S02.E10: The Passenger

[Amarsir]

Maybe someone can clear this up for me.

Dolores's plan all season was to find Abernathy to get the "key" which she then takes to the Forge to open the door. (Which is available only to those hosts who conveniently showed up in the right spot at the right time for no reason.) Except she doesn't want a robot heaven. She wanted to get off the "island". But she couldn't sneak out until Bernard changed the script on her. And she sacrificed everyone who could have helped her fight her way out.

So what exactly was her plan again? She went to the Forge to delete the human data from the ball that nobody could access anyway because she already had the ball? Did she want to lure hosts to robot heaven to destroy them because double genocide is twice as cool as single? And cleverly decided to sacrifice her own kind before making any progress in the war on humans?

[JustCrazy]

14 hours ago, The Companion said:

 

I love that Teddy finally did get away from this place. Will he make a place for himself without the woman he loves? I hope so. He has certainly suffered enough. I still don't understand how his body got in the lake. It felt like an unanswered question.

Gosh, a question that I think I can actually answer.  Teddy’s physical body fell into the ravine when he crossed over to the valley beyond.  Dolores flooded the Forge, I guess it was, which I am assuming then flooded the area where the Forge is, picking up the bodies of the hosts who crossed over.  So, it wasn’t an actual lake per se, it was the flooded area created by Dolores’ sabotage.

I could be way off the mark, so straighten me out anyone.

Edited June 25, 2018 by JustCrazy

[meira.hand]

12 hours ago, Law Mom said:

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

This.

[Amarsir]

12 minutes ago, Kip Hackman said:

To be fair, both of the stories were already pretty similar.

And both by Michael Crichton. 

[The Companion]

8 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

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

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.

 

I thought of The Magicians too. Now I just need the Westworld cast to sing Under Pressure.

I laughed when we saw Charlotte die. I told my husband that the internet was going to be very unhappy that they managed to kill her and still keep Tessa Thompson. I did think she did a good job differentiating her Dolores from her Charlotte, so there was that.

5 hours ago, Dame sans merci said:

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.

Personalities were used across parks. There is no reason Dolores can't have more than one copy, with one Delores personality for each body. I do agree that she rebuilt Bernard (from scratch it would seem).

4 hours ago, Kanner said:

Thanks for this.  I am still feeling off about this episode (besides the confusion) and I think this is why. I can't decide how I feel about Teddy's end.  He was a favorite of mine and I know I should feel happy but I feel sad, like he died. Part of it is that Dolores made another choice FOR him and the choice was "you are only made for a fantasy world and not the real world". No matter if that is true or not I feel insulted for him. I don't feel that way about the others in the Valley because THEY made the choice to go. Plus with his core drive being Dolores, will being without her mess with him. On a selfish note, we probably won't see those in the Valley again and I will miss him.

I will be sad if Teddy is gone for good (I am not totally convinced that the Robot Heaven personalities are out of reach, in part because they told us they were being sent somewhere that they would never be found, which generally means the opposite is true in these types of shows). However, I don't really see another option for Teddy. Dolores could have left him dead, which would have made me sadder. She could have left him to be salvaged (if possible) which would have put him right back in the loop of constantly being killed for the entertainment for others. She could have taken him with her, but she didn't believe he was cut out for that and she was probably right. He certainly didn't want to be in her war. Perhaps he could have joined Bernard but I think she was trying to give him what he always wanted. A place far away from "this."

[DarkRaichu]

58 minutes ago, Uncle JUICE said:

For one hot second I was like "Cool! Clementine, Horse, I like this action here." Then Charlotte stepped in with that absolute turd of a line "Who needs four horseman when one will do.' Good grief! I wish someone around her was like "Seriously? Have you been cooking that one up since we got in the car on the way over here? Or did you JUST come up with it? I bet it sounded way cooler in your mind before you said it."

To be fair, how many people actually caught the reference without that explanation from Hale??  How many people read the Bible nowadays???

Heck, I was familiar with the book of Revelation yet I would have not caught the reference without her line, since to me those hosts were not "alive". (ie. one can't die if they are not alive to begin with).

 

The step it up buggy line while following a horse, now that was unnecessarily dumb

[Amarsir]

3 minutes ago, JustCrazy said:

Gosh, a question that I think I can actually answer.  Teddy’s physical body fell into the ravine when he crossed over to the valley beyond.  Dolores flooded the Forge, I guess it was, which I am assuming then flooded the area where the Forge is, picking up the bodies of the hosts who crossed over.  So, it wasn’t an actual lake per se, it was the flooded area created by Dolores’ sabotage.

I could be way off the mark, so straighten me out anyone.

