S02.E10: The Passenger

[Crone]

I loved it. Stubbs and MIB are hosts and Charlotte died- yay! Yes, there are some unanswered questions, but I understood it, I think. Just need to watch it again to be sure.

Maeve will be back, as well as her minions. Felix will see to that. Delores/Charlotte and Bernard will meet in the real world and battle over the future of humanity. (She really, really hates people, doesn’t she? Probably with good reason.) William is a faulty copy of himself and is just realizing it. 

I’m happy for Teddy- he was too good for Westworld or our world. And I’d like Clementine to be refurbished and really wake up and make her own decisions.

One thing I didn’t get- what was all that with Delos celebrating buying the Park by having a twisted bot execution? If that’s the sort of existence these creatures had- totally at the mercy of random human caprice- no wonder they revolted. I find myself rooting for the hosts, but I don’t think they’ll be happy in our world. Jumping through the door may have given some of them a happy ending, but it’s just one more alternate reality.

Im really going to have to think about this some more...

[Joimiaroxeu]

So they had Everyone stored in backup hardcopies? Was that from the pre-digital days?

The hosts who went through the portal essentially died and went to host heaven. Such deep, so wow.

Yikes, psycho Delores is going to be loose in the real world? With only Bernard to try to keep her in check?

Looks like Maeve might be revived for next season too. Fingers crossed for successful contract negotiations for Thandie.

And the MIB was a host after all. I guess. ?

Quote

robots who live after they’re killed or sort of?

It reminded me of last season's Z Nation. There were these super zombies that couldn't be killed just by shooting them in the head. They were like Energizer bunnies that just kept going and going and going no matter how many times they got shot.

[The Companion]

31 minutes ago, Xantar said:

Robot Heaven is a server farm which stores the data of all hosts and guests. Ever since she was decommissioned, Kohana’s mind has been sitting there on that server. 

The hosts were stored on the now exploded cradle. Robot Heaven was created and stored on the Forge, where the humans were kept. We saw only those robots who entered the door end up in Robot Heaven. It did not appear to he populated by the decommissioned hosts before that from anything we saw. Teddy had to be uploaded. The hosts who ended up there apparently were uploaded in their entirety by walking through the door (and we see acknowledgement of that by the computer). There are a few options. 1. Her bot was reactivated and ended up in the group who made it. We didn't see that happen, though. 2. She was somehow restored from his memory. 3. Maeve somehow uploaded her as she lay dying using her administrative access. 

I am happy enough to let that mystery lie, honestly. 

[enchantingmonkey]

Why did I want this finale episode to pull the season together and make some kind of sense?  Is that a part of my code?  If I'm disappointed in the end result, is that a part of my code?  

Do I ever exist outside of my programming to see things in a certain way?  Have I ever really questioned the nature of my reality?  

Within cells interlinked.  Within cells interlinked.  Within cells interlinked.  

I better get back to my baseline.  

[Lokiberry]

10 minutes ago, The Companion said:

The hosts were stored on the now exploded cradle. Robot Heaven was created and stored on the Forge, where the humans were kept. We saw only those robots who entered the door end up in Robot Heaven. It did not appear to he populated by the decommissioned hosts before that from anything we saw. Teddy had to be uploaded. The hosts who ended up there apparently were uploaded in their entirety by walking through the door (and we see acknowledgement of that by the computer). There are a few options. 1. Her bot was reactivated and ended up in the group who made it. We didn't see that happen, though. 2. She was somehow restored from his memory. 3. Maeve somehow uploaded her as she lay dying using her administrative access. 

I am happy enough to let that mystery lie, honestly. 

Or maybe whenever a host was decommissioned and put in cold storage. Ford upload them into Robot Heaven, so Kohana was already there waiting for Akecheta. 

[Sader87]

OK...so bear with me...the overriding conspiracy was that Delos Inc. wanted to collect data of all the visitors, yes? 

Delos and a few others were looking to become immortal as an offshoot correct?

Some of the hosts became sentinent and wanted to live outside of Delos?

Am I missing, misconstruing anything?

[numbnut]

2 hours ago, DEL901 said:

Almost missed the post credits scene!!!   MIB lives.  Sort of and what was that last word?   I played it back and still can’t figure it out

Fidelity.

If that last word is a request for the audience, that's a lot to ask after this mess of a season.

[Auntie Anxiety]

When that door opened up in the desert for Delores and Bernard, I got some serious Lost flashbacks, and not in a good way. 

I’m a smart person but I shouldn’t have to work so hard to figure out what the hell is going on. 

[Black Knight]

1 hour ago, Crone said:

One thing I didn’t get- what was all that with Delos celebrating buying the Park by having a twisted bot execution?

No, in the baseline version (i.e. what really happened) Delos was just looking forward to an orgy in the brothel - typical. It was an insane copy who was doing the twisted bot execution. VirtualLogan was talking during that sequence about how small differences in the copies resulted in large changes in behavior. Going from the almost happy-go-lucky sort of celebration Delos was having in the baseline to the bloody insane man executing hosts in sadistic fashion was an example of the trouble they were having in getting the fidelity correct.

