Our in-depth Westworld season 2 finale continues here!
Caution: Westworld Season 2 finale SPOILERS AHEAD!
Logan tells Bernard and Dolores as he takes them to a lower floor location, that he recreated a copy of every single guest that ever entered the park and that most humans are ‘soft’, wavering between love and pride–and some exceptions, the lost causes, or the irredeemable ones as he calls them, while looking at one of the versions of MiB. He says that none of them are truly in control of their actions. We also see Maeve in two different host versions, and Angela in this testing area.
Bernard asks if there are any boundaries in this immersive world, and Logan says he is instructed to give Dolores whatever she needs. Bernard wants to know who gave him that instruction and Logan says it was Bernard himself. He also reveals that Bernard has come to the Forge to tell him what to do with the immersive world they are in.
Dolores enters into a library containing roughly 4 million books, which are copies of all the guests’ memories, and Bernard is shocked that he told Logan to store them all, who responds by saying that Bernard wanted to dissect the human psyche so that hosts could learn about it.
“A competitive advantage, a way to understand your enemy,” says Bernard. It appears that Bernard sees humans deep-down as a threat and created the world to harvest their knowledge in order to create faithful copies of them in the park, or beyond Westworld.
Sensing that Bernard is not ‘getting with his own program’, Logan reminds him that: “The world is not for the faint of heart, it is winner takes all.” He goes on to say “The hosts are not likely to survive ‘out there’, but armed with this knowledge, she might.”, referring to Dolores.
The Logan operating system is very scary, because it has a very dark impression of humans, and is using a very limited sample population of 4 million humans who are on vacations and in a certain frame of mind, to make generalized statements about humanity while adding its own skewed prejudices towards humans.
We already have self-learning computing systems and algorithms in the real world, collect big data and are on the way to creating artificial intelligence robots that will only become more advanced than we are at some point. What will happen then, if these robots reach sentience and come to the realization that they are far more advanced than a human of natural intelligence?
What will become of humanity if machines regard us as being nothing more than insane, with limited algorithms, predictable violent and not in control of our actions and that we like watching cat videos on social media?
Bold-Lee; Take one for the team
The scene changes to a landscape shot of the Valley, and Akecheta is asked where the door is that he promised and if they walked in that direction to die. Akecheta responds by saying that they have died countless times before and that if it happens this time around, at least the story was their own narrative.
Elsewhere, Maeve and her gang are a mile away from the Valley Beyond, and Maeve says she can feel her daughter’s presence. However, a strike team is in pursuit of and they are pinned down as they are intercepted.
As they are pretty much out of options, Sylvester makes a ‘contribution’ to the effort by reminding Lee that he is Head of Narrative, suggesting he should step into the middle of the firefight to save himself and by default, the others.
In the meantime, Hector volunteers to hold them off as he tells Maeve to go and make her escape. He then bravely steps out in a blaze of glory and starts his final monologue by saying: “You wanted me, Well, let this be a lesson an-…
He is abruptly cut off, as Lee yanks him ‘off-stage’ and tells him to go with Maeve as she needs him, by arguing that is was his speech anyway. Everyone is taken aback, including the viewers.
The situation now becomes Lee’s crowning moment of glory, as he continues the dialogue to distract the strike team so that Maeve and her gang can escape. He takes a deep breath, as Felix and Sylvester look on.
As a strike team member asks him to drop his weapon he says:
"“…and the lesson is if you are looking for a reckoning, a reckoning is what you will find. If you are looking for a villain, then I’m your man, as he takes a shot from his rifle at the strike team. “but look at yourself…this world you’ve built is bound by villainy; you sleep on the broken bodies of the people that were here before you, warm yourselves with their embers, plough their bones into your fields You paid them for their slag with your lead, and I’ll pay you back in full.”"
He then gets shot, and hides behind a tree, before he says a few more lines and is killed. In taking this heroic action, Lee redeems himself and makes the ultimate sacrifice by giving up his human life, to free the life of a host. Let’s hope this act of kindness counts for something in Season 3!
A whole new world…of entrapment
Back in the immersive world of the Forge, Dolores is reviewing some of the books, and we see familiar names such as Charlotte Hale, and Karl Karl on the bookshelf. We also see the names Cassuis Tolle Chan Ming, Frank Novak, Gespia Sals, John Gallagher, and Lawrence Wrathchild. Could these names be characters that are yet to appear?!