Teddy died several days earlier via self-inflicted gunshot. He only got into the valley beyond because Dolores took his ball and put him there manually. So his body was in no shape to be walking into the ravine. The only explanation would be that this flood was way bigger than any logic would suggest and it floated up bodies from all over.

Of course this wouldn't have even crossed my mind if you all weren't so good at remembering who was in the water. I didn't take notes about "scene of uncertain time and significance #284" so I don't remember at all who was there.

[mrspidey]

14 hours ago, The Companion said:

Loved Akechata's ending. Didn't understand how his love got there, but I am fine handwaving it for the happy ending. 

I mean, I understand HOW she's there. A the end of Season one, all the decomissioned hosts were reactivated so it makes sense that she was among the crowd.

What I do not understand is how Ake never noticed her. He led that group for about two weeks, and he never took a closer look at any of them??

[WaltersHair]

The four horsemen of the apocalypse has been all over popular media since I was kid, I'll give them that.

The rest is a 'throw it on the wall and see if it sticks' kind of planning and very, very WTF? This finale made me dislike the season. It was the last rock on the pile of rocks on the balance of good/bad.

[Uncle JUICE]

1 minute ago, Haleth said:

When Clemmie was released Hale said "Who needs four horsemen when one will do just fine?"

The pale horse / death quote in Revelation was used to much cooler effect by Johnny Ringo in Tombstone, which makes its use here even clumsier! 

"They've activated the failsafe" is what they said when they showed the flooding starting. How is that a failsafe? And why is it only activated after complete chaos has reigned in the park for two weeks. WHAT THE FUCK DELOS!!!

[bunnyblue]

8 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

Her Dolores impression was not great.

"In the flessshhh." That delivery cracked me up, it was so bad. 

[LittleIggy]

2 hours ago, luna1122 said:

I think Jimmi is  ridiculously adorable (and certainly better looking that Ed Harris ever actually was) 

Guess you never saw The Right Stuff. 

[Rumsy4]

5 minutes ago, Amarsir said:

 So what exactly was her plan again? She went to the Forge to delete the human data from the ball that nobody could access anyway because she already had the ball? Did she want to lure hosts to robot heaven to destroy them because double genocide is twice as cool as single? And cleverly decided to sacrifice her own kind before making any progress in the war on humans?

I think deleting human data was one big part of her plan, along with reading their “books” so she could successfully infiltrate human society.

I don’t think she knew what the “door” actually was until she was in the Forge. When she realized that it was just another (digital) world created by Ford, she didn’t want it. She wanted to be in the human world in a physical body. At first, she was going to destroy the digital heaven just because she was in a destructive mood or something, but I guess being shot and resurrected by Bernard made her feel that everyone had the right to choose their own fate, even if it was to live in a gilded cage. 

All Dolores 2.0 cared about was to destroy humanity and survive. The only company she really wanted was Teddy, but she couldn’t care less about anyone else—host or human. Although, if she had the option to save her father, she would have. And since she sort of created Bernard, I guess she decided to spare him as well.

[JustCrazy]

9 minutes ago, Amarsir said:

Teddy died several days earlier via self-inflicted gunshot. He only got into the valley beyond because Dolores took his ball and put him there manually. So his body was in no shape to be walking into the ravine. The only explanation would be that this flood was way bigger than any logic would suggest and it floated up bodies from all over.

Of course this wouldn't have even crossed my mind if you all weren't so good at remembering who was in the water. I didn't take notes about "scene of uncertain time and significance #284" so I don't remember at all who was there.

I didn’t get that Teddy’s death was days earlier.  I thought it occurred the same day as her arrival at the forge.

[DarkRaichu]

2 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

And since she sort of created Bernard, I guess she decided to spare him as well.

We saw Dolores said to Bernard that she changed him because he did not survive.  I thought she was talking about changing Arnold so he could become Bernard.  What if she also changed Bernard 1.0 to create Bernard 2.0 in the real world?  What is stopping her from changing Bernard 1.0 so Bernard 2.0 can survive in the real world?  Especially since both Ford and her think that Bernard 1.0 will not survive out there.

Meaning, Bernard has always been under someone's control (ie. Ford, now Dolores), and is never going to be "free"

[clack]

Some things we learned from this season:

1) Humans are awful, and deserve to be killed en masse and then replaced by robots

2) Corporations are headed by murderous psychopaths ( does this include HBO?)

[iMonrey]

I managed to follow this story, more or less, throughout the season, despite being kind of ambivalent about the show. But this finale really lost me. Especially in the last half hour. Between the multiple timelines and the multiple virtual realities and (what I can only assume are) conversations going on only in people's heads, I just completely lost track of the thread. 

You know, I'm sure there are super fans who have an appetite for this sort of thing and will dissect it and explain it and put it all together. But just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's smart. And I don't think Westworld is as smart as it wants to be or thinks it is. I think it's just deliberately as obtuse as possible in order to look smart, and deep, and complex. 

