Westworld Season 2 Finale, ‘The Passenger’ Plot Summary:
All things lead to The Valley of the Great Beyond. Deloros heads to the Valley of the Beyond in order to complete her mission. Bernard heads there to stop her. Maeve (Thandie Newton) and her gang head to the Valley of the Beyond in order to find her daughter.
If you haven’t watched the finale, spoilers are ahead.
“I’m confused.”
This line was uttered by Bernard innumerable times this season. And if you watched last night’s Season 2 finale, ‘The Passenger’ — you probably said the same thing, complete with Bernard’s confused, exasperated, mouth slightly agape stare.
The Season 2 Finale of Westworld was a dense, convoluted, and at times bewildering close to a season that evoked the same adjectives.
And this is the season’s biggest problem, and its biggest strength — complexity. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being complex, or challenging viewers. However, there also is a problem with making things too complicated. At times throughout the season, and especially in the finale, it felt like you were constantly running at a breakneck pace just trying to play catch-up with the immense information coming your way.
The Forge segments, particularly when Dolores and Bernard are with the system, that has taken on the form of Logan (Ben Barnes), are the biggest offenders. There’s almost too much happening here to fully comprehend on first viewing, and even the second.
You know what works the best in this part of the episode? When we see the scene between Delos (Peter Mullan), and Logan. That scene was powerful, and the reveal — why the system/hosts is was disappointed in recreating humans, and why it was (in essence) weaponizing information for Deloros.
And that’s the shows problem. It gets too smart for its own good. It’s mysterious for the sake of mystery. The writing is a bit show-offy at times. This series is always at its best when we get character-driven moments.
This year, as any good show would do, we dove deeper into the abyss that was Westworld. Naturally things would get complicated, however, the show was at its best when it relied on basic storytelling — character-driven moments, twists, and revelations.
Think of the best moments of Season 2 – the Ghost Nation storyline, the Delos reveal, the death of William’s wife, the entire Samurai world arc – all character-driven events.
And what worked best in this episode was the human moments: Akecheta’s happy ending, the self-sacrifice of all the hosts and Simon from Maeve’s crew, and of course, Bernard’s bloody, bloody revenge.
Speaking of Bernard, Jeffrey Wright has been brilliant this season. And thankfully his bewildered state, which could get a little old at times, paid off in full, and then some. His revelation about humanity, his recreation of Hale (Tessa Thompson), and him putting everything in motion for the hosts to survive was awesome. The reveal during his utterances of “Sorry, sorry, sorry…” was a great moment, which we all hoped would come.
Everything from there — Hale’s switcheroo, the reveal that Ford (Anthony Hopkins) did not aid him, and the wink and nod that Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) not only knew Hale was a host, but he himself may be one — all great.
Then we get that ending. Ultimately, the vagueness of Deloros remains. Her drive to burn the human world because what it did to her still rings hollow. Her reasoning to bring back Bernard, who will ultimately try and stop her, also a bit vague, and seemingly a twist for a twists sake.
However, the end results — Season 3: Dolores (and Hale) vs. Bernard — is something I think we can all get behind. We also know they have the blueprints for all the hosts, so who knows who will be resurrected for Season 3. The door is left open for a lot of possibilities, and we’re left with the same mouth-on-the-floor reaction we had at the end of Season One.
This also includes the hanging question of…is The Man in Black a host? We did see him with “his daughter” at the end of the episode. This opens up a massive Pandora’s box. Was his daughter, that we saw him kill, a host? Is this his real daughter? How did he end up in that room? Did he bypass everything (including The Forge) to get there? So yeah, probably a host…but then again…we are questioning or our own reality at this point.
Also, here’s some questions that this series never really answered:
How is it possible that Deloros can program Bernard?
Also, if the hosts are able to adapt and survive — how come Deloros could not be killed by The Man in Black, but by Bernard? (Bullet through the brain I guess?)
Why couldn’t Maeve undo Clementine’s power over the battling hosts?
So yes, the Season 2 finale of Westworld was confusing, it was bewildering as all hell. But once you can finally get through the thickness of the narrative, you’ve got a damn good end, to a damn good season.
Rating: 8 out of 10
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