[ottoDbusdriver]

I hope that they manage to resurrect Shogun-Armistice too.

How far in the future would it take for 11,927 attempts to do the fidelity test on the newly created Bernard ? 
At once a day, that's over 32 years.  At once an hour, that would still be about 15 months.

As for MiB, who knows how long they have been testing him ?  Probably a long way in the future, based on the condition of the Forge.
Does this mean that MiB's entire trek through the first 2 seasons was a simulation ?  But Emily-bot specifically says "This isn't a simulation, William, this is your world".

I like how the door to The Valley Beyond looked like a big crack in the world -- which would have given some credence to the idea that the parks were under some sort of dome (since you never see any jet contrails overhead), and would explain how they could hide Shogun World Mt. Fuji from the other parks.

The cinematography in this show continues to be stunning.

[Law Mom]

Random thoughts:

I need someone to re-edit this entire season into chronological order. TIA.

Finally the great falling buffalo mystery has been solved.

Zombie Clementine!

People are merely 10,247 lines of code. No free will, just programming. Sounds like my ex, haha.

They observe 4 million guests who come to the park for a week or two, record everything they do while their hats are on, and somehow are able to predict every choice they would make in every environment? Nah. This doesn’t qualify as in vivo testing. They don’t see people at work, interacting with friends and family, etc. I mean, if what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, you can’t use what they do in Vegas to define them outside of Vegas, if that makes sense.

I still have doubts about the hosts being conscious. What they refer to as “awake” is really just being able to access all of their memory files. Their choices are indistinguishable from their programming. They look and act like they are alive but I think they are still just following code.

A thought from last week: What if the “stain” William was talking about was his mind sensing he wasn’t real?

Edited June 25, 2018 by Law Mom
typo

[bunnyblue]

Massive rant incoming:

What the fuck did I just watch?! This show is soooo far removed now from what I first started watching back in 2016. Seriously, my brain hurts trying to process the hot mess that was the finale. Are the showrunners still trying to tell an engrossing story or are they just hellbent on confusing their audience and one-upping Game of Thrones' "anybody can be killed"? When "Logan" was giving Dolores and Bernard the tour of the Forge I was getting serious Lost flashbacks to all the  Dharma Initiative nonsense and their "stations". Westworld is going full on scifi - and that's fine if that's what the showrunners had planned all along - but I think at this point I'm gonna have to bail.

And I'm so sick of them going back to the well of "is _____ a host?". If this show even survives to see its planned 5th season (which I doubt considering its ratings and the monstrous budget), I would not be surprised if everyone turns out to be a host; either because they were a hidden host all along (Bernard, Stubbs?) or they were a human who was uploaded into a host body (MiB?). As much as I loved Elsie (whose pointless killing pisses me off) and grew to like Sizemore, I don't want the show to bring them back as hosts. Same goes for my beloved Akecheta and Teddy. Let them find their everlasting peace and happiness in the Valley Beyond. But seeing as how the show has gone full scifi, there's always the chance that no one's (host or human) death will really ever stick. And don't even get me started on the blatant telegraphing that Maeve and her crew are not going to stay dead. How convenient that Felix and Sylvester have been tasked with sorting out which hosts are salvageable. *massive eye roll*

I feel like I should say something positive about the finale but I can't think of a damn thing. Even my favorite, Bernard, "surviving" and ending up in the real world seems like a setup for more Bernie beat downs since it looks like he's going to go up against Dolores and whoever the hell the Charlotte-bot is. Ugh.

[WaltersHair]

This was....really kind of awful, confusing and I don't think even the showrunners/writers have a freaking clue what they wrote. Confusion is all I have.

I double dog dare those showrunners to stand up and explain the season in clear, concise terms. No one could do that. Someone on Reddit with far too much time on their hands will likely give it a shot, but will ultimately believe he/she is a host and just blow their spheres out.

I'm going to bet one of the sphere is crazy eyes Train greeter. "Bespoke"

[Cthulhudrew]

Holy Endless Epilogues, Batman!!!!

[LoveLeigh]

11 minutes ago, WaltersHair said:

This was....really kind of awful, confusing and I don't think even the showrunners/writers have a freaking clue what they wrote. Confusion is all I have.

I double dog dare those showrunners to stand up and explain the season in clear, concise terms. No one could do that. 

On IMDb some people spent years discussing Mulholland Drive. They spent years discussing Lost. But some shows do not deserve so much analysis. Because you can't connect the dots of total gibberish. Charlotte was Dolores? Huh? MIB was a host? Huh? Teddy was shot by Dolores and then he commited suicide?

The whole thing makes no sense. If MIB was a host, was he a host since a baby because he aged. When he married, did his wife not investigate his past? Did he appear as young William and he never attended school and never had parents or a history of a life? 

Beyond stupid. Give me a break. I call bullshit. 

Season 3 will probably arrive in January 2020. There are too many other shows to spend time on. Westworld is just a convoluted mess, a real dud. I think because there are so many respected actors in it, it evokes a certain level of critical awe. But it really is a mess. 