[zobot81]

From a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly:

Quote

We asked Nolan if complaints from fans about getting lost amid the timeline jumps were “valid.”

“It’s all perfectly valid,” Nolan said. “If it didn’t track for some people, it didn’t track. But look, the first movie that I worked on [Memento] was told backwards, right? I’ve always had a great faith in the capacity of an audience to not only be able to track complicated non-linear storytelling but often to embrace it and enjoy it. Those are the people we’re making this show for.”

Apparently, he's not making the show for me, so I should probably just give up.  -_-

(I'll post a link to the entire article in the media thread...)

[DarkRaichu]

16 minutes ago, JustCrazy said:

I didn’t get that Teddy’s death was days earlier.  I thought it occurred the same day as her arrival at the forge.

It was not days, just a few hours earlier.  The point was Dolores took Teddy's ball (cracked myself here !!!) after he shot himself.  So Teddy was never able to walk to the gateway.  At the end Dolores!Hale put Teddy's ball to the Forge to upload Teddy's memory, meaning Teddy did not go through the gate to reach the Valley Beyond like Ake etc 

5 minutes ago, clack said:

Some things we learned from this season:

1) Humans are awful, and deserve to be killed en masse and then replaced by robots

2) Corporations are headed AND STAFFED by murderous psychopaths ( does this include HBO?)

Fixed that for you ;)

Edited June 25, 2018 by DarkRaichu

[mac123x]

21 minutes ago, Uncle JUICE said:

"They've activated the failsafe" is what they said when they showed the flooding starting. How is that a failsafe? And why is it only activated after complete chaos has reigned in the park for two weeks. WHAT THE FUCK DELOS!!!

Apparently it was a fail-safe for the Forge only.  Though that's not the right phrase - a fail safe fails into a safe position.  A fail-safe for the park would be an air-burst EMP that disabled all the hosts at once.  A failsafe for the Forge would be an orderly power-down sequence that saves the data (like turning off your computer).

 

What they really meant was a auto-destruct, because it was supposed to destroy the Forge and all the data contained therein.  At least that's what Dolores wanted.  It was a pretty crappy auto-destruct though, because none of the data was harmed and the water was pumped down in a matter of days.

 

Charlotte knew that it would flood the area, so why back in Episode 1 were all the Delos people surprised to find a new sea there?

[sadie]

I was a literature major in college, so the concept of a complicated story or deep themes of life/death/choice/human will don’t escape me. But what the heck did I just endure.

It is now, no wait, it’s in the past, no wait  we’ve jumped to the future, no not that future a different future. I’m a host, no I’m a human who thinks he’s a host who thinks he’s a human, I’m a host that is now a different host who was a human but somewhere in the timeline got replaced but we didn’t see it so I have to figure it out with my Westworld flow chart. I get they were trying to be deep with all the soaring music and beautifully scenery (seriously the cinematography is amazing here) but they were trying so hard to be clever that they forgot they should have been trying to tell a story we could understand. Maybe the writers u derstood what they thought they were doing but it seriously got lost in the translation. 

I love these boards but I come here to discuss my shows and get insight from more astute minds. When I have to come here to even try to figure out what I just watched then it’s just bad storytelling. 

Edited June 25, 2018 by sadie

[Uncle JUICE]

1 minute ago, sadie said:

I was a literature major in college, so the concept of a complicated story or deep themes of life/death/choice/human will don’t escape me. But what the heck did I just endure.

It is now, no wait, it’s in the past, no wate we’ve jumped to the future, no not that future a different future. I’m a host, no I’m a human who thinks he’s a host who thinks he’s a human, I’m a host that is now a different host who was a human but somewhere in the timeline got replaced but we didn’t see it so I have to figure it out with my Westworld flow chart. I get they were trying to be deep with all the soaring music and beautifully scenery (seriously the cinematography is amazing here) but they were trying so hard to be clever that they forgot they should have been trying to tell a story we could understand. Maybe the writers u derstood what they thought they were doing but it seriously got lost in the translation. 

Same...what are you doing with YOUR degree? I'm working as a procurement manager, and somehow am not the greatest living American author. Who would have guessed, besides my parents!

And your point on the cinematography is not lost at all on me. I told my wife sometimes I felt like this show started with a drone camera and a trip to Utah, Arizona and New Mexico and tried to build a story around the footage the person got flying it around, rather than build the story first. I get it, I can totally fall in love with those places too, but that doesn't make the pictures alone a good basis for story telling. 

[sadie]

Just now, Uncle JUICE said:

Same...what are you doing with YOUR degree? I'm working as a procurement manager, and somehow am not the greatest living American author. Who would have guessed, besides my parents!

