Westworld Season 4 Episode 2 has just released on HBO Max, and in this episode, we get much
more screentime with multiple versions of The Man In Black, Maeve and Caleb entering
a brand new park, Halores unveiling more of her plan
and a few scenes to get us theorising even more over Christina.
In this spoiler review and explained analysis, I'm going to be giving you my
breakdown of Westworld Season 4 episode 2, entitled Well Enough Alone, alongside discussing
my general thoughts towards it.
But before I get into it, if you want to see more videos on
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But without further a do, lets dive into my review and explained video for
Westworld Season 4 Episode 2.
So now that the second episode of Westworld Season 4 has aired, we're starting to get
a better idea of what's in store for all the central characters and where they are heading.
I was completely wrong in my trailer breakdown last
week in predicting that this episode would be heavily focused on where Bernard is at,
and while that seems to be coming next week, we
get a lot of focus in episode 2 placed on the Host Man In Black and the devolping plan
of Halores.
And with the tease of a new theme park that we'll see in episode 3, the hints towards
her domination and what that entails become all the more scarier.
So let's breakdown all the different narrative elements and details that this second episode
showcased.
Starting with one of the opening sequences, we come back to a character that we haven't
seen in some time.
Clementine is re-introduced and after briefly seeing her in Season 3, having
working with Maeve and escaping the Dolores copy of Musashi, at the beginning of episode
2, she's living the good life in a very bright Mexico away from Host William.
But we soon learn that William is waiting for her when she arrives
at her home and asks her for the location of Maeve.
Clementine of course refuses and Host Man In Black kills her.
But that's not all for Clementine in this episode, because the
next time we see her, she's now a different host working for William, killing members
of the Secret Service, and walking around in greyer
clothing.
It looks like Clementine has had the same treatment as Host Man In Black, being used
for violent undertakings with little beauty to show.
And what this opening tells us is that Host Man In Black and Halores are seemingly
beginning an attack on powerful figures and either contolling them using the flies we've
already seen or replacing them as violent hosts to do
their bidding.
The latter is showcased in the other opening scene with Maeve and Caleb, but I'll come
back to that when I reach my description of what they get up to in this episode.
So while everyday humans currently think the war is over, Halores has some big plans of
her own to change the course of the world right under their noses.
And coming to that plan, we learn more about what she could be up to in season 4.
Of course, we learnt in season 2 that Bernard had created her as Dolores to escape the park
and then in the last season, we learnt that she had a
new copy of Dolores implanted in her.
She was used by original Dolores to gain control of Delos by prentending to be Charlotte Hale,
but after getting to know Hale's real family and watching
them be killed in a car explosion, she now believes that OG Dolores was not doing the
best that she could for their species, in turn,
taking things into her own hands.
At the end of season 3 she also replaced William with a host version of him and we believed
at the time that the human version was killed.
Now, in this episode, we see William replacing United States
government officials with hosts including a senator and his wife.
We further learn that he presumably replaces the vice-president off
screen.
But the man from the Justice Department meets a quite different conclusion.
Jim Navarro, the attorney general for counterterrorism who confronts Clementine towards the beginning
of episode 2 is trying to end Hale's new operations at Delos as he believes it's a risk to the
nation's security.
And he's not wrong.
Because towards the end, this new Clementine ties
him to his car and Hale enters to give us more info on what she's doing.
She explains to him that replacing humans with hosts is not their total goal, and says,
“I want my people to be able to grow, flourish, find their own identity.
I have plans for your kind.”
And then comes the return those flies that she seems to be using to control humans into
doing what she wants.
Of course, the swarm of flies in episode 1 displayed what was capable after they took
over that cartel figure, so we know that Jim Navarro is in for something similar in the
episodes to come.
And it's obviously a cool visual reflection to how the flies were used back in season
1.
We'll have to see how this all develops, but as of far, it's seems like Halores
is replacing these powerful figures so that she can change the course of the world's order,
but then also carry through what she said to Navarro in the car.
Allowing her species the chance to find their own identity in her world.
It's completely understandable when you hear her say it but I'm sure that there will be
a darker twist placed on this idea, to really show us the seperation between her and Maeve's
side of hosts.
Who knows, maybe the world she wants to create is the one that we see in Cristina's narrative.
Speaking of Christina, we do get a few brief scenes with her character and it's clear that
this is a very seperated storyline in season 4.