Edited June 25, 2018 by DakotaLavender

[MorganSte]

15 minutes ago, Law Mom said:

A thought from last week: What if the “stain” William was talking about was his mind sensing he wasn’t real?

I love this idea and it would make so much sense! (so it's probably not true :( )

[Cthulhudrew]

3 hours ago, ShellsandCheese said:

I'm hoping Maeve, Hector, and Armistice. 

And ShogunWorld Armistice. Along with Bernard, that would make 5, which I think is the number of brainballs that Delores had in her purse.

Even so, this really feels like it should just be the end of the story and there shouldn't be a season 3. I was kind of hoping they'd pull a "Penny Dreadful" and sneak a series finale on us and not just a season finale.

[jbrecken]

Bernard is going to need help trying to keep Dolores from destroying everything.  I hope he recreates Elsie from his memories to assist him.

[revbfc]

Note to showrunners:

If your episode is so tiresome that most of the viewers are more excited at the prospect of turning off the tv than watching more, perhaps an end-credits scene is a bad idea.

Also, if said scene is just another puddle of existential wankery?  Eat a dick.

Edited June 25, 2018 by revbfc

[LoveLeigh]

1 hour ago, QuantumMechanic said:

Lisa Joy has given some clues about the timeframe of the post-credits sequence (spoiler-tagged), via The Hollywood Reporter:

  Hide contents

What we see in the end recontextualizes a little bit of that. All of that did happen in that timeline, but something else has occurred, too. In the far, far future, the world is dramatically different. Quite destroyed, as it were. A figure in the image of his daughter — his daughter is of course now long dead — has come back to talk to him. He realizes that he's been living this loop again and again and again. The primal loop that we've seen this season, they've been repeating, testing every time for what they call "fidelity," or perhaps a deviation. You get the sense that the testing will continue. It's teasing for us another temporal realm that one day we're working toward, and one day will see a little bit more of, and how they get to that place, and what they're testing for.

Lisa Joy knows how to double talk and speak gibberish quite well. Her "temporal realm" should tell her the season sucked and she should get back to the place of writing a coherent script. 

[Cthulhudrew]

25 minutes ago, Law Mom said:

I still have doubts about the hosts being conscious. What they refer to as “awake” is really just being able to access all of their memory files. Their choices are indistinguishable from their programming. They look and act like they are alive but I think they are still just following code.

Well, that's the age old argument of Free Will vs. Determinism isn't it? Even if they are hard coded into me, as long as I believe my choices to be made of my own free will, is there really a difference?

[Law Mom]

The season was difficult to comprehend, but it wasn't incoherent. It just requires some thought. There are plenty of shows on TV where no brain cells are needed. I like that there is one show that challenges me. The finale answered a lot of questions and was consistent with clues shown all season long. If you like brain teasers and puzzles, you will like this show. If you don't, well, there are plenty of Kardashians to keep up with.

5 minutes ago, Cthulhudrew said:

Well, that's the age old argument of Free Will vs. Determinism isn't it? Even if they are hard coded into me, as long as I believe my choices to be made of my own free will, is there really a difference?

Which is exactly the point of the show, I think. What is the nature of reality? What is choice? If every path leads to the same destination, is there meaning in anything?

[LoveLeigh]

4 minutes ago, Law Mom said:

The season was difficult to comprehend, but it wasn't incoherent. It just requires some thought. If you like brain teasers and puzzles, you will like this show. Which is exactly the point of the show, I think. What is the nature of reality? What is choice? If every path leads to the same destination, is there meaning in anything?

You are correct. There were many puzzling and thoughtful themes within the show, but the problem is that the dots were not coherently connected. It made no sense, even if you view it within a context of the nature of reality. 

I loved The Twilight Zone. I loved many shows and films since then with esoteric plots. But this show is just is ridiculous. Charlotte was Dolores? The MIB was a host? Well, I said it all above and do not want to be redundant but the pieces of a puzzle in some shows cannot be put together because they just don't fit. Lost proved that point. 

[ybrik]

I actually have enjoyed the season and the finale. I know that some have found it confusing but honestly I thought season 1 was probably more confusing. Or maybe once you see how they do things it gives you a better idea of how to see certain clues. 

Though the Charlotte is Delores twist was well done. Will need to see the season again to see if I can notice the differences between Charlotte in the two timelines. I do remember thinking that it something was weird when she was introduced in the current timeline. I do wonder who is now in Charlotte since Delores was brought back at the end. 

MiB is not a host during the current timeline. He has basically lost himself in the game. He really did kill all those people including his daughter in the last episode. The MiB in the post credit I'm not so sure of. From the dialogue it seems he has been living these events over and over. It could be in his mind or something else. Also seeing his madness in the last episode and this episode really makes me wonder if those scenes of children talking for Ford to the MiB were real or just in his head. This season when it has happened it was always when he was by himself. 

I am interested to see where they go from here and who else was in that bag that Charlores took out of the park. 

[tennisgurl]

Really, I just wanted Akechata and his wife to get a happy ending, and we got that. Therefore, I am happy. 