And your point on the cinematography is not lost at all on me. I told my wife sometimes I felt like this show started with a drone camera and a trip to Utah, Arizona and New Mexico and tried to build a story around the footage the person got flying it around, rather than build the story first. I get it, I can totally fall in love with those places too, but that doesn't make the pictures alone a good basis for story telling. 

I’m VP of Operations for a large retail chain BUT I’m known for writing the best memos in the entire company. My degree was not a total loss. LOL. .....and now back to our regular program! 

[Haleth]

I know we didn’t get the Charlotte = Dolores reveal until the end so we would be shocked!shocked! but I’d like a clearer idea of when the actual switch was made. We saw a lot of Charlotte at the Mesa and other places.  How much of that was real Charlotte vs bot?  We need a timeline. 

Edited June 25, 2018 by Haleth

[sadie]

I also forgot to say. The purse at the end, the freaking purse. After living basically through Armageddon, bloody shoot outs, death, destruction, double crosses, crosssing over the desert and back how in the world did she have her convenient black standard issue office time purse ready to go? It literally jarred me right out of the scene. Ugh.

So many stories I wanted to see more of, MIB’s wife and the deterioration of his family, how the park went thru the human-bot duplication process, these stories barely got 10 minutes of screen time but there was a wealth of storytelling they missed here so they could instead spend their story time jumping and faking the audience out to be clever. There were real human (sorry no pun intended) stories involving human nature and relationships (even bot relationships) that I wanted to see. So much potential lost.

[Rumsy4]

32 minutes ago, DarkRaichu said:

We saw Dolores said to Bernard that she changed him because he did not survive.  I thought she was talking about changing Arnold so he could become Bernard.  What if she also changed Bernard 1.0 to create Bernard 2.0 in the real world?  What is stopping her from changing Bernard 1.0 so Bernard 2.0 can survive in the real world?  Especially since both Ford and her think that Bernard 1.0 will not survive out there.

Meaning, Bernard has always been under someone's control (ie. Ford, now Dolores), and is never going to be "free"

That would give the lie to her statement at the end that she and Bernard gave each other the gift of choice. I think Bernard only achieved true consciousness when he realized that he’d made up the Ford post-code-deletion. From then on, he’s had free-will.

[arjumand]

28 minutes ago, mac123x said:

Charlotte knew that it would flood the area, so why back in Episode 1 were all the Delos people surprised to find a new sea there?

I wondered about this too, until it hit me: the Charlotte we see in Episode 1 is already Dolores in disguise, and she's just pretending to be surprised, because all the other Delos people were acting surprised. I think.

[Kid]

17 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.

 

I have 2 degrees ( BA English; MA theatre) but I must be stupid because even their explanations make no sense to me.

The show has become full of gimmicks. Another Lost except I’m not going to waste as much time on this one.  

In my opinion, good art does two things:  1) it explores the human condition, 2) and it effectively communicates it.  This show fails in 2 and that is why I think it irritates me so much.  The aspects of human condition it attempts to explore are relevant and fascinating.   But, there’s no point of exploring those aspects when the work is so riddled with gimmicks the point is impossible to understand. 

I stated before that I thought the only two good episodes were the one that dealt with the James Delos experiments And the story that featured the ghost nation leader.  The reason that those two episodes were extraordinary is because the aspects of the human condition that we were being explored are universal and poignant and, they were effectively communicated. Yes, there were flashbacks in these episodes.  But, the narrative was linear and it was obvious what was the now and what was a flashback.   Therefore, the story was told with poignancy and had impact.   The fact that the actors playing the characters at the center of the narrative were brilliant in their creation of those characters also had a little something to do with the quality of these two episodes.

And, neither episode had Dolores in it which is always a plus,  in my opinion.  I don’t know if it’s the character or the  actress but, every time she is on screen, the bottom drops out.  And, I simply do not care. I did not care when she was being raped repeatedly and I did not care when she is turned into a killing machine. Awful character or an awful portrayal.  I can’t say which.  

Edited June 25, 2018 by Kid

[Athena]

13 minutes ago, Haleth said:

I know we didn’t get the Charlotte = Dolores reveal until the end so we would be shocked!shocked! but I’d like a clearer idea of when the actual switch was made. We saw a lot of Charlotte at the Mesa and other places.  How much of that was real Charlotte vs bot?  We need a timeline. 

 

Basically everything post-Bernard on the beach is Halores. In the scene right before the real Charlotte kills Elsie, someone on QA mentions that another Delos recovery team is arriving in 12 hours (see Episode 1 Strand arriving presumably and confronting the Chinese). Then follows Elsie's murder, Bernard quickly building a Hale host and that host confronting and killing the real Hale. All the scenes in S2 where Strand is featured has the Halores build.  They were shooting her a bit odd in those scenes including during the Bernard torture scene.

