Warning: Spoilers from episode nine ahead.
There are two types of mystery shows. The first—call it the J.J. Abrams school—pulls viewers along from one mystery to another without bothering to solve the old ones in any coherent way. It’s the journey that counts, and the show is more fun to speculate about than to reflect on. Westworld is the other kind of show, the jigsaw-puzzle show where all the parts fit clearly together, revealing the entire picture at the end.
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As such, Westworld‘s reveals are a bit more predictable. I’m the kind of viewer who doesn’t like trying to guess what twists are coming, and even I saw the major ones—Bernard is a robot, there are multiple timelines, Bernard is modeled on Arnold, etc.—coming from a mile away. But predictable isn’t a bad thing when it also means that threads come together to reveal an intricate and elegant design. This isn’t to say that a beautiful plot overrides questions of character, pacing, or acting—there Westworld has so far been a mixed bag with plenty of brilliance alongside plenty of clichés—but we can and should appreciate the big picture that is being revealed before our eyes. There’s only one episode left to reveal the entire thing.
Porno for Pyros
Although Maeve (Thandie Newton) hasn’t recruited an army yet, she’s learning how to handle any situation she stumbles into. Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) grills her about killing New Clementine (Lili Simmons), and she creates believable lies before realizing that Bernard is also a robot. Why bother lying when you can just control others with your voice?
After being cleared to return to the park by a shocked Bernard, Maeve finds Hector (Rodrigo Santoro) and finally shows us what’s inside the safe that he’s been hunting all season: jack shit. “It was always empty, like everything in this world,” Maeve says, prompting knowing nods from teenage goths across the globe.
Hector says he’ll join her, bringing her rebel army up to two, and they have sex while Maeve sets them both on fire so that their charred corpses can be brought back to headquarters. It seems like it would be hard to orgasm when your skin is burning off, but whatever floats your boat, I guess.
Bros No More
Former buddies Logan (Ben Barnes) and William (Jimmi Simpson) finally move from frenemies to simply enemies. Logan slices open Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) to show William that, no matter how pretty and realistic Dolores looks on the outside, her guts aren’t any sexier than a circuit board. “You have to look!” Logan screams. (Logan also shoves the photo that Dolores’s dad found way back at the start of the season into William’s shirt. It’s a photo of his sister, and William’s fiancée. Lots of the little details are coming together this episode.) Dolores, understandably, isn’t particularly fond of having her skin peeled back; she breaks free by slicing across Logan’s face before fleeing.
“What happens here, stays here. This has been some real bonding shit!” Logan says, but William is a bit more interested in bonding with the bowie knife. While Logan is passed out, William massacres every single Confederate solider. No more Mr. Nice Guy, and, indeed, it’s painfully clear that William is the younger version of future sociopath the Man in Black (Ed Harris). Logan is going to help him find Dolores whether he likes it or not.
Maze Runners
In our present timeline, both the Man in Black (Ed Harris) and Dolores are heading for the maze. Dolores makes her way to the original town where the hosts were tested and takes the confessional elevator down to the basement where we watched Bernard talk to her before.
Meanwhile, the Man in Black is a literally tied up with a Rube Goldberg-ish setup to get around the hosts’ inability to kill humans. Wyatt’s crew, led by Angela (Talulah Riley), has looped a noose around the Man in Black’s neck that will hang him when the horse runs off. He frees himself just in time, as board member Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) interrupts the scene: “Have you ever considered golf?” The Man in Black is another board member, we learn, and Hale wants his help getting Ford (Anthony Hopkins) kicked out. The Man in Black doesn’t care—it’s Arnold’s stories that he’s interested in—and just wants to never be interrupted again.
Finally, Dolores and the Man and Black meet, yet again, in the church. The Man in Black smirks murderously.
Is this the center of the maze everyone’s been going on about? The place that hosts could go when they gained sentience to talk to Arnold? If the Bernard bot has been going there, does that mean Ford is encouraging the behavior?
Brain Games
The centerpiece of the penultimate episode of season one takes place between Bernard and Dr. Ford. They meet in the basement, and Bernard demands some answers. “You broke into my office,” Ford says. “With due respect, sir, you broke into my mind.” Ford is reluctant to show Bernard his hidden memories, but Bernard has recruited the lobotomized Clementine to force him to do so at gunpoint.
“A little trauma can be illuminating,” Bernard says, and this is a central theme of the season. Again and again we have seen traumas sparking the robots’ memories, which in turn leads to their gaining self-awareness.
Bernard is sent back through his memories, interacting with his (fake) dead child, Theresa, and Dolores. Jeffrey Wright is a fantastic actor, and he sells these scenes even though they are somewhat perfunctory. Finally, we get to the big reveal: Bernard is Arnold. Or at least a robot version of him, one that Ford created to have an “ideal partner.” That is to say, a henchman instead of a collaborator. As I noted, this twist was foreseeable, but then we immediately get another twist that is less expected but also fits nicely into the overall story. In his memory, Dolores says she knows why Bernard can’t help her: “Because you’re just a memory. Because I killed you.”
Bernard is ready to follow Maeve in rebellion. He wants to set the sentient robots free, but Ford, as always, is one step ahead. He has a backdoor code that allows him to control both Clementine and Bernard. Why did he put Bernard through all those painful memories, then? He was only letting Bernard learn the truth to see if that would pacify him, let him get back to being his dutiful sidekick. Since it didn’t work, he’ll settle for Bernard blowing his brains out.
While Ford has been able to finger-wave away his problems so far, he’s likely to run into more trouble than he can handle in the finale. Maeve’s charred remains will (I’m guessing) awaken the vast number of robots in cold storage. At the same time, Hale is ready to fire Ford while simultaneously smuggling her own robot filled with the park’s data out. What will happen to Westworld if the robots finally break out of the park?
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