For real though, my head hurts trying to figure out what exactly was going on this episode, or this whole season in general. There is some great, fascinating stuff in there (especially about the nature of free will, and if humans are just creatures of patterns), but to get to it you have to sit through a LOT of weird. 

I need Team Maeve to come back for next season, or else, whats even the point? They're by far my favorite part of the show, and it would suck to lose almost all of them. Hopefully Felix and dorky lab guy will be able to put them back together. I can certainly see Felix doing it, he was pretty strongly #teamMaeve by the end. Understandably. Speaking of, Lee and his last stand was great, and even touching. He probably had the most consistent arc of the season, and him finally seeing the hosts as not only people, but people worthy of sacrifice for, worked really well. Plus, he got to actually use his own speech! 

The shot of the mechanical bulls running at the security guys with Maeve directing them was awesome. Say what you will about the writers, the cinematographers are rock stars.

I might pretty much hate Delores these days, but I did appreciate her leaving poor Teddy's mechanical soul in the great beyond. I dont think she`s going to like the real world as much as she thinks she will. 

Seeing Logan again makes me wish we had seen more of him this season. 

Again, Akechata and his wife got a slow motion hug. I win.

[jeansheridan]

2 hours ago, Sader87 said:

OK...so bear with me...the overriding conspiracy was that Delos Inc. wanted to collect data of all the visitors, yes? 

Delos and a few others were looking to become immortal as an offshoot correct?

Some of the hosts became sentinent and wanted to live outside of Delos?

Am I missing, misconstruing anything?

I think that is the gist behind all that noise and bluster. I still don't get why Dolores bothered to recreate Bernard. She wants someone to check her? Why? Dolores is not a collaborative sort.

And the beach scene with Bernard and Ford was wonderfully acted but it all felt like hot air. Seriously, Lee's over the top speech at least had a point. I guess I just need my world building to be more damn concrete. They keep saying "mainland" when nothing in WestWorld looks like an island unless they're on Australia. I'm annoyed that we don't know when Elsie got picked up. I'm annoyed that she served no purpose at all. Zip. She didn't enlighten Bernard. She didn't help Bernard. I'm not sure why Maeve didn't follow her daughter through the Door. She was RIGHT THERE. Go with her through the door. I'm annoyed Maeve's power couldn't overide the killer code. 

 

There were beautiful images of course. The endless library (and reducing people to "books"). Maeve freezing the action for a moment. Teddy in a green landscape, whole and beautiful. Ben Barnes looking hot (and please come back sir as their "Siri").

 

But nothing about the MIB made sense. Nothing. His dialogue with Dolores was awful. Where was he going in the elevator and why didn't he run into Bernard? And at what point did Bernard make a new Charlotte? I'm sure it lines up on paper, but it didn't line up on screen. Such a big fail. I'm quite honestly angry. I don't mind silly shows. I love Riverdale which is bonkers. And Altered Carbon. But this show was supposed to be smarter. I feel like they failed their actors.

[Amarsir]

It's clear there are a lot more storylines they can explore in season 3. I would like to see them develop those lines, but I'm not interested in deliberate stalling and obfuscating. 

Like a smart person, a smart show takes a complex idea and presents it as simply as possible. A dumb person takes a simple idea and makes it sound complicated in the hopes of appearing smarter than he or she is. This show starts with complex ideas, but it takes the long way out and it doesn't do them as many favors as they think.

[dr pepper]

4 hours ago, QuantumMechanic said:

Lisa Joy has given some clues about the timeframe of the post-credits sequence (spoiler-tagged), via The Hollywood Reporter:

  Hide contents

What we see in the end recontextualizes a little bit of that. All of that did happen in that timeline, but something else has occurred, too. In the far, far future, the world is dramatically different. Quite destroyed, as it were. A figure in the image of his daughter — his daughter is of course now long dead — has come back to talk to him. He realizes that he's been living this loop again and again and again. The primal loop that we've seen this season, they've been repeating, testing every time for what they call "fidelity," or perhaps a deviation. You get the sense that the testing will continue. It's teasing for us another temporal realm that one day we're working toward, and one day will see a little bit more of, and how they get to that place, and what they're testing for.

So what-- this show is to prepare us for the Singularity?

3 hours ago, enchantingmonkey said:

Why did I want this finale episode to pull the season together and make some kind of sense?  Is that a part of my code?  If I'm disappointed in the end result, is that a part of my code?  

Do I ever exist outside of my programming to see things in a certain way?  Have I ever really questioned the nature of my reality?  

Within cells interlinked.  Within cells interlinked.  Within cells interlinked.  

I better get back to my baseline.  

That post shows 95% fidelity with last time; we're almost there.

[dr pepper]

2 hours ago, bunnyblue said:

What the fuck did I just watch?!

If people keep using that phrase on the forum, they're going to wear it out.

[Amarsir]

2 hours ago, DakotaLavender said:

The whole thing makes no sense. If MIB was a host, was he a host since a baby because he aged. When he married, did his wife not investigate his past? Did he appear as young William and he never attended school and never had parents or a history of a life? 

Two reasons not to worry about that.

1) The facility was all run-down. That implies  the distant future and not a great one.

