'Westworld' Recap: 'The Bicameral Mind'

12/5/2016

Written by Scott Edwards

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

After finding the old workshop hidden inside of the church, Dolores knows that she has once again completed the maze, but there is something different this time. The Man in Black is waiting for her and now he is looking for answers of his own. Seeing that there is something special with this host, he can only hope that she knows the secrets about the maze and what it should mean to him. But Dolores is running on memories only and her time is short when she is not able to explain to the Man in Black what it all means.

Maeve has found her way down to the repair center once again, but this time she has company. With Hector and Armistice by her side, a few hosts will be able to provide the distraction that she needs to escape the park. Bypassing their protocols, the two start back up with what they are good at, killing. Making their way down to the storage facility and getting Bernard back on his feet, Maeve finds out that she has been programmed to want to escape. Not believing that it is a program, that she is doing this of her own volition, Maeve continues with her plan and with everything that she needs to escape but a wrinkle comes into play when the alarms are set off after the security team sees that the hosts are out of control. Keeping her friendly tech Felix with her, Maeve is able to move throughout the facility and her enforcers take care of business when they are called upon. A bloody exit from the park is the only way out, but will she be able to make it all the way to the real world when her memories are telling her to do something different.

Picking up Logan and showing him that he knows how to play the game, William is on the hunt for Dolores and is not liking what he is hearing. Needing help in his search, William is able to locate his old friend Lawrence and get him to join in on the hunt. Finding another military regiment, the men talk about passing the young woman around and this is something that William cannot accept. Killing everyone in his path, William takes Logan to the edge of the park to see what the end game is. Knowing that he is in position to make a difference after he gets married, William sees a future in the park and there is nothing that his soon to be brother in law will be able to do to stop it. Heading back to town, William spots Dolores in a familiar scene and with no memories about what they had just been through, he sees that the park has only one purpose, to show people what they are capable of. Now in the middle of the maze, William has found his early love once again and sees that there is something special about her as her memories are coming back and she has been waiting for him for all this time.

Charlotte is finally getting to apply the pressure to Dr. Ford and with the backing from the rest of the board, it is time for the old man to step aside. With so much joy delivering the news to Ford, Ms. Hale has no idea what the old genius is planning for his new narrative, nor does she realize that he will still have time to release it. Seeing a sad love story come to an end, Charlotte is ready to turn the reins over to Lee so he can make the simple changes to the park that have been needed for some time. Knowing that everything is now at his fingertips, Lee is ready to rewrite the narrative, but his extra hosts are nowhere to be found in the storage facility as they have been programmed for something much different.

Not being able to distinguish between reality and dreams, Dolores has taken a trip back to her old stomping ground and is remembering her time with Arnold. Reaching the end of the maze, she is still not ready for the world yet, but acts as if she has a conscience and Arnold will try anything to push back the opening of the park. Giving Dolores a way to scare everybody into believing that the park is dangerous, she kills everyone in town, including her creator. Seeing Arnold again in the form of Bernard, she is confused, yet knows that she will have to carry out the same sort of assignment again. Knowing that she only has to look within herself to see what she is supposed to be, Dolores has her finger on the trigger and being the oldest surviving host in the park, she may be able to develop a following that nobody sees coming.

Knowing that the board wants him out is not making Dr. Ford worry at all, in fact he is ready to show them his stroke of genius at the narrative reveal this evening. But knowing that everyone is not happy about what he has been doing, he stops and talks with William about what the maze was really for and although the Man in Black is not happy with the results, there is nothing he can do about it. Finding out that he will retire after his massive reveal, Ford has something special for everyone in attendance and while a couple of his hosts are running amuck in the facility, there are plenty more that are not accounted for. Seeing that Bernard has been reactivated and Dolores is no longer looking for answers, Ford is ready to unleash the biggest surprise in the park's history. But there will be no applause for this great man and his next effort as he has unleashed a hell that nobody can escape.

Talk about a surprise for the season finale, I did not see this coming, but we finally got some answers about what is happening in the park, for a minute anyways. William is the Man in Black and his company owns a majority of the park. The memory driven storyline for the hosts makes it impossible for them to know what is real and what is a memory, so they can move alone and think that there are other people accompanying them. Even though Maeve may be programmed to escape and she knows that her world is not real, she still wants to protect her daughter from a past life and Bernard/Arnold will always have a place in the park, no matter what happens to the guests that love the park so much.

The multiple timelines theory in this story has been confirmed, yet we don’t know when all of them take place exactly. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of storytelling, but overall the series did a great job in clueing you in with their devices. There is more to the park as we find out during Maeve’s escape, as we see Samurai hosts training in a different part of the facility, and I cannot wait to see if we get to find out what they can do. Westworld has had hell released in it, the new narrative promises death and destruction and, well, no restraints so now the guests can be killed just like the hosts. When next season comes along, it will be very interesting to see how the path of the new story goes, because with all of the killing, could there even be a park to go back to? And there are still protocols in place to keep the hosts trapped in the park, so if they tried to escape, would they be able to? These are all new questions that will need to be answered and there is a new narrative that we will need to keep an eye on, but it will be a while before that happens, so now I need to try and find another show this good to keep me occupied.

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