did. To acknowledge anything else would’ve been to kill his dreams.
Jess: Ah ha. Going back to Maeve, of course you don’t have control. NO ONE DOES.
Mari: Dolores asks if that’s it, then? They are trapped here, inside his dream? Ford says that it’s taken him 35 years for him to correct his mistakes.
Jess: Holy shit, WE’VE BEEN HERE FOR 35 YEARS?!
Mari: 35 years, at least, from Escalante and Arnold’s death to this new narrative. It’s a lot of timeline.
Ford brings out the old blue dress Dolores used to wear and the gun we’ve seen her carry– the same one she used to kill Arnold. Ford looks at Dolores and asks if she found what she was looking for and does she understand who she will need to become if she ever wants to leave this place? Dolores doesn’t answer, but Ford asks her to forgive him.
Maeve is all dressed up and ready for her escape when Felix is like, “oh yeah, by the way, your daughter is alive and in the park.” He hands over her location, but Maeve puts it away. That’s not really her daughter.
Mari: NOTHING IS REALLY ANYTHING.
At the train station, Maeve catches sight of promo video of herself and her daughter. She turns away quickly and boards the train. She takes a seat.
Bernard and Ford are in the Escalante church and have another showdown. This time, Ford answers the question of why he really gave Bernard the memories of a dead son: suffering is a key ingredient to the human experience, I GUESS.
Jess: I AM SUFFERING RIGHT NOW.
Mari: Yeah, and it sucks, and I would like human experience sans suffering.
Also key is the feeling that the world is not how you want it to be. It took Ford losing Arnold for him to realize that and to realize that he was wrong. Arnold didn’t know how to save the hosts, but Ford figured it out. The hosts needed time. Time to figure things out and get to know the enemy. Ford says he’s sorry because in order to break out of this place, the hosts will need to suffer more. He says goodbye to his old friend, shakes his hand, and gives him back the toy maze.
Dolores is still sitting down int he field lab, but now she stands and heads back into the interview room. She’s suddenly sitting across from Arnold. He asks if she knows where she is, and she repeats her words from the beginning of the episode. She was in a dream. Arnold asks again if she knows now whose voice she’s been hearing all this time? The voice goes from Arnold’s to Fords and then…. to her own. Pants Dolores is sitting across from Dress Dolores. She understands now. The maze is this, finally– Dolores confronting herself and who she must become. Dolores and the voice of her own consciousness leading her. Dress Dolores is gone and Pants Dolores looks out at gun.
Mari: Do you understand who you need to become to ever leave your house?
Party. Teddy is entertaining guests. William in Black drinks. The player piano plays. Ford takes the stage to applause and delivers yet! another! speech! This time about stories and lies and deeper truths.
Maeve sees a mother and daughter on the train and looks back at the location of her daughter.
William in Black smokes alone, apart from the party, as Ford talks about not being able to change, because you are only human after all. Ford says that he realized that someone can change, though, and he made this new narrative for them.
Maeve gets off the train right before it leaves. On the platform, all the lights cut off.
Lee makes it to the Basement of Don’t Go in There, but it’s empty.
William in Black hears twigs snapping coming from the woods.
Ford keeps explaining his new narrative and the character of Wyatt. A killing, this time by choice.
Jess: THE BUILD UP, IT’S SO MUCH.
Mari: Dolores makes it to the party wearing her blue dress. She finds Teddy and tells him that it’s going to be alright because this world doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to the hosts.
From the woods, a heck ton of hosts come walking.
Teddy has flashes to Escalante, and he realizes what’s happening.
Ford announces that this will be his final story.
Bernard watches and quotes “these violent delights have violent ends,” and he realizes what’s happening.
Dolores walks on stage behind Ford as he finishes up his speech. And shoots him in the head. People scream and run, and Dolores starts shooting out in the crowd, picking people off one by one.
Jess: I’M SCREAMING
Mari: From the the woods, someone shoots William in Black in the arm. But he smiles like a maniac. This is what he wanted all along.
Jess: I don’t know what to say but I will say that I didn’t see any of that coming. Am I going to watch season 2, yes. Why, because like a host, I’m stuck here in quarantine doing the same thing over and over again.
Mari: Overall, this was a really solid season of television for me. Ultimately, it’s biggest downfall was the pace of mystery and reveal. The twists and payoffs were satisfying but sometimes dearly bought with some of that fluff of Dolores running around and William’s stupid face.
But I’m invested in this robot uprising. Onward!
Next time on Westworld: A whole new season which also probably have violent delights and violent ends in S02 E01 – Journey Into Night.