Westworld: 4 major takeaways from season 2, episode 9
This week’s Westworld episode gave viewers a Father’s Day to remember. While the Man in Black isn’t winning any awards for Father of the Year any time soon, ‘Vanishing Point’ delves further into his home life with telling details of his wife’s suicide.
Furthermore, Bernard rebels against Robert Ford like a teenager intent on making his own choices. Even Maeve is visited by her “father” and learns that she is Robert’s most favorite child.
Here are the 4 takeaways from this week’s episode leading into the season finale! If you have not caught up on the latest episode of Westworld, please be wary of major spoilers ahead!
The Man in Black may be a host
The validity of the Man in Black’s paranoia was in question ever since his encounter with Maeve, in which he thought she was another one of Robert’s pawns. Even though no host comes forward with an eerie message from Robert like the new El Lazo or Lawrence’s’ daughter, The Man in Black still believes that everyone he encounters is just another test in Robert’s game.
His daughter Emily is also under suspicion since their reunion causing him to abandon her in the middle of the night. When Emily rescues her father from the Ghost Nation, it seems that he has put his suspicions behind him, but that is not the case. The Man in Black questions his daughter’s motives continuously to rule out any possibility that she is his truly his child.
Emily’s goals are to find out the reason why her mother committed suicide, in addition to exposing the Man in Black and Delos’ illegal operation. She learned of the park’s pursuit of collecting guest data for host development from her Uncle Logan and presumed that the Delos would have a profile of her mother’s cognition that would be able to shed light on the night she committed suicide. A profile card her mother, Juliet, left her in a music box bolsters this theory, as the profile contains William’s digital history of gruesome deeds at Westworld.
Emily doesn’t realize the profile is the reason. The night Juliet committed suicide, she had to be taken home because she was embarrassingly drunk at an event honoring the Man in Black’s accomplishments. Once in the comfort of their own home, Juliet lays into the Man in Black for his neglect, lies, and obsession with Westworld and later that night she asks if he ever loved her.
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He answers honestly and admits that he doesn’t belong to her but belongs to another world. However, the cherry on top was that Juliet saw the Man in Black hide the profile card ironically in a book titled Slaughterhouse-Five.
She later hooks the card up to a tablet and sees a visual record of William’s horrifying adventures for the past thirty years. Realizing that the darkness within William, or as he calls it “the stain,” is his true nature and can never be changed, she ends her life with a bottle of pills.
The Man in Black was never aware that Juliet saw the card. To him, the only person that knew the card existed was the man who gave it to him, Robert Ford. Emily disclosing that she knew about the profile was a confirmation of his wildest delusions that she was a host under Robert’s direction. With this in mind, he had no issue killing Emily and the rescue team she flagged to extricate them from the park believing that they are all hosts.
Had the Man in Black taken a moment to allow Emily to show him proof that she was his flesh and blood, his daughter would not have died at his hands. When he pulls out a knife and reaches for her arm to cut out the telltale wire hidden in the forearms of hosts, he discovers that Emily is holding the profile in her hand and had reached for it to show him.
With the death of his daughter heavily weighing on his shoulders, the Man in Black rides into an open plain and puts a gun to his temple. He considers all of his paranoid thinking that is not unlike the thought process of a host rejecting their reality.
Is the Man in Black’s speculation that every person can be a host in Robert’s game just a manifestation of a human conscious rejecting their reality? His obsession with figuring out Robert’s game has led him to question every person he meets but not once does he ever consider that his questions are irrational.
The Man in Black also thinks back on a pain in his forearm that has occurred several times during the episode raising red flags that there may be something there. Could he be feeling a host wire embedded in his forearm? You get the feeling that he just might be a host when he questions his power to make choices, somewhat similar to the fidelity test he gave Delos senior.
The Man in Black digs into his forearm with a knife, but we’re going to have to wait till the next episode to see if his suspicions that he is a host hold any weight or if the park has finally worn down his sanity.
Bernard removes Ford’s code from his system
After handling some business on Robert’s behalf in the Mesa, Bernard heads to the underground lot to meet up with Elsie and head for the Valley Beyond. Elsie is at the root of Robert and Bernard’s first headmate conflict. No one said it was going to be easy sharing the same head.
Robert wants Bernard to lie to Elsie because she’s a human and it’s in her nature to betray him. Bernard doesn’t tell her that Robert Ford’s consciousness is coming along for the ride, but he doesn’t lie.
