Someone just put poor Bernard out of his misery
All of the lead characters are finally meeting each other — meaning, of course, they’re actually trying to kill each other — in the newest episode of Westworld, entitled “Les Écorchés.’
Three major storylines this week, most of which involved Bernard, so try to stick with me here. If you thought Game of Thrones could get confusing when it jumped around from place to place, Westworld is here to prove that HBO shows can get even MORE confusing, as they’re jumping around from place to place while using the same characters in each place.
We’ll start with the farthest in the future we see, which is how the episode begins.
Bernard, Charlotte and Ash are all hiding out underneath Westworld, waiting for the cavalry to arrive.
Or at least, that’s what Charlotte tells them they're waiting for. Ash gets to thinking and suddenly isn’t so sure. The extract team is obviously there for Peter Abernathy, but what’s going to happen to him and Bernard once they arrive?
It doesn’t take long for him to get his answer. He and Bernard are marched down into Ford’s secret laboratory — the one where Bernard killed Teresa Cullen in — where Charlotte is waiting for them.
She starts waving a gun around, thinking that Ash is the one behind Teresa’s death, which causes Bernard to break down.
That’s right when they find another secret laboratory hidden within the first secret laboratory, revealing a room full of half-built Bernards.
“I figured you’d have some skeletons in your closet Bernard,” Charlotte says. “but I didn’t think they’d be your own.”
Now that his secret is out, Charlotte takes him upstairs for interrogation. That’s when things start to get complicated.
Storyline Two: Bernard in the past which may or may not be a memory implanted during Charlotte’s interrogation.
Back where the previous episode left off, Bernard has just found Ford inside the park’s data files or whatever they’re being called.
Done through a few exposition-heavy scenes, Ford basically explains that, thanks to the technology used on Delos, he’s able to live within the park’s data banks and basically become a ghost in the machine.
Makes sense so far.
He also elaborates further on what, exactly, Delos was trying to do. The park wasn’t meant to be a place to entertain the guests — it was a place where the creators could study the participants and learn more about human behavior.
That knowledge was then used to build replicas of their guests — hence the reason Bernard is an exact copy of Arnold (which was perfected because of Dolores since she knew the real Arnold so well. That explains that one scene a few episodes back when Dolores was leading the interrogation — she was testing to see how closely Bernard resembled Arnold).
Confusing, I know, but hang in there.
That’s when Ford decides he’s had enough of this virtual world. He wants to get out and see the real one again.
He can’t physically do so as of yet, because technology hasn’t come that far. He can, however, live through Bernard — meaning Ford basically follows and talks to him wherever he goes even though no one else can see him, all Upgrade style.
He wakes up to find the laboratory under attack as Dolores and her army has now arrived — and this is where I get slightly confused.
Dolores, Evil Teddy and the group of terrifying soldiers she assembled march in and start taking people out one by one. Charlotte’s extraction squad does the same, and the whole thing emerges in this beautifully choreographed action sequence that we’ve been waiting for all season.
Dolores and Evil Teddy find Abernathy and, as you might expect, aren’t thrilled. Dolores takes a minute or two to intimidate Charlotte, bringing one of those buzzsaw things that were used on the androids to her head, only to be interrupted at the last moment.
There’s an explosion downstairs as Angela blew up the entire Cradle (which is all the digital files), meaning they no longer have their consciousness downloaded into new bodies. This is what Dolores wanted, after all, as that’s the only way they can be truly free.
The explosion seemingly kills Angela (but who really knows in this show) and gives Ash and Charlotte enough time to escape.
Evil Teddy goes after them, which winds up in an epic fist-fight between him and the head of the extract team. Evil Teddy comes out on top, as Evil Teddy is a complete badass who is the unsung hero of this entire show.
Dolores doesn’t chase after them, though. She’s got something much harder to do — she has to take off her dad’s head to get the flash drive inside it.
There’s no other way around it, so she does it and quickly leaves. On the way out, she finds Maeve lying on a bed shot, and the two stop to share another ‘free will’ kind of conversation.
Why has Maeve been shot you ask? Well, it’s because she’s had an adventure of her own. After finding her daughter and running away from Ghost Nation, she just so happens to come across the Man in Black.
The Man in Black, if you recall, is the one who’s basically responsible for all of Maeve’s trauma. She gets flashbacks to him busting into their cabin and gunning down her daughter in cold blood on the regular, and she instantly recognizes him when they meet.
The Man in Black recognizes her too. He, however, thinks she's just part of Ford’s game — she’s only here to remind him of his past sins.
Maeve doesn’t wait around for an answer. She starts firing at him, then gets his henchmen to start firing at him, then starts firing at him herself again.
She has him at gunpoint when Lawrence sneaks up behind her. Turns out, Lawrence is awake like Maeve is and can’t be controlled by her mind powers. While it looks like Maeve might be finished for a minute, she does some quick thinking and challenges to look into his memories and see the Man in Black for who he really is.
Cut to a bunch of flashbacks of the Man in Black repeatedly killing his wife and daughter in past timelines. That’s all Lawrence needed — he turns his gun and shoots the Man in Black right in the chest.
He’s not dead though. Almost immediately after shooting the Man in Black, a bunch of guards that Lee called come wheeling in with their vehicles and shoot Lawrence in the head and Maeve in the chest. As she looks off in the distance, she sees her daughter running into the wilderness, only to be captured by Ghost Nation.
Then we go back to Charlotte’s interrogation, and things in the lab look relatively normal again. Bernard is freaking out as a wave of memories rush back into his brain.
“I know it’s confusing, separating your real memories from the ones you’ve been given,” she says. “But it’s the only way to remember.”
Meaning some of what we just saw might have been a fake memory implanted into Bernard’s brain, or it could have been completely true. Honestly, no clue at this point.
Either way, Bernard does give up the information that Charlotte was looking for: that the Abernathy control unit is in the Valley Beyond — the same place Dolores is now headed.
Looks like this Valley Beyond place is where we’ll be getting our climax to season two.
There are only three episodes of Westworld left! Make sure to watch HBO for the newest episode tonight, and then check out our other Westworld recaps by clicking here.