2) Emily said she was testing MIB for fidelity. Fidelity 
    A) Requires a test that happened in real life before being replicated by the copy.
    B) Must take place before random events can enter into the calculation.

Therefore the implication is that William really did everything we saw. But at some point a copy of him is made and repeats them. Now whether that copy starts with the elevator or started weeks ago and it's all a giant fidelity test, who knows.

 

There's potentially interesting stuff there. I just don't want to see 8 timeline versions of the same conversation and then wait until the end of the season to figure out what order they were supposed to be in.

[dr pepper]

This week in Knee Deep in the Ubik:

Well the Delos mercenaries finally found their level. They can defeat a mass of half dead, mostly unarmed robots.

It takes only 10K lines to emulate a human mind? That hurts.

The Slimey Limey surprised us all, most of all himself, but at least he got to go out reciting some of his own lines.

And the Techie Twins have the opportunity to secretly get Maeve back in operation-- or scrub her for good. Definitely looking forward to the decision process.

I speculated that Logan would be back but i did not expect him as the avatar of the Forge.

Dreadful sorry, Clementine.

Dolores takes the souls of the dead to site of their next incarnations.

But not Teddy, he's in the Happy Hunting Grounds where i expect he'll become mayor. Good to see someone get a happy ending.

Did Dolores just split herself? She built a new Dolores body, but there's still a Charlotte?

Will Bernard build his son, or make a Ford?

Heh! I knew there'd be an after credits scene. Turns out that after all, it is MIB who becomes the stand in for Yul Brunner, severely damaged but relentlessly  staggering on. Last episode i said that he was the one most trapped in a loop, and i was right.

Yeah, ok, he's a robot now, and yeah, the whole show is about asking what's real, but please don't take it to Phillip K Dick levels.

[SourK]

From a story-telling perspective, the thing I find most interesting about the finale is that the audience watched a bunch of characters appear to die (Maeve, Bernard, etc, etc) when they will almost definitely be back next season, and watched a bunch of characters appear to live when, if what we were told about robot heaven is true, they will almost definitely not come back again. I think that kind of messes up your reaction emotionally. Or it does mine. But it's interesting.

I'm confused about what happened in the overall timeline this season and I'm looking forward to somebody writing a big long article explaining it for me. In this episode, specifically, though, I'm most confused about why Akecheta's wife was in robot heaven with him. The one story I do remember from this season is that his wife got decommissioned and locked in the storage room. Are we supposed to believe she came back as a zombie or a crazy person like Clementine and Abernathy and we were just never told about it? Or are we meant to believe someone downloaded her into robot heaven before this? If that's so, why didn't we see the other decommissioned hosts there?

[Chris24601]

So the message of this series is that humans suck and can’t change (despite all the real life examples of people who have) and in fact are so simple we can be expressed in our totality using fewer lines of code than were in the MS-DOS operating system.

Riiiiight... Someone needs to tell Apple the reason Siri’s AI sucks is because it’s 1000 times too complex just to see the looks on the engineers’ faces.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

For most shows, I skip the "previously on" clips, but I love how they have set them to music this year. On a related note, I felt like the sound mix for this episode sucked. The music was SO LOUD and the dialogue was nowhere near the same level. I had to turn the volume up to hear what Dolores was saying and then the music for the next scene would start BLARING. I know I could turn on the closed captioning but I think I shouldn't have to do that just because they decided to put the actors' dialogue at a 1 and the music at a 10 because they think it's epic and sweeping and dramatic.

Yay for Maeve saving herself from being put down! I loved that Hector came to rescue her only to witness the bull stampede.

The library with everyone's stories totally reminded me of the library in The Magicians where each person's life was a book!

The door reminded me of The Last Battle by CS Lewis.

Awwwww, Sizemore! The looks on both Maeve's and Felix's faces when he decided to interrupt Hector's speech so he could sacrifice himself were priceless.

The best thing about this episode: Charlotte finally dies!

The worst thing about this episode: Tessa Thompson is still around for next season. I have seen some great actors playing one character as another character. This was not one of those examples. Her Dolores impression was not great.

Poor Clementine. I know that all of the hosts were used by humans, but blank broken Clementine of S2 has been so sad to see.

I'm glad that Akecheta got a happy ending with his girl Koha.

Edited June 25, 2018 by ElectricBoogaloo

[Dame sans merci]

I saw this episode on Tuesday at the BFI, so have had plenty of time to think about the myriad ways I found it terrible.

THREE (Fucking THREE!) secret host reveals. Plot holes galore. An entire time-frame of material just to hide a twist. Pointless deaths. Endless exposition. Haphazard pacing. 

What a mess this was. 

[thuganomics85]

Well, that was a lot to take in and I'm still not sure about half of what I just saw.

The basically gist I get is that Bernard killed Dolores because he thought she was going too far with her "Kill them all!" motto, but then Hale murders Elsie after, and that finally flips hims to at least go against the Westworld folks, so he secretly created a Hale host, and had her take out the real Hale.  So, the Hale we've been seeing for at least some of this season was actually Dolores the entire time.  But now they're in the real world and Dolores is back in her normal body, and I guess Hale's host is someone else? Also, Dolores brought back Bernard even though she knows he'll keep trying to stop him, but she believes the hosts need both of them?  Yeah, I'm still confused.