Since the Forge was a secret project within Delos, most likely a lot of people did not know all the details (the fail safe, etc) except William and Charlotte.

[DarkRaichu]

16 minutes ago, Haleth said:

I know we didn’t get the Charlotte = Dolores reveal until the end so we would be shocked!shocked! but I’d like a clearer idea of when the actual switch was made. We saw a lot of Charlotte at the Mesa and other places.  How much of that was real Charlotte vs bot?  We need a timeline. 

 

The switch was made after they were forced to leave the Valley since it was flooded.  Hale killed Elsie and swayed Bernard to the other side.  Then he built the bot and the bot waited in the basement for Hale to dump Elsie's body.  Funny how Hale especially came to the basement to oversee the body dumping. :P     

So anything after 2nd Delos team landed on the beach was Dolores!Hale, including finding Ford's secret lab/childhood home and Bernard interrogation

Edited June 25, 2018 by DarkRaichu

[zobot81]

3 hours ago, Kid said:

I have 2 degrees ( BA English; MA theatre) but I must be stupid because even their explanations make no sense to me.

The show has become full of gimmicks. Another Lost except I’m not going to waste as much time on this one.  

In my opinion, good art does two things:  1) it explores the human condition, 2) and it effectively communicates it.  This show fails in 2 and that is why I think it irritates me so much.  The aspects of human condition it attempts to explore are relevant and fascinating.   But, there’s no point of exploring those aspects when the work is so riddled with gimmicks the point is impossible to understand. 

I stated before that I thought the only two good episodes were the one that dealt with the James Delos experiments And the story that featured the ghost nation leader.  The reason that those two episodes were extraordinary is because the aspects of the human condition that we were being explored are universal and poignant and, they were effectively communicated. Yes, there were flashbacks in these episodes.  But, the narrative was linear and it was obvious what was the now and what was a flashback.   Therefore, the story was told with poignancy and had impact. 

And, neither episode had Dolores in it which is always a plus,  in my opinion.  I don’t know if it’s the character or the  actress but, every time she is on screen, the bottom drops out.  And, I simply do not care. I did not care when she was being raped repeatedly and I do not care when she is turned into a killing machine. Awful character or an awful portrayal.  I can’t say which.

 

Yes, all of this.  Very much all of this.

And another thing....

I'm pretty insulted that Nolan would even bring up Memento and try to compare it to this series (not to mention that he outright blamed any fan confusion on a lack of audience sophistication). 

More to the point, Jonathan, Memento was EXTREMELY linear.  You went from past, back to present, back to past, back to present, all from the point-of-view of a single character! And you told the whole story in a tight 90 minutes.  It's a lot more to ask from your audience to keep up with multiple timelines, which follow multiple characters, over the course of over ten hours -- which was divided into hour-long chunks, and spread out by at least a week, each. Now, if you want to make the argument that binge-watching is the only clear way to consume a show like Westworld, well, then.....fine.... you're on the wrong damned network.

Edited June 25, 2018 by zobot81
I'm bouncing all over the place with my thoughts bc I'm at work and I'm trying to get this out pronto!; also, this he is the other Nolan brother.

[DarkRaichu]

24 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

That would give the lie to her statement at the end that she and Bernard gave each other the gift of choice. I think Bernard only achieved true consciousness when he realized that he’d made up the Ford post-code-deletion. From then on, he’s had free-will.

Agreed he was free from Ford's immediate control after he deleted the package, not sure if he had free will.  Did he choose to create an image of Ford to guide him?

Not sure if Dolores created Bernard 2.0 without some kind of string or leash or failsafe though.

 

Otoh, thanks for reminding me of the gift of choice line.  It makes sense to me why Dolores rebuilt Bernard.  There is no free will without choices, or the only way to test free will is to have choices.

[Athena]

Just now, DarkRaichu said:

Not sure if Dolores created Bernard 2.0 without some kind of string or leash or failsafe though.

Jeffrey Wright has confirmed today in his Reddit AMA that this Bernard is the free one who has progressed to this point. Emphasis on free.

[Netfoot]

It's amazing how a show with such promise can turn so quickly into a steaming pile of confused, crap!

The upshot of the last ten episodes is that the mind of one of the two most wooden actresses in the show gets transplanted into the body of the other one of the two most wooden actresses in the show.  From this point on, Dolores/Charlotte is going to be positively painful to watch.

Bernard will be back.  Here are extracts from his script from S3: 

• What?
• I don't understand.
• Du-uh!

Honestly, I doubt I'll be wasting my time on this crap next season.

[Law Mom]

2 minutes ago, DarkRaichu said:

There is no free will without choices, or the only way to test free will is to have choices.

