Part 2 of our Westworld season 2, episode 9 in-depth review continues here! Be wary of spoilers ahead!
What the Ford?
William heads to the bar and sees Ford and confronts him as to why he is there. William tells Ford to stay out of the Valley and stick to his stories, but Ford says he did not break this agreement, that the project did.
Ford asks when William last looked at his creation, and what it has been learning about its subjects. He then slides William’s Westworld profile to him which is stored on a card and says: “Be careful what you wish for” He adds: “For a self-portrait. You may not find it very flattering”
William leaves the bar, saying the game has ended, Ford watches him leaving with Juliet and says: “No William, there is one last game”.
In Delos, Bernard is walking through the labs on his last errand for Ford, and he sees Maeve. He transfers an encrypted data payload to her, which Maeve accesses by searching Bernard’s mind.
Once he delivers the payload, he goes to meet Elsie at the transport bay, only to be confronted by her: “If you know something, now is the moment to tell me”. Bernard reveals to her that Delos is ‘replicating all the guests’ cognition in order to turn guests into hosts Elsie asks Bernard to promise not to lie to her, or keep any secrets.
Meanwhile, Ford can be heard telling Bernard that he can’t trust Elsie as it’s in her nature. However, Bernard ignores him and tells her what he saw in the CR4-DL, and informs her that they are doing the same to all hosts as they did with Jim Delos. This confirms that Delos has been luring guests to the park, stealing their cognitive personalities and then adding a real human into a host body.
From the CR4-DL to the Forge
She asks what he saw in the Cradle and Bernard said they are replicating the cognition of all guests at the facility and that they will use them to install into hosts. He asks, and it makes you think if he is referring to himself with Ford attached.
He found out the guest’s code is laid bare in a server located in a facility in the Valley Beyond which is like the CR4-DL only larger, and is called the Forge.
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The Forge must be what Dolores and William want to destroy, and what the Ghost Nation and Maeve want to preserve, to access the door into the new world. As Dolores now has her father’s host unit, which holds a secure encryption key, she will be able to use this to access the same door that all the other hosts are trying to breach.
Bernard wants to get there before the others, secure it and then use it as leverage to end it all and dictate the outcome they want. It is not known how the two will be able to stop all the hosts converging on the facility even if they make it there first.
The scene changes back to Grace and William, in the current timeline. He is having doubts that this Grace is not his daughter because the real Grace would have been appalled by what they were doing–monitoring guests and storing all their data.
She replies by saying: “Sometimes the end justifies the means” and that: “All this data you have on your guests, their decisions, its precious, gives people a second chance, even Mom” However she draws a line at copying guests: “but to duplicate a person you need to copy them down to the tiniest detail”, and wonders how Delos could acquire the complete picture or a record of the internal process of their cognition.
William replies by saying at first they weren’t sure what they needed, so they recorded everything and saw inside the guests, down to the core. Grace still isn’t sure how it is done, as she states they would have to scan the mind throughout their stay, William says a scanner was ‘built-in’.
Then he tips his hat, and then Grace takes off her hat too and briefly inspects it, implying that the scanners are located in them. William thinks that Grace’s interest to get involved is to revive her Mom, but she really wants to find out what drove her to the decision to commit suicide.
The scene changes to a flashback of and William and Juliet at their home, as she reiterates how proud of him her father would have been. She says she knows what pisses him off, like calling him Billy and can feel his anger and his need for his yearly pilgrimage.
She then asks what he does in the park, and that Logan has told her stories of what they do in the park, but she didn’t believe him as he was hysterical and wasted, which is what everyone thinks she is now.
She then goes on to talk about why she was attracted to him, as she talks of being surrounded by all the phony ruthless powerful men with power smiles and noted him among them, with his shabby suit and felt he was the real thing, the only one who didn’t fake it. She adds that he was really the only one who was good at being fake, even good enough to fool her, but not anymore.
William tries to talk to her, but she rejects his approaches and tells him not to touch her as he is a liar and a phony–a virus. She says he came into her house, into her family and consumed it from within, starting with her brother, father and now her, just as Grace enters the area.
She then shouts at her Mom, as Juliet accuses William of bringing her to the house just to expose her in front of her daughter. Juliet also mentions he is gas-lighting their daughter, and you get the feeling she may be right and could be manipulating his daughter to obtain the desired response. He has shown he is a man not to be trusted as he only has his own interests at heart.
Grace suggests she return to the psychiatric center but her Mom becomes upset at the idea and refuses to go back.
She calms down and tries to convince them both that she is fine, and just needs to lie down. William takes his wife to bed, as she questions her reality by asking if this or he is real. She asks him to tell her the truth if he ever loved her, to tell her one true thing.
As he pours her a drink, she says: “if you keep pretending, you’re not gonna remember who you are” He gives her the drink and says she will feel better, telling her to rest.
William and Grace are sitting downstairs, and Grace tells her father that she is not going to put up with her mother and will place her in psychiatric care under an involuntary stay.
He notices a chandelier is leaking and as Williams runs into the bathroom, he sees his wife in the bath with pills next to her, implying she has taken her own life in the bath.
You can’t choose your family
As the scene shifts back to the present timeline with Grace and William, he asks what Grace wants. She says she wants the truth but he accuses his daughter of being a host that was planted by Ford, there to distract him and know him off his feet.
He says “It is cleverly disguised but I see right through it. Nothing is gonna stop me from getting to the end. Not another one of your games, I make my own decisions and I’m gonna destroy this whole place.”
Grace then says that he doesn’t just think she is a host, but that the entire place is created just for him. Grace sees he is delusional and psychotic. He argues that the real Emily would have been at an extraction point, or long gone by now.
He doesn’t appreciate the effort that Emily has made to rescue and heal him, and noting he is walking away from her, she offers him a truth. She tells him she is not a host, but a daughter that is just trying to care for her Dad.
She tells him that he has been hiding in these false realities for so long he has completely lost his grip on what is real or not. As he laughs, she grabs him and says that she will expose his research project along with him, “Everything you are everything you’ve done, its gonna come out”, once they leave Westworld. She then goes on to tell him it is all going to come to light, and when it does, she intends to lock him up: “just like we were gonna do with Mom”.
William has a stern look, and you can tell he is planning on his next move based on the information he is receiving.
He responds by gas-lighting Grace just as her Mom said he was doing by manipulating her comments and turning them on her, saying it was she who put her Mom into a psychiatric institution; that it was her idea and that she alone made the decision. He also adds that maybe Ford forgot to add that little detail into her narrative.
Next: Westworld: 4 theories after ‘Vanishing Point’
This annoys Grace and she says how could she ever forget–that little detail haunted her, and William’s manipulation seems to work as she admits she blamed herself for her Mom’s death. She also says she stopped blaming herself, as she found a new source to direct the blame on, namely William.
She reveals that she saw his profile, which her Mom left for her to review, a reminder that Juliet was always trying to help her daughter, that she was not the bad one in the story. And that Grace feels guilty about all the times she sided with William as he played his game of manipulation. However, his profile card was the one thing that shattered Grace’s tranquil mind in regards to her father.
To continue reading this Westworld recap, check out part three here!