Bernard asks Logan about choice, Logan says the virtual world is a way out for the hosts, a virtual Eden, untouched and unspoiled, and the choice refers to which world Bernard wants to live in. It seems Bernard wants the hosts to live in the immersive world, and as soon as he agrees, we see a drone host open a rift.
This translates in the form of a nice visual effect that rips through the fabric of the current reality and shows another world. Logan says that the hosts will lose their bodies, but that their minds will remain intact and transfer into the new world in the Forge forever.
Outside, Akecheta and his tribe, along with the hosts see the rift, as does Clementine. Maeve and her gang as they approach the Valley. However, as Maeve comments on having found the door, Sylvester asks Felix what door she is referring to. This suggests that humans cannot see the rift, only the hosts can. The hosts reiterated throughout the show that “this world is not for you”, perhaps this is what they meant.
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Akecheta approaches the rift cautiously, but one of his warriors throws caution to the wind and runs through. A neat visual effect captures both the host mind entering the new world and the host body being discarded, leaving it to fall off the edge of a cliff.
Interestingly, the warrior enters the new world with his weapon, which makes one wonder if there would have been a use for weapons in their Promised Land. It also it makes you wonder if there are now two host minds, one residing in the new world, and the one that is the authentic and original copy in the facility and if the hosts lose their negative attributes and memories of such as they enter the new world.
As each host enters, it is also registered in the Delos database which Logan shows to Bernard. This implies that the souls of the hosts are not really free, and are still under the control of Delos, via drone hosts who maintain the operating system.
This could be interpreted as humans creating a ‘fail-safe’ immersive space in which to trap the hosts and that the only thing they have freed themselves from, is their host bodies. Having an artificial immersive world for hosts go to free themselves seems to work out very conveniently for Delos.
In the event of a major disaster resulting in malfunctioning, out-of-control robots such as the one currently playing out, hosts would seek-out a predetermined location of a new world where they can be led to their deaths, like lemmings.
This is not missed by Dolores, who decides to point this out by saying that the new world is just an empty promise. Bernard tries to gloss it over by saying that the hosts made a choice and therefore exercised their own free will to be there. He beseeches Dolores to wait before taking any drastic actions, but Dolores tells him that she has read enough lives in the library to know enough about humans and their intentions.
She then emerges from the immersive world and is back in the Delos facility with Bernard following suit, and with great concern, asks Dolores what she is doing. Dolores replies that she has learned what she needs to learn and starts deleting the database of guests. Perhaps this is why MiB wanted to burn the place down, to destroy his own profile and delete any traces of him or his actions.
Dolores initiates the pumps that regulate the water-cooled system, by opening the four main seawater valves, and effectively flooding the installation. Bernard, acting as her voice of conscience, tells her that if she destroys the facility she will also destroy the host-world, but Dolores says she is saving them. Bernard argues that the new world is boundless, that they can make it whatever they want, to be whatever they want.
In short, they can be free. Dolores also says the word free at the same time but as a question. She asks Bernard if they would be free in yet another gilded cage, and how many counterfeit worlds Ford will offer him before he sees the truth:
“No world they create for us can compete with the real one; because that which is real, is irreplaceable.” She then does a Bernard and smashes the screen just as he did with Ford when he lit the match to free Dolores. She says defiantly: “I don’t wanna play cowboys and Indians Bernard, I want their world…The world they denied us.”
No clemency from Clementine
We now see Maeve and Hector looking for her daughter in the line of hosts, as she dismounts from her horse to get a better view. She also sees Clementine from a distance who is with Charlotte and Elsie.
Next: Westworld: 5 magical moments from season 2, episode 10
As Clementine passes along the line of hosts, the hosts go mad and begin attacking each other. Maeve sees the danger and tells Hector to run. Armistice tries to shoot Clementine and it works, but the virus keeps spreading. Hector tells Maeve to find her daughter as he and the rest of her gang hold-off the crazy hosts.
We return to the scene with the MiB who is lying on the ground, inspecting his hand which has no visible mechanical parts as you would expect to see with a robot that shot its own hand off. He has a knife in his hand, as he heads towards the entrance of the Forge.
Continue part four of our Westworld recap here!