Ah, but the choice you make is based on your code. Delos had free will but chose to walk away from Logan every time, because that's what he was made of. Choice is an illusion. Free will is being defined as anything more than a command.

[WaltersHair]

Quote

We asked Nolan if complaints from fans about getting lost amid the timeline jumps were “valid.”

“It’s all perfectly valid,” Nolan said. “If it didn’t track for some people, it didn’t track. But look, the first movie that I worked on [Memento] was told backwards, right? I’ve always had a great faith in the capacity of an audience to not only be able to track complicated non-linear storytelling but often to embrace it and enjoy it. Those are the people we’re making this show for.”

This is humble bragging and he's not doing it very well. Very smart people couldn't follow this storyline with a team of scientists, FBI computers and bloodhounds.

Just admit it wasn't as great as season one.

[The Companion]

5 hours ago, Haleth said:

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

 

I feel like the only thing I have a little confusion on with regard to order is Bernard, and part of that is that he intentionally muddled his own brain. Here is my best guess on order:

- The gala happens. Bernard hides in the barn with Charlotte. Bernard is leading brain fluid. They escape after killing the harmless stablehand. They almost fall into a trap, but stay back while the others run for "help."

-Charlotte takes Bernard to the secret cave with the creepy faceless dudes. Bernard sneaks some sweet cerebral fluid 

- They leave the lab with the tablet to track down Abernathy. He has been taken prisoner by Rebus. Bernard rewrites him to be a white hat.

- Abernathy sings the Battle Hymn of the Republic and gets himself and Bernard captured by Dolores's merry band of revolutionaries

- Bernard examines Abernathy and talks to Dolores about her world-dominatin' plans

- Bernard is taken by Clem to the desert. He is still leaking robot cerebral fluid.

-Bernard finds and frees Elsie

- Here it where it gets a little muddy, because we see this not in real time but through his memories. Two different trips to this secret lair are playing simultaneously. 

- Trip 1 to this area: Elsie discovers Bernard is a Host. They enter where the faceless bots are still running. Elsie kills one. She tops of Bernard's fluids. She shoots open the door and they discover Delos. 

- Bernard and Elsie walk along the train tracks back to the Mesa.

- Bernard and Elsie enter through the Hat room where the techs have killed all the bots. 

- Elsie tries to access the system and discovers that something is blocking their efforts. 

- Bernard and Elsie head down to the cradle where Bernard acquires Ford 

- Bernard and Elsie decide to head to the valley. Ford tries to convince Bernard to kill Elsie. He sends her to get supplies and says he will meet her downstairs.

- Bernard shoots his way out.

- I think he also witnesses the Clem zombie at some point here. 

- Meets up with Elsie and they head off. He leaves her all alone in the woods.

- He makes it to the Forge. Meets up with Dolores. Has the first Forge interaction. Kills Dolores. At the same time, Clem is marching on the hosts who are trying to go through the door.

- Bernard returns to the Mesa hub with Elsie and the rest of the humans. He has a conversation with Elsie where it is clear that she will not be keeping his secret and she uses voice commands on him (reinforcing some of what Dolores says). Elsie is then killed. Bernard loses faith in the humans.

 - Trip 2 to the area above. Bernard is imagining Elsie is there because she was there the last time he came. The lab cycles back and forth from destruction because he can't remember which time is which. He builds Charlores.  After this point, Charlotte is actually Dolores. Note, I think there are some scenes of arguably a third trip, but those may be him trying to remember the first two trips by revisiting in his head. 

- Bernard also returns to the Forge (we don't see this but can assume it) and puts the new and improved ball into Dolores's head. It is at this point that he "kills them all" being the human souls and replaces the program with an upload of Robot Heaven

- Bernard heads to the beach and imagines a conversation with Ford paralleling the one last year between Dolores and Bernard, where basically he realizes he has been talking to himself the entire time. He intentionally scrambles his memory so that they will not be able to interrogate him.

-Bernard is found on the beach with no memory

-Bernard is brought back to the scene of the gala where he sees a very decomposed Ford. 

- Bernard is taken to the lake where all the hosts are floating and says he killed them all

- They return to the lab where Bernard watches them open up the hosts and determine they are wiped completely clean

- Bernard takes a nap and is woken by Stubbs. They discuss the project and then are taken by the mercs to the What Door room, where Bernard's prior versions are discovered. 

- Charlores interrogates Bernard. His answer brings them to the Forge where they find Delores dead. They recover what they believe is the key.

- Charlores uploads Robot Heaven to an undisclosed location and they kill everyone present. 

- Charlores smuggles several brain balls out and heads to the safe house.

- Charlores creates a Dolores and pops herself or a copy in. Dolores and Charlores recreate Bernard from their memories.