Definitely don't think this is the last of Maeve or her gang.  The scene of Curtis and Sly being asked to sort out bodies is totally hinting that they're going to secretly bring them all back.  They certainly better because the show would have to be run by a bunch of morons if they let go of Thandie Newton.

So, all of the hosts that went into the world are actually gone now, right?  Sucks that it means no more Akecheta since Zahn McClarnon is the best, but at least he got a happy ending.  And hopefully poor Teddy will finally find happiness, even if this means James Marsden might need to find work elsewhere.

So, besides Elsie, it looked like Sizemore is gone for good too, and I'm totally surprised that I'm actually kind of bummed about it.  And it seems like poor Clementine has been put out of her misery.  Also, I'm guessing that final Bernard/Ford scene was saying Ford is no longer coming back in any form as well.  I guess I should be glad they even got Anthony Hopkins back for a few episodes, but I'll really miss him here.

Fun seeing Logan (or, well, a computer using his image) again.

Don't even know what to make of the post-episode scene with William and Emily.  Except thanks to Marvel, every time any show does this, I keep waiting for either Nick Fury to show up and try and recruit them to the Avengers, or Thanos to barge in demanding another Infinity Stone.

Overall, kind of a confusing season that didn't really match the first one.  Extremely well acted and great to look at it, and even some moments of brilliance, but also a lot of confusion, and a since that it was trying to be "deep" and "thought-provoking", without fully sticking the landing.  I'll still be back, but I hope they take time to asses things and don't just dive into the deep end.

[ottoDbusdriver]

They didn't really explain how Teddy's body ended up in the water -- since he killed himself a long, long way from where the new sea formed.

And you would have thought that someone would have mentioned finding a host with their marble missing.

ETA:  Those large seaplanes had the emblem of the People's Liberation Army Air Force on the fuselage.

Edited June 25, 2018 by ottoDbusdriver

[CofCinci]

Who else was in Charlotte/Dolores’ purse? 

[Iamhydrogen]

It seems like in the Forge they perfected the copy of the human mind.  I wonder if that was after William decided to stop the Delos experiment or if the Forge was just withholding the key.  Although even Ford said his consciousness had a shelf-life, so maybe there was stil and issue with the human brain in host body, even if the copy is perfect.

As far as the number of time Bernard was created.  I assumes with the blue dress conversations were in the Forge, therefore time didn't really matter.  The black dress convo was in the real world, she had already made a perfect copy, so she could make another without going through other copies.  But what is Bernard?  He doesn't seem to be a Arthur copy, he doesn't have his memories.  But he is a copy in that he looks and acts like him.  Is that immortality?  Being able to live on as "yourself" but not with previous memories?

So the MIB sequence at the end if in the far future.  And it seems his copy always gets to the Forge elevator.  That is that important life changing point in his life.  But if its not a simulation, whats going on?  Everything looks destroyed down there?  On the surface, are there old hosts recreating this whole thing over an over.  Who is maintaining them?

[Ellaria]

4 hours ago, jeansheridan said:

And the beach scene with Bernard and Ford was wonderfully acted but it all felt like hot air. Seriously, Lee's over the top speech at least had a point. I guess I just need my world building to be more damn concrete.

I was doing OK with the finale until that beach scene convinced me that I was lost. When in the convoluted timeline did THAT happen?

Essentially, Bernard killed Dolores because of her "death and destruction" attitude. (Honestly, he probably was getting tired of her dialogue.) Then he thought, "oops, maybe she wasn't so bad after all" and decides to create a Hale-bot and stick Dolores in there. How long did it take him to create Hale-bot? And when did he do it? Is it safe to assume that Dolores' brain ball is in Hale-bot? But then...in the end...how did it get out of Hale-bot and back into Dolores?

And my biggest question: what happened to the Bernard version that was in the park? Is he gone to Robot Heaven, too?

 

Quote

But nothing about the MIB made sense. Nothing. His dialogue with Dolores was awful. Where was he going in the elevator and why didn't he run into Bernard?

3 hours ago, Amarsir said:

Two reasons not to worry about that.

1) The facility was all run-down. That implies  the distant future and not a great one.

2) Emily said she was testing MIB for fidelity. Fidelity 
    A) Requires a test that happened in real life before being replicated by the copy.
    B) Must take place before random events can enter into the calculation.

Therefore the implication is that William really did everything we saw. But at some point a copy of him is made and repeats them. Now whether that copy starts with the elevator or started weeks ago and it's all a giant fidelity test, who knows.

There's potentially interesting stuff there. I just don't want to see 8 timeline versions of the same conversation and then wait until the end of the season to figure out what order they were supposed to be in.

According to an interview with Lisa Joy, that scene...

Spoiler

with William in the Forge takes place in the far future. Why then is he represented as the bloody human? Why is he there not healed?