We don't get any continuation of teddy from when he was re-introduced at the end of Episode
1 but based on the preview trailer for the next few episodes, I'm sure we'll get more
of him in Episode 3 or 4.
But in Episode 2, we pick back up a few days after the events in Christina’s
world for the premiere, and it involves her investigating the suicide of Peter Myers,
the man who was trying to contact her before.
Christina doesn't go to work and even lies to her boss that she's ill so that she find
out more information.
And after she once again passes the homeless man on the street talking about
the tower and avoids her work boss tracking her, she arrives at a mental health clinic
listed in Peter’s obituary, confirming to her that the eerie details may be true.
It turns out that she did create an NPC that matches what
happened.
But when she arrives at the clinic, she finds out that this Mental Health Centre has been
closed for years and is being transformed into apartments.
Christina even finds a memorial plaque in one of the wards with Peter's name on it,
which is impossible when considering that he comitted suicide only yesterday.
So at the minute this Christina narrative is really
mysterious and it's becoming hard to develop a theory that fits in line with everything
we've seen so far.
Based on what she's seen at the mental clinic you would think that this is
suggesting that the original Peter has been replaced and Christina has written the narrative
for the version we saw in episode 1.
But then you have to ask, what would be the goal of that.
A lot of the deatils are still missing, but I'm still sticking with the theory that this
world, whether it be a simulation or a dystopian future created by Halores, is set in the future
and that's what were seeing unfold.
I think all the hints of the Maze symbol, the Dolores storyline repeating itself and
the control of the tower suggest that all the previous narratives
are being used to make Christina regather her memories or question the nature of her
reality for some ultimate goal.
But in trying to work out what is going on here, we do get
another scene with Christina before we leave her and it could be giving us more hints of
something being covered up.
While on the phone, Maya tells Christina to come home and after the
call ends, she discovers tower drawings in one of the rooms, suggesting that the homeless
man she passes hasn't been lying.
In the scene with him at the beginning of episode 2, he talks
about hearing a song with no sound, and that only him and the birds could hear it.
We then see dead birds scattered over the floor and around
Christina.
No idea what this could mean other then it either being to do with suppresing reality
or being some kind of message for what happened in the past in relation to Halores and
her tower ongoing now.
That's of course if Christina's World is set in the future.
I think in the episodes to come it will also be interesting to see how Maya continues to
respond to Christina because at the minute it seems like
she's living a normal life, but then on the flipside, she also gives Christina a lot of
pep talks and tries to discourage her from finding
out the mysteries surrounding Peter.
She's not making it obvious towards what she's up to or how she fits into this narrative,
but I think with more signs we might get a better idea of
what's going on with her, and therefore, what's going on with Christina.
But I am intrigued to hear what you guys think on Christina's world because at the minute
I can't quite put my finger on exactly what's happening here.
But this now brings us to the rest of Episode 2, and we spend a lot of time with Maeve and
Caleb, who are continuing their journey to find William and learn more about why they
are being hunted.
In this episode, we get a bigger sense of their chemistry and previous time together,
with the pair now investigating and posing as a fake couple later on.
It makes me wonder what they did get up to, especially after Caleb
mentions a memory of something called The Lighthouse, and I'm sure we'll learn more
about that soon.
But coming to the events here, their opening scene is the one with that previously
mentioned Senator for before, which involves them fighting the host replacements of him
and his wife left by Host William.
Once they win the fight and Maeve analyses the host senator,
she discovers that they are more upgraded versions of the hosts we're used to seeing,
and voice commands don't work as well as they used
to.
But she also sees how the human senator was killed and how the human wife was left alive
as an experiment by Hale.
They soon find her in the barn and discover that she’s not acting
normal, having brutally killed horses, delivering them messages from Host William and surrounded
by those creepy flies.
Before Maeve kills her in defence, the woman ends up giving them
a lead to an opera theatre where things will really bagin to enravel.
Maeve and Caleb dress up and set out on another road trip to find this theatre and see what's
going on.
Once they arrive, no one is at the theatre and they
eventually discover an underground corridor, leading them onto a train.
It's visually identical to the second episode of season 1 where young
william enters the train to Westworld, indicating that were about to see a new Delos Destination.
And it turns out that this is the MafiaWorld park that we saw in the trailer, modeled
after the 1920s in Chicago.