Instead, Bernard tells her about the Forge, a part of the Valley Beyond that holds the bare guest coding like the Cradle but larger. They were headed to the Valley Beyond anyway, but now Elsie feels like she understands where they’re going.
That isn’t the end of Robert’s annoying intrusion. Robert continues to insist that Elsie is going to betray Bernard to propel him to kill her. Bernard already feels guilt for choking out Elsie under Robert’s control. There’s no way he’s going to do that again, especially since Elsie has saved his life.
Robert claims that he is only there to provide options and it is ultimately Bernard’s choice. But living within Bernard’s head allows for Robert to push his initiatives without having to say anything. Bernard feels the pressure in his skull and screams for Robert to get out of his head.
During most of Bernard’s existence he’s been under the control of programming and the occasional Robert takeover, but in this instance, for the sake of Elsie, he decides to take the reigns on his destiny. Bernard throws his gun and goes for his tablet. He cuts his arm open, connecting himself to his tablet and deletes Robert’s code.
If Robert’s transfer from the Cradle to Bernard’s control unit was a matter of carefully written programming, it is possible that he will not return. But I don’t think that Robert would have allowed it to be so easy to get rid of him. He could exist in another digital space within Westworld, or he is laying low to convince Bernard that he was successful at kicking Robert out of his mind.
Clementine is the new Delos secret weapon
The Delos tech under Maeve’s care isn’t working on bringing her back. He’s just keeping her alive. There are no plans to restore her functioning and patch her wounds. Maeve has become Charlotte Hale’s source for a strategy to defeat the hosts at the Valley Beyond. Charlotte’s minion is mining Maeve’s code, and we finally get to see what they intend to do with Maeve’s mind control superpowers.
They’ve weaponized Clementine by fitting her with Maeve’s code with intentions of dispatching her at the Valley. Clementine can place her hand on a wall and use the mesh network to spread a virus-like command that forces the hosts to fight each other to the death.
With technology like that, the Delos corporation won’t even have to risk losing any more of their team members. Should Clementine be successful, the Delos corporation will be able to squash the host rebellion within minutes. As soon as they’re rid of the threat, as the Delos tech has reported to Maeve, they will give the order to end Maeve’s life.
Lucky for Maeve, Robert has updated her code, and she will heal herself (or find someone to do it) and escape the Mesa. As the only other person with mesh network related powers, Maeve will probably have to go against Clementine to stop her.
This crossroad is going to be a heartbreaking scenario as life at the Mariposa has made Clementine family to Maeve. I can only hope that unlocking Maeve’s core functions will allow her to disarm Clementine and not force her to kill her.
Teddy fights back
The tension between Dolores and the Ghost Nation comes to a head when they confront each other about the Door. The Ghost Nation sees the door as a way to paradise and Dolores sees it as her enemy’s weakness and wants to destroy it.
This argument easily becomes a shootout and all of the Wyatt followers, and the majority of the Ghost Nation are massacred. Thankfully, Akecheta is not with his warriors.
Teddy spots one of the Ghost Nation leaders and struggles to shoot him, allowing for the man to flee the scene undetected. Teddy may be programmed to be vicious, but he struggles with who he used to be.
While Teddy has been abiding by all of Dolores’ commands, he’s been showing signs that he is not happy with his transformation. As Dolores preaches about freedom for the hosts and resisting human control, Teddy bitterly acknowledges her hypocrisy.
Dolores and Teddy head out toward the door. It’s unclear how Dolores proposes to confront teams of Delos employees when her army is down to two people. They stop at a cabin and Teddy unpacks all of his baggage on what he feels about the changes Dolores made to him. Since he is sentient, he remembers his first day online.
Next: Westworld: 5 burning questions from season 2, episode 9
As Robert and Arnold ask him questions, he is mesmerized by Dolores who is across the room and as naked as a newborn babe. His first thought was whether she was cold and it reflects how Teddy has always been dedicated to Dolores. In the end, Teddy can’t see Dolores being any different from the Delos corporation since she was willing to control the person she loves.
Dolores believes that Teddy intends to shoot her, as his gun is in hand during his rant. Teddy swears that his life has always been about protecting her. He kills himself instead.
The Cradle is gone, and there is no bringing Teddy back. Dolores is deeply wounded by her loss and will be heading to the Valley Beyond without her loyal protector.
Westworld will air its season 2 finale this Sunday on HBO at 9 PM EST!