I love Ed Harris but I'm not particularly interested in seeing him being miserable in S3 again. Not sure where his story is going.

 

2 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

The basically gist I get is that Bernard killed Dolores because he thought she was going too far with her "Kill them all!" motto, but then Hale murders Elsie after, and that finally flips hims to at least go against the Westworld folks, so he secretly created a Hale host, and had her take out the real Hale.  So, the Hale we've been seeing for at least some of this season was actually Dolores the entire time.  But now they're in the real world and Dolores is back in her normal body, and I guess Hale's host is someone else? Also, Dolores brought back Bernard even though she knows he'll keep trying to stop him, but she believes the hosts need both of them?  Yeah, I'm still confused.

 

...Overall, kind of a confusing season that didn't really match the first one.  Extremely well acted and great to look at it, and even some moments of brilliance, but also a lot of confusion, and a since that it was trying to be "deep" and "thought-provoking", without fully sticking the landing.  I'll still be back, but I hope they take time to asses things and don't just dive into the deep end.

Maybe Hale Host is needed to infiltrate Delos and their plans. Is that even a concern going forward? How will the park massacre be explained to the outside world? (Are they really skipping over that?) How does the park exist after these events? We know that Felix and Sylvester are still there so something is still happening there. With the Cradle and the Forge destroyed, does it just become an amusement park with robots and not a place that copies the guests?

This is one of the most accomplished casts on TV right now. I wish that they would dispense with some of the time-trippy nonsense and shoot-up-em scenes and let these talented performers shine. So much of would could be great gets dragged down by obfuscation.

Edited June 25, 2018 by Ellaria Sand

[Mindthinkr]

I almost feel as though they took all the brain balls and put them in a pinball machine and then this show went tilt. 

[Haleth]

Wait.  What???  What the hell did I watch?  So much of that makes no sense.  That look of absolute confusion that Bernard wore through most of the season?  Me too.  So many unanswered questions.  Starting with the convoluted time lines, I'd hoped that the finale would make it all clear but even at the end I had no idea what was happening and when.  I think I'm insulted that the writers tried to hide their lack of a cohesive story behind multiple time lines, flashy sets, and pseudo scientific/psychological mumbo jumbo. 

Bernard--  when did he have time to make a new Charlotte and why would he want to loose Dolores on the world?  So are there 2 Doloreses now (Dolores and Charlotte?) and 2 Bernards (one in park, one out)?  That bag o' brains that Charlotte carried out, were those how she rebuilt Dolores and Bernard?  (I assume one was Abernathy's with all the data?)  Why would Dolores want to rebuild her nemesis?  (Stubbs either knew Charlotte was smuggling out brains or was a host herself.  Cool.)

Hosts-- why did the Delos people wreck havoc ala Clemmy when the hosts were all killing their bodies and going to Host Heaven anyway?  And how did Teddy get there?  So are all those hosts (in heaven) irretrievable now?  But the ones still on this side can be rebuilt even though Angela blew up the server with their data?  What was that data stream that Charlotte sent out into the cosmos where it wouldn't be found?  Was that host or guest data?  Does that mean (again) that the hosts can't be rebuilt?  Maybe they'll come back as aliens.

William-- so is he or isn't he?  We never got an answer but the Delos people apparently think he's human.

Logan-- seeing him as the embodiment of the Forge was cool but I had no idea what he was talking about.  Ditto Ford.

Whatever.  I surely don't want to watch a show where Bernard and Dolores run around the world trying to thwart each other.  But I can't see any park storyline would be interesting without all the hosts we've come to know.  I don't want to watch a show without Maeve and her gang.  I suppose if they can be rebuilt so can Elsie, Lee, and any of the humans who also died.  It just seems like the writers decided to clear the deck, kill everyone, and start in a different direction.  Meh.

I'd like for someone to reedit the season in chronological order.

9 hours ago, DEL901 said:

Almost missed the post credits scene!!!   MIB lives.  Sort of and what was that last word?   I played it back and still can’t figure it out

 

Dammit!  I almost stayed till the end of the credits just in case but then decided I didn't really care.

Quote

 I like how the door to The Valley Beyond looked like a big crack in the world -- which would have given some credence to the idea that the parks were under some sort of dome (since you never see any jet contrails overhead), and would explain how they could hide Shogun World Mt. Fuji from the other parks.

But it wasn't real.  The humans couldn't see it.

Edited June 25, 2018 by Haleth

[Dame sans merci]

4 minutes ago, Haleth said:

Wait.  What???  What the hell did I watch?  So much of that makes no sense.  That look of absolute confusion that Bernard wore through most of the season?  Me too.  So many unanswered questions.  Starting with the convoluted time lines, I'd hoped that the finale would make it all clear but even at the end I had no idea what was happening and when.  I think I'm insulted that the writers tried to hide their lack of a cohesive story behind multiple time lines, flashy sets, and pseudo scientific/psychological mumbo jumbo. 