Maeve and Caleb are greeted on the train by Sophia, who was the replacement host for Clementine
during Westworld Season 1.
They are also presented with the famous white and black hat choice on entry,
with Caleb refusing as a reverse to William choosing the white hat back in Season 1.
William's addictiveness corrupted him yet showed us his
true colours, but Caleb so far, seems to be going the opposite direction.
But for all we know his time in the park may change that entirely.
And even Maeve is given a different kind of entry to this new park herself.
We learn that Maeve get's to enter this park in a sort of role reversal, as she now viewing
it from the guest’s point of view.
And I think that this may be hinting at what's to come in this new park
itself.
During the ending of Episode 2, we cut between Maeve and Caleb entering the park and Host
William onstage announcing that it's opening.
He calls the sweetwater of this park 'Temperance' and labels the whole park with the title,
'The Golden Age', but's it's key to point out that this could just be the descriptive
reference to this actually being called MafiaWorld.
That's because in a promo video for Season 4 using
this exact scene, they particularly labelled it as MafiaWorld.
So like Lee Sizemore's Odyssey on Red River narrative, I'm guessing this is
just the narrative or tagline for this new park.
But moving on to the bigger details, based on one of the shots on the train of a desert
landscape and city in the distance, what I'm guessing is that this park has been built
on that Navada land we saw William buy in the premiere.
Host William does say in his speech on stage that Delos has expanded its footprint and
it would explain why he potentially replaced the vice president earlier on.
Him and Halores needed the authority so they took it into their own hands.
But we'll soon find out whether this is that land William brought, somewhere
on the original island or somewhere else entirely.
The even juicy detail in this ending is the hint of that role reversal idea I mentioned
before, explaining what the function of this park is.
If we take in mind that Halores is replacing powerful people, then what we could be looking
at here is a park being used by them to attract the other elite figures that she can
replace.
I think we're seeing Halores use a park to reverse the roles and start to really implement
her power regime by replacing the most wealthy and powerful individuals.
It could be a greater sign of what's to come in the real world too in the form of controlling
humans and making hosts the dominant species with greater
freedom.
And speaking of that domination, Halores really shows that essence in one of the other final
scenes, because we learn that she's keeping the real human William in some sort of
crygenic chamber in the basement of Delos Headquarters.
He's under her complete control and the chamber he's in very much reflects the pods used to
create the original hosts in Westworld, again somewhat reversing the roles
here.
It turns out she wants to make him watch this reversal and punish him for the control that
they had over the hosts.
Her goal is to do the same to his species, with human William
being kept around to watch what comes of the new world.
We'll have to see what happens and I'm interested to see waht happens to him later in
the season and whether it leads towards that fidelity test we saw in the Season 2 post
credits scene.
But what did I think of Westworld Season 4 Episode 2.
Well I must admit, this episode was a lot of fun and really amped up the scale of the
season via the extended plan of Halores in replacing powerful figures.
It may have had some shoddy dialogue at times like in Episode 1, but the narrative seems
more streamlined and it definitely calls for intrigue.
Suprisingly, I'm actually really invested in what's going
on with Christina, because it reminds me of Season 1 and 2 when it comes to the mystery
of this show, and I think that if this narrative thread has some effective conclusions and
reveals, then it willl be totally worth all the questioning we currently have.
I also loved the chemistry building between Maeve and Caleb
because it really displayed how these two characters have been together for years, yet
it didn't feel forced or unnatural.
And the Halores and Man In Black side of things is really
ramping up now that we've seen a few more details surrounding their push for control.
It would have been nice to have seen what's up with Bernard in his potential future timeline
too, but based on the trailer for next week, it
seems like we'll be getting into that pretty heavily, alongside everything going on in
MafiaWorld.
Overall, it's a solid episode that continues building out the narrative threads in what
will hopefully be a meaningful season of storytelling.
But that was my spoiler review and explained analysis for Westworld Season 4 Episode 2.
Like episode 1, I'm giving it a rating of 8 out of 10.
I will doing a trailer breakdown, predictions and theories video for episode
3 tomorrow, so keep a look out for that and stay tuned to my channel each week for breakdowns
on every episode of Season 4.
But to those who have already seen the episode, what are your
thoughts on all the events that went down and what do you think will happen in Episode
3?
Let me know down below in the comments section.
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