And we back, and we back, and back, and we….
The first question on everyone’s minds when Westworld ended in Fall of 2016 was when was season two going to air. Now, a year and a half later, we’ve finally made it.
And, to no one’s surprise, we’ve already got multiple timelines going on (classic Westworld, am I right?) so we’re just going to jump right in.
We last left Westworld in utter chaos. Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) found her consciousness and shot Ford in front of the entire administration, then leashing forth the army of androids to do their bidding.
That's not where we start, though. Instead, after a brief flashback conversation between Dolores and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), we cut right to Bernard waking up on a beach in Inception like fashion after some of the carnage has already gone down.
W attack the androids launched created enough waves to bring in a military (what kind of military, we’re not told, meaning these guys could technically be anyone). Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) apparently joined up with them, but the real focus is on a new character: Karl Strand (Gustaf Skarsgard) — a dude who’s clearly not here to take shit from anyone.
Strand wants Bernard’s help in finding where all the hosts are currently added, but the real red flag here is when one of the guards in Strand’s troop holds up a card with Bernard’s face on it. Pretty sure they know Bernard is an android, and there’s no way this is going to end pretty.
That’s all still coming, I’m sure. Now, some scientist belonging to Strand walks over to a dead host, takes out its brain and starts looking at its memories. You’ll never guess who killed this host: Dolores.
Dolores has been on a killing spree ever since this whole thing began. She’s channeled her inner Wyatt and begun to mow down guests and hosts alike with her rifle. We see that she’s pretty merciless as she hangs a bunch of VIPs up on some nooses, but she also takes a moment to clarify something: this isn't Wyatt. This isn’t Dolores. This is the new and final version of herself.
Oh yeah, Teddy (James Marsden) is standing there for all of this too, but Teddy has never really done much of anything in Westworld but repeatedly die so we can just move on.
Next, we move on to Maeve (Thandie Newton). We knew the reason why she decided to return to Westworld in the season one finale was so that she could find her “daughter.” We didn’t know how difficult of a challenge that was going to be.
Maeve busts back into the Westworld headquarters, saving Lee (Simon Quarterman) from a deadly host. She agrees to protect him if he shows him where his daughter is. Even though Lee is looking to get out of this arrangement as soon as possible, he really doesn’t have any other options at this point so he goes along with it. A couple of bloody hallway gunfights later and a reunion with Hector (Rodrigo Santoro), and Maeve and Lee are definitely stuck together (Lee is going to become a maniac by the end of this season, mark my words).
Then, finally, we get our closest look at the android uprising yet, all told through the eyes of Bernard. We don’t see exactly it from exactly when it began, but we see him hiding in a barn with Charlotte (Tessa Thompson) and some other guests.
Those other guests are eventually killed by hosts, but Charlotte and Bernard make it to one of Charlotte’s secret hiding places inside the park.
A secret hiding place with some highly classified information that Bernard was definitely not supposed to see. There’s a bunch of huge, faceless hosts that honestly look terrifying (I’m so scared for when they inevitably turn evil and start killing people) who are collecting DNA from the host’s genitals. Thing is, the DNA they’re collecting is that of the guests. That’s right, Charlotte’s keeping a sex record for anyone who’s ever had this kind of encounter in the park. Pretty weird.
Charlotte isn’t in the mood to discuss this right now though, she’s trying to find that one host who had valuable data stored in his brain. Bernard says he has a way to locate it, but he really just needs some time alone to do some self-maintenance. He became injured somewhere along the line, and obviously can’t show any signs of that or else Charlotte will learn of his true identity.
Then we finally get to the Man in Black, or Mr. Ed Harris himself. He’s, more or less, living. Or at least he should be. Having the host act of their own free will is what he’s always wanted. He’s also been a man that’s never been content — he needs a mission.
Luckily, Ford thought of this before his passing. Speaking through that little child we saw in season one who’s supposed to resemble him as a boy, Ford tells the Man in Black that there’s another game to play — only this time, unlike the maze, it’s actually designed for him. His first step is to find “The Door,” and the only clue he was given on how to do so is: “The game begins where you end and ends where you begin.”
Which brings us to the episode’s ending, which is back with Bernard. The Bernard who’s with Strand and his group, that is. There’s still a missing amount of time between that storyline and the Bernard with Charlotte one.
Strand and company come across a dead Bengal — yes, an actual tiger — lying in Westworld. That’s when the most exciting line of the whole show hits: “We got Bengals in Park 6.” More on that later.
What this means is that, for the time being, the parks are coming together as one, somehow. And all of that has something to do with the giant lake that Strand then stumbles across, a lake that could no way have been put there by Ford. Something weird is going on here.
Even weirder is that all the hosts are lying dead in the water. And, to top it all off, when confronted about the whole thing, Bernard says that he was the one who killed them.
And cut to black.
A few things here: Bernard probably thinks he’s telling the truth. Who knows why he killed everyone, but this whole lake/flood thing has a Noah’s Ark feeling to it. At one point Dolores mentions something along the lines of a “special place,” so maybe all the dead hosts are the ones who don’t get to go there.
More importantly is the fact that we learn there are at least SIX parks, Westworld being only one of them. We saw hints towards a Samurai world in season one, but my mind is now racing to figure out what the other four could possibly be.
Hopefully, we’ll get an answer soon, so tune into Westworld on HBO on Sunday nights to find out.