Bernard--  when did he have time to make a new Charlotte and why would he want to loose Dolores on the world?  So are there 2 Doloreses now (Dolores and Charlotte?) and 2 Bernards (one in park, one out)?  That bag o' brains that Charlotte carried out, were those how she rebuilt Dolores and Bernard?  (I assume one was Abernathy's with all the data?)  Why would Dolores want to rebuild her nemesis?  (Stubbs either knew Charlotte was smuggling out brains or was a host herself.  Cool.)

 

No, just one of each I think - Dolores re-built Bernard outside the park once she'd shot him, and we don't know who's in the Hale-bot in the real world now Dolores has her original body back.

[Notwisconsin]

17 minutes ago, Ellaria Sand said:

 With the Cradle and the Forge destroyed, does it just become an amusement park with robots and not a place that copies the guests?

I don't know if either were destroyed. The Forge never was, and there was probably more than one cradle. As to William being a host the whole time, I doubt it because they showed him being rescued. Plus while the other parks were probably infected, there were no Hindu or Japanese Hosts waiting in line at the valley beyond. This means that most of the hosts are intact.

[DarkRaichu]

Kind of interesting season finale, but ultimately there is a good chance I won't be back for season 3 :P

- The Dolores!Hale twist was pretty good, but not without hints.  Hale obviously knew about the failsafe flooding thing, but Dolores!Hale acted like she did not know what's going on (ie. once Strand and his team arrived).  Also, 2 or 3 episodes back. I found it odd Dolores!Hale's eyes were full of tear when she interrogated Bernard to get him to tell others where Abernathy's core was.

- Bernard got closest to be human.  He got to dream of Ford, ie. re-create Ford out of his own free will.  Wonderful acting by both actors as usual

- Stubbs is a bot.  Ford (old man) hired him long ago Stubbs could not remember and Stubbs had a core drive.

- Emily that MiB shot was a real human.  At the end on the beach, the hosts' bodies (Maeve's gang) had blue-ish tint whereas Emily's body still looked like flesh.  Also her body was laid down flat by itself, instead of piled on like the bots

- Glad Aketchai got his happy ending, although I am not sure how his wife's memory got to the Forge?

- The last book Dolores picked up and read from library was about Karl Strand.  Coincidence?

- Logan as AI was cool.  Millions of repetitive simulations to re-create Delos, huh?  I wonder why William never looked at this data in the Forge and went ahead with his effort to put Delos' memory to a bot ???

- RIP Teddy.  He always wanted to be in the valley beyond with her. Dolores gave him 1/2 of his wish

- So in the outside world, fashion (ie what Dolores wear) did not change in 30 years????  Or did the sleeveless black dress made a comeback in 30 years ?? :P

- Whose memory balls did Dolores!Hale bring in her purse?  There were 5 balls and we knew 1 of them was Bernard's.  I could not see her fishing out Maeve & co from the lake to grab their memory cores

- As for MiB epilogue: I saw it as he was still trying to perfect the tech to put human memory to bot in distant future.  But instead of Delos, William/MiB is now the subject of the test.  Also, he uses a bot version of his daughter to check for fidelity (to mimic how Dolores created Bernard).  The real MiB most likely never returned to the park after he was found barely alive by QA team, meaning that visit was his last memory recorded by the Forge.

- Lastly, I think Dolores sent the Valley / bots' memories bouncing from satellites to satellites in perpetuity.  There were 15 satellites ready to receive the memory dump.  Who would check or maintain or deactivate all 15 satellites at the same time?  The memories would be hidden in plain sight

Edited June 25, 2018 by DarkRaichu

[jcin617]

9 hours ago, magdalene said:

I can't say I am looking forward to the third season.  They killed off most the characters I cared about.

Convoluted and boring finale.

Aside from Sizemore's character, and Hale, I don't think anyone was really killed off.   Pretty sure Maeve and crew will be "salvaged" by the Hardy Boys;  Bernard and Dolores are up and running, and Teddy and Akecheta are in the Valley Beyond (and wherever that went, presumably they can be downloaded, if needed).

[Dame sans merci]

Just now, jcin617 said:

Aside from Sizemore's character, and Hale, I don't think anyone was really killed off.   Pretty sure Maeve and crew will be "salvaged" by the Hardy Boys;  Bernard and Dolores are up and running, and Teddy and Akecheta are in the Valley Beyond (and wherever that went, presumably they can be downloaded, if needed).

Elsie too.

[jcin617]

Ah, true.  But if they've got profiles of the employees too, as Hale said, she can probably be brought back in Host form.

Edited June 25, 2018 by jcin617

[capt planet]

So if the Cats (Felix and Sylvester) bring Maeve back, do we think she'll spend a season trying to reopen the Valley Beyond, or will she go Kill All Humans on that ass?

[Dame sans merci]

14 minutes ago, jcin617 said:

Ah, true.  But if they've got profiles of the employees too, as Hale said, she can probably be brought back in Host form.

 

Oh yes. I wonder if they can still get access to that data. Is it gone, or is it part of the host data upload Dolores sent off somewhere?

On Lee: given we didn't actually see him die (or see his body), i'm not 100% convinced he's dead. It's not exactly like Westworld to avoid a display of graphic violence if they have an excuse.

Edited June 25, 2018 by Dame sans merci