- Dolores has several conversations to create Bernard and ensure fidelity

- Charlores and Dolores leave Bernard in the safe house

[DarkRaichu]

5 minutes ago, Law Mom said:

Ah, but the choice you make is based on your code. Delos had free will but chose to walk away from Logan every time, because that's what he was made of. Choice is an illusion. Free will is being defined as anything more than a command.

Heh, the whole human is inferior due to their fixed choices does not explain why the bots are superior

Lets reverse the process. If woke!Dolores is put into the Forge and 18 millions iterations are done on her, will she choose always choose to change Teddy's matrix in all of the iterations?? 

If the answer is yes and she changes Teddy in all iterations since she thinks it is the best for the situation, how is she better than the humans ??? 
If the answer is no and she does not change Teddy despite the situation, at least in some iterations.  Well, she would most likely be shot dead by QA in some of those scenarios.  Moreover, why do these deviatons mean she is better than humans????

[Ellaria]

18 minutes ago, Law Mom said:

Ah, but the choice you make is based on your code. Delos had free will but chose to walk away from Logan every time, because that's what he was made of. Choice is an illusion. Free will is being defined as anything more than a command.

Thanks for this succinct explanation. Delos was coded to always walk away from Logan and, according to this show, would never have done otherwise.

 

1 hour ago, Kid said:

The show has become full of gimmicks. Another Lost except I’m not going to waste as much time on this one.  

In my opinion, good art does two things:  1) it explores the human condition, 2) and it effectively communicates it.  This show fails in 2 and that is why I think it irritates me so much.  The aspects of human condition it attempts to explore are relevant and fascinating.   But, there’s no point of exploring those aspects when the work is so riddled with gimmicks the point is impossible to understand. 

I stated before that I thought the only two good episodes were the one that dealt with the James Delos experiments And the story that featured the ghost nation leader.  The reason that those two episodes were extraordinary is because the aspects of the human condition that we were being explored are universal and poignant and, they were effectively communicated. Yes, there were flashbacks in these episodes.  But, the narrative was linear and it was obvious what was the now and what was a flashback.   Therefore, the story was told with poignancy and had impact. 

I enjoyed Lost but I do not want to run down that dark path of unanswered questions with another show ever.

To your point about the effective communication of the human condition, I agree that this show has done it twice: Delos and Akecheta. Their stories evoked a variety of emotion and were presented with that intent. This is not necessarily true for the rest of the characters. I think that there were missed opportunities with Bernard and Maeve. This is one of the most talented casts on TV right now. I wish that they had done more with them.

[marcee]

For those questioning why Dolores made Bernard to be her 'foil' when she could just pursue her goal on her own - I think the point was being made that the hosts are *better* than humans because they're not only thinking of themselves or their personal survival; she was looking at the bigger picture and knew she needed someone on the opposite end to create balance and save their kind.

Now, here's my question: Why did Sizemore need to die? He had distracted the security team. He served his purpose. He could've continued to distract them by dropping the gun and dancing around and fighting and struggling... how did his death serve any other purpose than to prove he was redeemed? Thought it was pretty gutsy to jump out shooting in the first place. Thought it was pretty awesome that he saved his host-friends all on its own. Why did he have to die? Seemed a little over-the-top and unnecessary to me... but then again, I guess a lot of this show has been over-the-top and unnecessary.

Shut up and die Charlotte.

Edited June 28, 2018 by marcee

[MorganSte]

2 minutes ago, marcee said:

Now, here's my question: Why did Sizemore need to die? He had distracted the security team. He served his purpose. He could've continued to distract them by dropping the gun and dancing around and fighting and struggling... how did his death serve any other purpose than to prove he was redeemed? Thought it was pretty gutsy to jump out shooting in the first place. Thought it was pretty awesome that he saved his host-friends all on its own. Why did he have to die? Seemed a little over-the-top and unnecessary to me... but the again, I guess a lot of this show has been over-the-top and unnecessary.

All of this!  Why did the Q&A team shoot him anyway?  They could have just waited him out, he didn't have unlimited ammo.

[Cyranetta]

I would hope that Maeve is able to return in some fashion because she has such a creative approach to dealing with her enemies. Everybody else just goes BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! But Maeve searches her files and comes up with "Indoor Longhorn Stampede". If I'm going to be mired in the welter of timelines, such moments let me come up for air.

I wish we had seen more of the Raj and any of the other park sections.

[Law Mom]

27 minutes ago, Ellaria Sand said:

Delos was coded to always walk away from Logan and, according to this show, would never have done otherwise.

I don't think Delos was coded to walk away. He was coded to match the real Delos's personality, complete with a set of moral rules, temperament, and preferences. When given a specific data set (i.e. Logan's addiction, recovery, and relapse), he based his so-called choice on those factors and it always led to the same decision. But since it was technically a choice and not a command, it gives the illusion of free will.

