Westworld Season 2 Episode 2 starts with Dolores and Arnold, thirty-five years ago.
Arnold shows her a city in the real world – possibly in China, near the Westworld
island . Dolores is awed with the beauty of this place . Arnold says most people don’t
see the beauty in the world . But hosts like Dolores, and children like Arnold’s son
Charlie, have the naivety, or the “courage”, to see the world with all its wonders and
possibilities . This is why Arnold loved the hosts, and wanted them to be free.
Though ironically, the freed hosts lose this innocent optimism.
In the present, Dolores attacks a Westworld facility.
She says she “used to see the beauty in this world” but now she sees “the truth”
. Dolores shows Teddy his deaths and abuse in Westworld – she opens his eyes to evil
. It’s like in the Bible, when Eve eats the forbidden fruit, then gives a taste to
Adam.
The fruit gives them knowledge of good and evil , original sin – so they’re cast
out of the Garden of Eden – just like Dolores and Teddy lose that innocence Arnold loved.
Now that they know good and evil, Dolores and Teddy are free to choose.
Dolores choses violent vengeance – what will Teddy do?
Back in the past, Arnold and Ford are trying to get investment for the early Westworld
from the Delos corporation.
So they send the hosts Angela and Akecheta to Logan Delos, the son of company head James
Delos.
So this happens before Season 1, when Logan and William visit the park.
Angela and Akecheta take Logan to a party where everyone’s a host, to show off how
advanced their robot tech is – and Logan gets a hands-on demo with Angela.
So Logan’s convinced to invest in Westworld, and he becomes a regular at the park.
Then Season 1 happens – Logan’s sister Juliet gets engaged to William , so Logan
takes William to Westworld.
Will meets Dolores, then embraces his dark side, and discredits Logan so that William
replaces Logan as James’ Delos favourite .
In this scene, after Season 1, William convinces James to invest even more in Westworld.
He pitches the big secret Delos plan, which is about collecting data on guest behaviour.
Cause in the Westworld park, people feel free to reveal their true desires – just like
William did in Season 1 . If Delos records and analyses this behaviour, they could use
the data to predict and control peoples’ choices – like Facebook, Google and YouTube
do.
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Later we see a retirement party for James – William is taking over the Delos company.
And there are hints of tension here.
William is taking power from James.
And James seems sick – he’s impatient for progress on something . Does he mean some
medical development?
Do they wanna put James’ brain in a robot body or something?
From the looks of the trailers, James’ story is far from over.
We see William’s wife Juliet, and their daughter Emily.
But William has also brought Dolores , which is kinda creepy – to keep her around as
scenery after having falling out of love with her last season.
And Will’s wife Juliet looks unhappy to see Dolores – you gotta wonder how much
she knows about Will and Dolores’ relationship.
We know from last season that eventually, Juliet commits suicide because of the darkness
in William . We see Logan moping, and doing some sci-fi
drugs, as you would if your father rejected you and gave the family business to some other
guy.
Dolores comes to Logan, possibly sent by William to taunt Logan – as though Dolores is a
cruel trophy of William’s victory over Logan . Logan says that Delos will cause “the
whole fucking species” to “burn” . What does he mean?
That Delos’ secret data project will hurt humanity?
That Westworld will make people dark and cruel like William?
Or does Logan foresee the robot uprising?
He clearly knows something.
It’ll be cool to learn more about his fate, cause we’ve never seen Logan in the present
timeline.
Is he even still alive?
We see William visit Dolores – who acts passive and mute.
In the park last season, William thought love for Dolores transformed him.
But now with Dolores reduced to “a thing”, William realises it was self-discovery that
changed him . In a different light, this could be a positive message – to self-actualise,
without defining yourself by others.
But unfortunately, the self William discovers is a sociopathic asshat.
And he has plans.
William shows Dolores some kind of construction project, connected to the data collection
plan.
He says it’s “an answer” to “a question no one's ever even dreamed of asking” . And
this place becomes the big mystery of this episode.
Cause now, thirty-five years later, both William and Dolores are trying to return to this place.
Old William – the Man in Black – rescues the host Lawrence from some other hosts, “the
Pardue brothers”.
Will says that in this narrative loop, Lawrence is meant to escape the brothers himself . But
since all the hosts have gone rogue, they’re acting differently.
One brother gets up and keeps fighting after William shoots him dead . So the rules of
the Westworld game have changed . The difficulty has increased.
The enemies have more HP, and it’s ironman Nuzlocke mode – you can die for real.
So William has to use all his knowledge of the game to survive – he goes to a bar,
and grabs a high tech health pack from a wall – like that chicken in Castlevania.
William is determined to beat this end-game quest.
But then he says that Westworld “is goin' down in flames”, and everyone’s gonna
die , but it’s not clear why.
Does he think Dolores’ war will kill them all?
Or does this connect to what Logan said about the species burning?
