Westworld Season 2: 10 Possible Answers to the Biggest Questions

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Lifehacker took apart the finale of the second season of HBO's main sci-fi series. Warning: spoilers!

June 24 ended the second season of one of the most ambitious shows of recent years - "World of the Wild West". As the creators promised, the story of the futuristic amusement park has reached a radically new level and beyond the territorial limits known to us.

Such a large-scale season, according to the idea, evokes not only the feeling of a brilliantly played game, but also shock due to some plot decisions. And leaves a lot of questions.

1. What is this idyllic space where some of the androids have gone?

In the last episode of the second season, Bernard briefly opened a portal to the digital dimension, where the consciousness of some of the robots, led by the Indian Akecheta, moved. In particular, Teddy, who had killed himself shortly before, got into the "new world": Dolores uploaded his control module separately into the system.

But what is this dimension and why is it so like heaven?

Judging by the statements of the showrunners, they really wanted to create a kind of afterlife virtual space where androids can finally become truly free.

However, do not rush to say goodbye to all the heroes who have left the corporeal shell. In the end, we are talking about the "World of the Wild West", which means that part of the next season may well unfold in this digital Eden.

2. Where did Dolores send the consciousness of the departed androids?

In the same last episode, we see Dolores (already in the body of Charlotte Hale) change coordinates and send the consciousness of those who have gone to digital paradise, to a certain point. “I send them where no one will ever find them,” says Dolores Bernardo.

Could this be the real world, like Arnold's house? One of the six existing parks? Or another secret place where Dolores can recreate them in a new shell?

And in general, is Dolores going to restore old androids or would she prefer to construct her own (after the second season, we are convinced that she has such abilities)?

All these questions remain unanswered so far.

3. Which android did Dolores take with her?

We know that Dolores, who escaped from the park, took five control modules with her. One of them was Bernard's module: we see him in the very end, coming out towards the world of people.

However, in addition to him, there were four more modules in Dolores' bag. Who exactly?

Probably those androids who will be useful to Dolores in the implementation of her plan to destroy humanity. For example, Angela, Clementine or Abernathy's dad. In particular, Dolores could well have implanted one of them into the body of Charlotte Hale, in which she escaped from the park.

What we know for sure is that Teddy will no longer be among them.

4. Will Maeve return?

For the entire second season, Maeve was engaged in traveling to other parks in search of her daughter and ideologically opposing Dolores. If the latter armed herself against people with fire and sword, then Maeve followed the path of compassion and saved, for example, the ass of the staff writer of "Westworld" Lee Sizemore.

We last saw Maeve at the Door. The girl sacrificed herself to help her daughter go to a virtual paradise. And it was brutally stuffed with lead by the Delos fighters.

To some extent, for a selfless heroine, this is a worthy ending. However, it is not a fact that everything will end there.

In the scene on the beach, two of Maeve's accompanying park staff, Tom and Sylvester, were ordered to test all robots for viability. And this is a rather bold hint that Mei will still show herself in the third season.

5. Is Stubbs aware of what's going on (and which side is he on)?

Unexpectedly, it was Luke Hemsworth's character, the die-hard head of security Stubbs, who managed to really surprise us in the second season.

In one of the most intriguing scenes in Episode 10, he stops Dolores, who is reborn in the body of Charlotte Hale and is about to escape by boat from the park.

During their conversation, Stubbs explains that he was hired by Ford himself, and he gave him the role that he has since unquestioningly followed. What does this mean?

First, what Stubbs most likely knows about Dolores.

Secondly, Stubbs is perhaps himself a creation of Ford, another android who has been undercover all this time.

At least, this explains why he let Dolores-Hale into the human world, while doubting her humanity.

But does that mean Stubbs was following Ford's plot? Or does he have a consciousness of his own?

By the way, about Ford himself.

6. Should we wait for the next return of Robert Ford?

The resurrection, perhaps, of the main character of the "World of the Wild West" this time, it seems, is not expected. In the final episodes of the second season, we see how Bernard, unwilling to follow the advice of the owner, erases Ford from his digital consciousness.

