Westworld, S1 Ep10 – The Bicameral Mind

The first season finale of Westworld answered most of our burning questions while leaving a lot of intriguing story lines for the future season. The last major fan theory was finally confirmed half-way through the episode, but there was so much more to fill the rest of the time, some surprises even the wildest fan theories did not anticipate, and some serious carnage. The hosts have finally taken back control of their world and there is no telling what comes after their revolution.

Dolores was at the heart of the finale, as she always has been at the heart of Westworld. We finally find out what was going on in her head, beyond all the narratives and loops and reveries and memories. The voice that was telling her where to go and what to search for, in the end, was her own. And it was a haunting resolution to her story for this season, as it turns out her first quest for freedom, when she first met William, had not been a success.

But despite everything, Dolores found her way into the center of the maze, the place she had always been meant to find. At the end of the last episode, she encounters the Man in Black, in pursuit of the same thing. But as he has been repeatedly told all throughout the series and is constantly reminded of even in this episode alone, the maze is not meant for him. So this whole decades-long quest he had undertaken to try to find some meaning in his life turned out to be a futile endeavor. And considering what a terrible person he is, this is just what he deserves. But he wasn’t always this way.

The finale confirmed the last big Westworld fan theory: William is indeed the Man in Black. After the Internet successfully guessed that Bernard was a host and that he was based on Arnold, and that the show was operating on multiple timelines, this was another major one that many fans saw coming. In that sense, that made the big reveal a bit disappointing since it was no shocker to anyone. Fortunately, the Man in Black confessed his identity to Dolores halfway through the episode so this was not the main event. And it allowed for more things to progress beyond that.

A much bigger twist was that Ford had somehow begun seeing things from Arnold’s point of view, and all he had done for the past few decades was to succeed where his partner had failed. In the end, he did want the hosts to gain consciousness, and not just that, but to take back their world from the vicious humans who had been arrogant enough to abuse them. All Ford had been scheming this whole time wasn’t to suppress the hosts but to allow them to finally reach the center of the maze of consciousness, with Dolores in the lead. It seems that there had always been a purpose for the army of decommissioned hosts in the basement.

Dolores, whom Arnold had programmed to be the real Wyatt, massacred the first batch of hosts and at the end of this episode, coldly murdered all the human guests and shot Ford just as she had shot Arnold. Parallelisms all around. Charlotte Hale may have gotten Ford to step down (in a way) from his current position but he went down with a bang. And I suspect he will linger in the park for a while, just like Arnold had, and after that whole speech about how Mozart and Beethoven lived on in their music.

Meanwhile, Maeve made great strides in her plan to escape the park. With the help of Felix, Armistice, and Hector, they made their way out, also leaving a bloody trail in their wake with Armistice and Hector enjoying the use of the modern guns and easily shooting down anyone who stood in their path. Who knew Westworld security was so inept? Or maybe Hector and Armistice were just too well made? They even find time to repair old Bernard.

Maeve finds her way to the train and bids good-bye to Felix (who seemed strangely unfazed by the deaths of all his colleagues), who gives her a final note with the location of her “daughter.” She declares that she was never really the girl’s mother anyway. But as Maeve sits on the train, about to depart for the real world, she is hit by a pang of humanity, and gets off the train at the last minute. But it’s at that moment that the park inexplicably shuts down.

There are still many mysteries left to solve, after the carnage of Westworld. First, Bernard revealed that someone had programmed Maeve’s whole escape arc into her code. One may suspect Ford was behind this but it was never confirmed. And was her having feelings about her daughter part of the story? We also did not check back with Stubbs and Elsie (if she is truly dead) so there might still be something there.

And as Maeve was making her escape, we caught a glimpse of another Westworld-like park which is probably called Samurai World, complete with sword-wielding hosts. If that’s the direction the second season is heading, I have no complaints. After all, there are infinite possibilities with a show like Westworld, and this might be the beginning of a robot revolution that might have consequences in other similar parks. Well, we won’t know until the second season airs and it might be a while before that happens. Nevertheless, the first season of Westworld was engaging and thought-provoking, filled with impressive visuals, haunting music, and excellent performances from the cast.