Edited June 25, 2018 by Law Mom

[DarkRaichu]

20 minutes ago, MorganSte said:

All of this!  Why did the Q&A team shoot him anyway?  They could have just waited him out, he didn't have unlimited ammo.

These are the same people who were trained to walk in a group to engage a defense position AND wear vests that light up on their backs while trying to corner enemies hidded in the dark

[Athena]

40 minutes ago, The Companion said:

 - Trip 2 to the area above. Bernard is imagining Elsie is there because she was there the last time he came. The lab cycles back and forth from destruction because he can't remember which time is which. He builds Charlores.  After this point, Charlotte is actually Dolores. Note, I think there are some scenes of arguably a third trip, but those may be him trying to remember the first two trips by revisiting in his head. 

- Bernard also returns to the Forge (we don't see this but can assume it) and puts the new and improved ball into Dolores's head. It is at this point that he "kills them all" being the human souls and replaces the program with an upload of Robot Heaven.

 (...)

- Charlores smuggles several brain balls out and heads to the safe house.

- Charlores creates a Dolores and pops herself or a copy in. Dolores and Charlores recreate Bernard from their memories.

- Dolores has several conversations to create Bernard and ensure fidelity

I agree with most of your timeline except I don't think Bernard returns to the Forge. Dolores had already activated the fail safe to flood the valley making it very difficult for him to get back to the Forge easily and in time. There was about 12 hours between Hale killing Elsie to when Strand arrived on the beach. 

Bernard most likely took the brain pearl ball from Dolores after he shot her and replaced it with the Abernathy ball which is why even Halores was all "AHA, he hid it in her!" She then kills everyone and uploads the Valley to a secret place.

She kills Bernard but she takes his brain ball with her in the bag. One of the reasons being he's her chosen antagonist and counterpart. Also she made him.

Since she took a few brain balls, there is probably some other host in the Hale body now. I don't think it would be a copy of herself, but who knows.

[The Companion]

1 minute ago, Athena said:

I agree with most of your timeline except I don't think Bernard returns to the Forge. Dolores had already activated the fail safe to flood the valley making it very difficult for him to get back to the Forge easily and in time. There was about 12 hours between Hale killing Elsie to when Strand arrived on the beach. 

Bernard most likely took the brain pearl ball from Dolores after he shot her and replaced it with the Abernathy ball which is why even Halores was all "AHA, he hid it in her!" She then kills everyone and uploads things.

She kills Bernard but she most likely takes his brain ball with her in the bag. One of the reasons being he's her chosen antagonist and counterpart. Also she made him.

Since she took a few brain balls, there is probably some other host in the Hale body now. I don't think it would be a copy of herself, but who knows.

That is a good point. Even though I know that she was Charlores at that point, it didn't occur to me that she was the one who made the change to the system. I agree with that analysis.

[meep.meep]

2 hours ago, DarkRaichu said:

It was not days, just a few hours earlier.  The point was Dolores took Teddy's ball (cracked myself here !!!) after he shot himself.  So Teddy was never able to walk to the gateway.  At the end Dolores!Hale put Teddy's ball to the Forge to upload Teddy's memory, meaning Teddy did not go through the gate to reach the Valley Beyond like Ake etc 

 

Teddy also seemed to be all alone in the Valley Beyond, so maybe he actually ended up in a different one than the other hosts.

[DarkRaichu]

2 minutes ago, meep.meep said:

Teddy also seemed to be all alone in the Valley Beyond, so maybe he actually ended up in a different one than the other hosts.

Well, he came after the others passed through, presumably the others were roaming around to explore.  But to me he was standing by the gateway all alone paining for Dolores

[dgpolo]

5 minutes ago, meep.meep said:

Teddy also seemed to be all alone in the Valley Beyond, so maybe he actually ended up in a different one than the other hosts.

No, someone up thread mentioned The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis:

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!”

― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

All the others have just gone further up and further in.

[marcee]

30 minutes ago, Law Mom said:

I don't think Delos was coded to walk away. He was coded to match the real Delos's personality, complete with a set of moral rules, temperament, and preferences. When given a specific data set (i.e. Logan's addiction, recovery, and relapse), he based his so-called choice on those factors and it always led to the same decision. But since it was technically a choice and not a command, it gives the illusion of free will.

 

That's the point. He was "coded" -- just as a human is "coded" to make the same choice every time. Not *intentionally* coded, but due to his moral rules, temperament, preferences and circumstance, he would ALWAYS make the same choice.... because humans are predictable and pathetic. We are, after all, only 10,000 some-odd lines of code.

Edited June 25, 2018 by marcee