Later, Ford makes another brief appearance in the beach scene. But only to say goodbye to Bernard (and possibly to all the audience).

According to one of the showrunners of the series, Lisa Joy, the hero of Anthony Hopkins "is gone forever." However, we naively thought the same way before, when Dolores knocked out Ford's brains in the finale of the first season.

Therefore, you should not completely delete the old man from the list of possible returns for the next season.

7. Is William a real robot?

We last saw William in a tent on the beach, wounded but clearly alive. So he definitely outlived the action of the second season.

However, in the post-credits scene, which, according to the showrunners, takes place in the distant future, William is still in the Man in Black suit. He goes down to the Forge (a secret place in the park where the Delos corporation kept the data of all the guests who ever visited the Westworld) and discovers his daughter, Emily, who has been killed by him. More precisely, its android version.

Emily the android invites William into a room where he spent years testing the digital consciousness of former park owner James Delos. She tells William that this is not a simulation and that they have been testing it for a long time, checking for "validity." Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

On the one hand, all of this confirms the long-standing fears of fans of the series:

The man in black is a robot. How else to explain the fact that he still has not died from numerous bullet wounds?

On the other hand, it could all be just a dream of William who has passed out on the beach.

In one thing, according to the creators, we can be sure. As the scene unfolds in the future, the William we see after the credits is not at all the William we knew for the first two seasons.

8. Is this a game that Ford came up with for William?

In the ninth episode, we see one of the last meetings between Ford and William in the real world. The action takes place during a Delos company party shortly before the suicide of William's wife, after which he finally lost himself in the park.

During a short conversation, Ford gives William a profile with records of all of the Man in Black's visits to Westworld. In fact, this is compromising evidence that demonstrates its true nature.

“No more games,” a clearly annoyed William replies. “There is probably one last game left,” says Ford after him.

All this leads to the idea already circulating in fan circles that the events that took place in the first two seasons are a game that Robert Ford, for some reason, arranged for William before his death.

Perhaps everything that happens in the series is a figment of the imagination, an illusion in which William flounders and desperately seeks a way out.

Hopefully the third season will somehow clarify our guesses.

nine. What is the difference between humans and androids (and is there any difference between them at all)?

In a sense, the second season of "Westworld" after the first continues to ask the same questions that tormented the heroes of Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

What is the difference between robots and humans? In one of the most mesmerizing scenes of the tenth episode, the show's creators try to give their answer to this question.

This is the moment when the Forge system, in the guise of Logan Delos, shares its knowledge of human nature with Bernard and Dolores. She explains that she was tasked with constructing the most plausible digital copy of human consciousness, starting with James Delos, the former owner of the park.

For this, the system developed 18 million copies of Delos, but they all came to the same moment in his life: the day when he turned his back on his own son, which led to the death of the latter.

From a philosophical point of view, this scene has two implications. First, that having truly free will is a myth. Secondly, that the nature of consciousness and its behavior are dictated by key moments in a person's life - and we are not able to change them.

But if each of the tens of millions of copies of Delos pushed his son away, unable to overcome its nature, does this mean that each of the possible variations of Dolores manages to leave the park? Or that, no matter how Maeve's fate turned out, at the right moment she would still sacrifice herself to save her daughter?

Are we living in a programmed world, after all, or are we making our own destiny?

Despite the fact that Ford is portrayed in the series as the sole architect of Westworld, a kind of divine figure, and people are still positioned as the only free creatures, this short episode takes the concept of the show to a completely different level of understanding. It turns out that a person, unlike the artificial mind of an android, has absolutely no control over his own life, and his consciousness can be represented in the form of a short algorithm.

10. Isn't it time to change the name of the series?

In the last minutes of the second season, we see Bernard, who woke up in the world of people. It is located in the house of one of the creators of the park - Arnold, in the image and likeness of which it was once created. Bernard walks to the door, opens it and smiles before crossing the threshold.

What exactly does he see outside the house? What kind of new world awaits him? How will his relationship with Dolores develop, who, although she returned his body, remains on the other side of the barricades?

One thing is certain: the main action of the third season for the first time will not unfold on the territory of the "World of the Wild West". This means that the series is ripe to change its name.