Spoilers Ahead!

To say this season of Westworld has been a whirlwind would be an understatement. I’ve been holding my tongue, patiently waiting for the finale of Westword Season 2 because I knew the episode would put the puzzle pieces together. At least a little bit.

Watching this season has been like living in that boomerang filter, jolting around frantically. The storytelling was much more fragmented this time. In the finale, it’s confirmed that Bernard scrambled his memory and basically scrambled the whole the damn show. Thus, watching on an episode by episode basis sometimes left me with so many questions, lots of confusion, and sometimes frustration. I couldn’t help watching the show through a writer’s lens and comparing it to the incredibly well-paced first season. I guess this is a credit to the writers, this season was all about chaos and breaking expectations, so I can imagine they wanted the viewers to feel that. Some of the episodes felt like fillers watching the season traditionally, yet when watching the series over again, the little details stuck out more and it was much easier to fall deep into the story.

Westworld Highlights

Maeve vs. Dolores

This season did an amazing job of showing the differences between these two female leads. They are both powerful and awake to the illusions of the park, but they use their power very differently.

I think a reason why Maeve has become such a fan favorite is that her motivations still remained clear to the audience. Her goal was to find her daughter. When her goal became complicated, seemed unattainable, and finally, when she had to let her daughter go, the audience could feel for her. We saw what was at stake for her, we saw how much she struggled, especially in episodes 8 Kiksuya and 9 Vanishing Point. Also, throughout the journey to her daughter, Maeve’s strength and fierceness were unmatched. The season did an amazing balancing act of evolving Maeve’s character with her god-like new power, which we see in episode 5, Akane No Mai, and making that power realistic further into the season. More importantly, it was her storyline that kept this season at it’s most entertaining.

Maeve is ruthless at times, yet she still honored the power of choice and freedom when it came to the other hosts, which amounted to merely words with Dolores. With Maeve’s motivations so clear, it is interesting to see how she is much more powerful than Dolores. She had techy-scf-fi-supernatural powers, the people that followed her were really by her side, her love story, though obviously not the main focus, was more passionate and interesting than Dolores and Teddy, and in the final episode, she saves herself! #TeamMaeve!

What I loved in the final episode was that Dolores finally came clean about her motivations. Yes, as viewers we could see that she was being hypocritical with her reasoning for an uprising against the humans. Which is why you start to dislike her character this season, she seemed so self-righteous yet her words and actions just weren’t matching up. Her character was starting to feel flat as well, being cunning with few moments of relatability. She was spouting all this talk about liberation, yet she let the others hosts die when trying to get her father back and when she reunited with her father she killed him, she altered Teddy for her gain, and then she partnered, briefly, with the Man in Black to get to The Forge and so much more.

In retrospect, this season was truly the birth of Dolores as the antihero. It was hinted at with the Wyatt program, but it was her own behavior that cemented her ‘new’ role. I would think her huge hate for humans stemmed mainly from the Man In Black, yet her brief team up with him proved how much she was warped by wanting control and wanting to be free of the park. She was hinting all along that some hosts wouldn’t make it to The Valley Beyond. Yet, in the end, she confesses that her goal was purely selfish: she was done “playing Cowboys and Indians” and just wanted to make it the real world– no matter what. This confession made the second episode, Reunion when she sees the human world, all the more significant. Also, Reunion was the set up for the whole season: Maeve and Dolores have a chat about power dynamics, past-William shows Dolores The Forge, and bits and pieces of the Delos agenda are foreshadowed.

Teddy’s Decision

The most significant moment where the all-knowing and cunning armor Dolores adopted was briefly broken was when Teddy shot himself. This moment where we see her shock and then see her mourning him after is the most relatable she’s been all season. She drove him to the edge but it’s also interesting to see why she needed Teddy to change so much. Once she gets to The Forge, she teams with the Man in Black because she needed someone to fight by her side.

Ford’s Message to Maeve

You start to understand in this season that Ford was playing the role of a ‘necessary villain’ to the hosts in the first season. He believed that the hosts needed struggle to become sentient. One of the major questions in season 1 was whether or not Maeve was really escaping on her own, when it became clear that someone had been orchestrating her escape plan, we couldn’t quite pinpoint who. Arnold and his goal for host sentience was such a huge focus of that season, and his favor for Dolores was clear to see. So it was interesting for Ford to share that his favorite host was Maeve and he programmed her escape plan.

Throughout the scene, I wondered when Ford began to see that Maeve was such an awesome character and should live out in the real world. It was such a revelation that was of course planted, yet you didn’t see it coming because Ford had never really focused on Maeve. The likely moment is when Maeve still remembered her daughter’s death even after he erased it from her memory. You can imagine that the moment stuck with Ford and why he decided to change Maeve’s role to the madam. I think his favor for Maeve is actually significant to his state of mind toward humans. Somewhere along the way of Westworld park, Ford’s disdain for humans and his ability to see the host as more than machines grew, that much is obvious. My speculation is that it’s connected to the Man In Black and Maeve…. but I am open to seeing how more of the backstory comes out, if at all.

Sizemore, The Writer

Sizemore and his journey with Maeve and her crew were always fun to watch because it was so meta: a writer seeing characters and storylines he wrote go completely off script. He finally does something redeemable in the finale by sacrificing himself and saying the speech he wrote for Hector. We don’t know for sure if he is dead, yet if he is, he symbolizes the definite end to linear storylines for the hosts. As he guided Maeve to find her daughter, he was always the one with clarifying statements, we see this especially in Akane No Mai.

Kiksuya

Episode 8 was one of the best episodes of the season. It was heartwrenching and created an epic collaboration between Maeve’s crew and the Ghost Nation. I was really happy that the Ghost Nation was finally explored, there were subtle hints in the first season of how they saw the humans somewhat as deities yet they were mostly on the sidelines. I loved seeing that Akecheta was one of the first hosts to awaken… Yet, I loved that the maze symbol was a rallying call to consciousness and it was spearheaded by indigenous hosts. This episode added some great clarification on a character and story level and added a fresh and enlightening perspective to the season as well.

Bernard vs Dolores

It was so great to see Bernard finally take action. Bernard was always an important character yet this season he seemed relegated to the sidelines. He was busy tripping, trying to figure out what’s real and what’s the past, yet still, it wasn’t always interesting to watch. Despite that, some of the exciting tension was whether or not he was going to be helpful to the hosts, or end up destroying them. That was the main tease of this season, finding out how the hosts ended up floating in a lake, and just how responsible Bernard was for this.

But, seeing Bernard make a choice, to protect the digital haven of the hosts by killing Dolores was a pivotal point for his character. He had to realize that he wasn’t just a piece in Ford’s game. Since he’s saddled both the human and host world, it was powerful to see him as one of the key players to the future of the hosts and actively defend them.

Dolores then bringing Bernard back and the open-ended nature of the last scenes was a redeeming point for Dolores in this season. I was getting some android Adam and Eve-vibes watching the Dolores-Hale host interact with Bernard. I can’t wait to see how Bernard and Dolores’ relationship is further fleshed out and how they end up wrecking the human world.

The Passenger

Episode 10, the finale. It’s extra long and it’s extra good. We see some happy endings for the hosts: Akecheta, Teddy, and Maeve’s daughter. And we finally find out why the hosts are floating in the water. It’s a new beginning for Bernard and Dolores and it’s definitely not the end for Maeve. Just watch it!!

I’m not even gonna act like I have all the answers. Westworld is a beautiful mindfuck. There are many more awesome moments in this season. Since two seasons are out, go and watch if you haven’t already. If you have seen it, I am an advocate of binge-watching, so binge away!

Best,

Kai 😀