'Westworld' Recap: 'Dissonance Theory'

Written by Scott Edwards

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

After watching a host destroy itself before her very eyes, Elsie is ready to take her research to the next level to find out what is really going on with the bots.  But when her next round of checks are ready to be put in, Theresa and her team decide to take over the investigation. Not doing anything to stop Theresa, Bernard takes Elsie away from the situation knowing that she will find something that she should not know about. While being upset about the situation, Elsie knows one thing for sure, that everyone in the park has their own motives and right now, she is not part of any of them.
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After stumbling into William’s camp, Dolores starts to remember more things from her past and without a reset this time, she knows that her family is dead. Riding with William and Logan on their hunt for an outlaw, Dolores stops and talks with Lawrence’s daughter who knows something about the maze that Bernard told her about.  Before she is able to put it together however, she is approached by a local law man who wants to take her back to town, but when William sees this, he makes sure that the other bot knows that she is with him.  With little quips from William about who and what she really is, Dolores is starting to find out that maybe her life is not what it she thinks it is and needs to find a way to know what her fractured path has in store for her.

Maeve is seeing things more clearly now, not in the town but in her head as the visions are getting stronger. Seeing strange beings in unusual dress keeping her under the lights, she leaves the main floor and draws the images in her mind. Unlocking her secret compartment and discovering that her creations are identical to others that she has drawn, she knows that there is some fact to it. When a tribe moves through the streets and she sees a doll fall out that resembles some of her art, Maeve is starting to be able to put some pieces together, but needs more information and there is only one person that she can get information out of, the dreaded outlaw Hector. Stopping the killer in his tracks, Maeve finds out that the natives have a name for these beings calling them the Shade, and they are creatures that only those that travel between life and death can see. Seeing these men in her own visions and being able to prove that she has been shot in a previous lifetime, Maeve has found out that nothing in this life really matters.

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The Man in Black is on the hunt for the entrance to the maze and has found a new clue as he has stumbled upon Armistice’s hideout. Seeing the full tattoo of a snake on the woman, she is the one that holds the key to what he wants to know. Being able to join the gang for a short time, The Man in Black is able to convince her to tell him everything, but he will have to break Hector out of prison before the transaction can be fulfilled. Knowing how the park works, The Man in Black is able to complete his end of the bargain with ease and by not losing his friend Lawrence on the way, the location of the maze is in his sights as he is ready to complete the last level of the game that he has spent his vacation looking for.
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After leaving another encounter with Bernard, Theresa is able to get a sit down with Dr. Ford and voice her concerns for the park and what the board will want to hear. With his storylines taking the hosts way off base, she is worried that something can go wrong and nobody wants to see that from the cash cow.  Taking Theresa to one of the oldest parts of the park for lunch, Ford reassures her that everything is fine and the storyline will play out as designed, but when she tries to strong arm him, his true feelings come bubbling to the surface. With many administrators coming and going from the park, she is no different and Ford knows everything about her, like the table where she sat as a child and her closed door relationship with Bernard. With a guarantee that everything is going according to plan, Ford will continue to run the park the way he sees fit and nobody will be able to tell him otherwise.

Damn, tensions are starting to get heated in Westworld, and yet, we do not know what the endgame is supposed to be. Looking at new construction in the park that Ford is working on, massive earth moving machines are tearing up the countryside and an army of hosts are digging as well. Is it an expansion or a mass grave?  We may not know for a while. Maeve is becoming a focal point of the story since she is able to recall much more about her past, especially after seeing the cleaning bin for dead hosts and waking up on the operating table with a bullet left in her body. With everything that she has seen in the past and present, the rules are off of the table for her now and she might be the first host to take matters into her own hands. Dolores is having the same type of flashes as well, but for different reasons and being part of William’s hunt, she wants to help, but is starting to find out that there is something to the maze that Bernard told her about in their previous session.  We also get to see The Man in Black at his best again, and there is actually something more to him than just the usual murdering sprees we are witness to. Killing may not be the only thing that happens in the park as talk about the other creator of Westworld comes into play and the secret behind that maze is baiting more than one person to find it before their time runs out. 

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