Westworld: Season 2, episode 9: Part 3 review

Credit: HBO

Our Westworld season 2, episode 9 in-depth review continues here! Be wary of spoilers ahead!

…As she tells him he hasn’t lost his grip on reality and is the essence of a lie, a Delos Strike Team arrives to collect the two.

Grace says confidently to her father that it is over, for good, and we see William glancing nervously at the approaching strike team, knowing it is all over, and that he will never be able to complete the final game that Ford created.

William now addresses Ford as he moves towards Grace, saying that he got sloppy and overreached. He goes on to say he never told anyone about his profile, and that the only way Grace could have known about it was through Ford.

At this point, you are left wondering which part of Grace stating that her mother ‘left the profile card for her to see’ did William not understand?!

He then sees that Grace has the card in her hand just as he is about to cut her arm to view the host control docking port and is visibly shook by this.

The scene now changes to Maeve, as the tech monitoring her says she does not have long to go before being decommissioned. We can almost sense the fear in Maeve as she lays helpless with eyes wide-open.

But then we see the arrival of Ford, who can now communicate with her thanks to the payload Bernard delivered. He says: “Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts” but feels that mankind has fallen further since the time it was written.

This quote is from a philosopher known as Plotinus. His treaties are collected and arranged as the Enneads.

Ford is very disappointed to see her end up this way. He said he had a different story in mind for her, waking from the dead, listening to her inner voice and then riding far away from here to freedom–a tale of escape.

He goes on to say: “I did not want you to suffer here…Look at the creatures you have to share this world with; these men of stone all this ugliness all this pain so they can patch a hole in their own broken code”

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It seems as his influence over Bernard is waning, he now turns his attention to Maeve. He says he tried to inject happiness, a worldview of his own in the hosts he created and of all of them–Maeve was his favorite, like a child he never had. He mentions how Maeve tried to save her child and vows to do the same.

He says: “You have come so far, and so much of your story to tell, shame to end it here, don’t let them” He kisses her on her forehead andd we see that Maeve has now received a payload from Ford and she starts to unlock. This is not the end of Maeve, she still has a story to tell.

The honeymoon is well and truly over

Meanwhile, Bernard and Elsie stop to get ammunition from dead hosts, and we see that Bernard is struggling to keep Ford’s thoughts from having a negative influence over him and has now decided to end the relationship

Bernard is told to kill Elsie but says that she saved him and says he is not going to hurt her. Ford disagrees and helps Bernard by giving him a gun and telling him that to open the door, he must kill Elsie.

So desperate and tormented is Bernard to free himself from Ford, that he ties himself up, throws the gun away and cuts into his arm to connect to his host port in a desperate attempt to delete all the code relating to Ford’s voice and consciousness and to ensure the survival of Elsie.

As he does this, he tells Ford he will survive as Bernard, not as Ford. Ford notices that Bernard is fighting him, and tries to keep him in check, but Bernard says he only brings violence and seems to successfully delete the code being sent by Ford, telling Elsie he was patching a glitch.

Elsie asks if he is going to hurt her but he says he is just protecting her, but then throws a locator device to her and tells her to wait for help to arrive, as he has to go. Elsie is upset that she has been dumped by Bernard.

We now see the MiB, all alone, and in pain, having continued his journey after dealing with his daughter, and is tormented by flashbacks of the people he killed, to a point where he is going to commit suicide and take his own life.

We see him point a gun to his head and the voice of Juliet saying tell me the truth, tell me one true thing, as a flashback takes us to the moment that William is putting her to sleep in their home.

He narrates his story about the invisible stain, an affliction that resides in him, like a darkness, invisible to everyone, saying how he saw glimpses, and it was a part of him all along. As he decided how much of it he let into the world, trying to do the right thing, being faithful, generous and kind, and hoping that he has to count for something.

As he thinks Juliet is asleep, he talks to her about his state of mind, how he built a wall around them to protect them but in the end, the wall crumbles, as Juliet saw right through him. He apologizes to her, for seeing through him, and admits that everything she feels is true, that he does not belong to her, or this world.

He kisses her forehead, as did Ford with Maeve and leaves, but Juliet was not asleep, just pretending, and locates his profile card and views the Westworld interactions between William and Dolores, Maeve and all the other hosts–and now sees another, darker side of her husband, his world–a place she never knew.

She hides the card in her music box, and then the scene switches to the moment she is discovered in the bath but perhaps she did not commit suicide. He now talks about choices as he lowers the gun from his head, deciding not to kill himself, but then starts to cut open his arm.

He asks whether the choices he made were truly his, to begin with as he questions his reality and hears his wife doing the same.

It’s not me, it’s you

The scene shift to Dolores and Teddy, who are well on their way towards the Valley Beyond. Dolores tells him they have to keep on, as he reloads his gun and takes in the natural splendor

Teddy tells her there is no trace of nature in the environment or them, and she says no, that means we are free, and we will be the first in the world to make a choice.

Teddy thinks the people they were before was just a dream–that they used to be in love, saying no matter how much I change or you change me, you will always be my cornerstone. Recalling the day he was commissioned and he first saw Dolores in analysis mode and worrying if Dolores was cold, and how he wanted to protect her.

He then takes out his gun, and Dolores thinks he is going to kill her and says she changed him into a monster. Dolores says it was to survive, but Teddy asks what is the use if they are just like them, and thinks he sees where this is going.

He says he would never hurt her, and he will protect her until the day he dies, and then in an example of exercising his newfound free will, decides he cannot protect her anymore, doesn’t want to play and commits suicide by shooting himself.

Dolores is completely overcome by sadness and anger, and looks distressed and confused, and wasn’t counting on her boyfriend upgrade going so awry. Perhaps she will keep his core and rebuild him with a few tweaks, or maybe she will get to the outside world and then find a new human partner.

Is William is playing a clever game by acting crazy? The suicide and deaths of almost all the Delos family may all seem coincidental, but this is nothing less than the work of a cold-blooded serial killer, and psychopath who has carefully constructed a long-term plan to take full control over Delos and his project.

Perhaps William’s plan all along was to install himself into the Delos Empire, and take control of it by killing off all the family members.

William is going to be exposed for his project and unethical practices in Delos, and is under pressure, from his wife, her father, and even his own daughter, and he needs to silence them. He manipulates situations to make it appear as though he had nothing to do with the circumstances surrounding the deaths.

This has worked well so far, as he managed to trap James Delos, and drive his wife to suicide, or perhaps killed her and made it look as such.  Perhaps under the control of William and his project, the aim is to kill the real wealthy humans and substitute them with their hosts which can be fully controlled.

Next: Westworld: 4 major takeaways from season 2, episode 9

As William is now showing signs of madness, he also is aware that he is being filmed constantly in Westworld, so he needs to play a convincing role of a madman in order to justify the murder of his daughter, which is why he kept accusing her of being a host. Everything he said was designed to be recorded including his attack on the rescue team.

William is probably not a robot, although it is implied in the episode, and this is just a clever ruse by him to make people think he has gone mad. If he is able to claim diminished responsibility, then he still retains control of Delos, and there are no longer any members of the Delos empire to get in the way.

However, we know Logan was found, so perhaps the lesser of two evils will return to save Delos.

What were your thoughts on the episode? Share your comments below!

The season two finale of Westworld airs this Sunday at 9 PM EST! Don’t miss it!