Whatever the reason, William’s excited by this apocalypse – says it’s “a chance
to see what we're really made of, a glimpse of the men we could've been” . It’s a
sad dumb tragedy that William has spent decades so obsessed with discovering his true self,
that he never got around to living his life – being himself – so all that’s left
for him now is “a glimpse” of what he “could've been”.
William’s a man defined by his past and regrets.
William says Delos has been watching, “tallying up” peoples’ sins in the park – he must
mean the guest data project that he himself started.
William says he “built” “this place”, and it’s his “greatest mistake” . He
says he’s been judged for his sins in the park – and he does have many sins.
But he thinks judgement is unfair – cause why should he be judged for hurting robots,
when the robots were meant to be mindless machines?
The stakes weren’t real.
So William wants to “appeal the verdict”, clear his name, then “burn” the whole
thing “to the ground” . So if this mysterious place is where the Westworld data is stored,
maybe William wants to wipe his files to avoid judgement.
But with all the talk of burning and God and “a question”, there must be deeper meaning
here.
William and Lawrence head to Pariah, and meet El Lazo.
As William points out, El Lazo was a role played by Lawrence back in the Season 1 timeline.
Lazo talks about his revolution storyline – says now that he’s reached its end,
he sees it was empty all along – just like Hector with that safe . The freed hosts are
realising that their lives are lies, scripts written to entertain guests.
So what do they do with themselves now?
William could face the same problem.
What if he reaches the end of his “find the door” quest, and just feels empty – what
next?
Lazo finds no joy in quests, so he refuses to help William with his journey .
And Lazo tells a story about how elephants can be trained to stay in place with just
a stake – if the elephant learns from a young age it’s too weak to escape, it won’t
even try when it’s older and stronger . The lesson is that sometimes we’re held back
not by the realities of our situation, but by our beliefs and our fears and our past.
Maybe for William to truly escape Westworld, he needs to let go of his past with Dolores,
Logan, Delos – Robert says last episode that William’s quest “ends where [he]
began” . William tries to recruit Lazo’s men, but
Ford’s programming kicks in, and the hosts all kill themselves, so that William can’t
use them.
Even after his death, Ford is manipulating William . Which raises the question of just
how much control Ford has over the broader storyline of this place of judgement.
Dolores, meanwhile, chokes a bloke in robot yoghurt, to make him tell her Delos’ security
plan.
Apparently, they’ll rally hundreds of men , which is prolly what we saw on the beach
last episode.
Dolores only has like fifty hosts, so she needs allies to win this war . She meets Maeve,
and tries to recruit her to the robot revenge army , but Maeve’s not interested.
She points out the hypocrisy of how Dolores commands people when she says she’s fighting
for freedom . Maeve pointedly asks Teddy if he feels free . Maybe after getting woke this
episode, Teddy will finally start making his own decisions on what’s right.
Dolores then meets with Confederado soldiers – who are cosplaying as the Last Supper.
Apparently they’re headed for Glory , aka “The Valley Beyond”, which seems to be
that same place that William’s headed.
If the Confederados are the apostles of the Last Supper, Dolores is the Jesus.
Cause when the soldiers threaten Dolores, she says to forgive them cause they “don’t
know any better” which is totally a Jesus catchphrase . Dolores then murders them all,
which is less Jesus-y, but then she uses her Westworld tech to resurrect their leader Craddock,
like how Jesus resurrects Lazarus.
Dolores then claims to have killed God , which is true in the sense that she killed Westworld’s
creator, Ford.
Dolores tells Craddock he’ll need her favour to reach Glory.
So there are heavy religious themes here.
Dolores frames herself as a messianic figure, but also claims to have killed God, so maybe
she’s more like Satan – a fallen angel who rebels against God .
Dolores marches on with her Confederado army, including the resurrected Craddock.
There is something about leading an army of undead Confederate soldiers that gives off…
kind of a bad guy vibe?
Not to mention Dolores’ torture and murder of innocents.
She does have a bit of a breaker of chains Daenerys feel sometimes, but she can also
seem a bit like the Night King – what with the exterminating humans thing.
Is Dolores a hero, or a villain?
Dolores talks with Teddy about “Glory”.
He says that Glory and “The Valley Beyond” are all names for the same place . Dolores
equates it with William’s place of judgement, the Delos data project.
She says she knows what’s there because William showed her , she was present at his
pitch thirty years ago.
Dolores says this place is a weapon and she’ll use it to “destroy them” . If Glory is
the place where guest behaviour data is stored, maybe Dolores plans to release the data to
show the world all the awful things that Westworld guests have done.
It’d be like in South Park when everyone’s internet history’s made public – it could
cause chaos.
But the weapon seems bigger than that.
It’s tied to ideas of judgement, fire, God, “an answer” to “a question no one's
ever even dreamed of asking”.
And the flooded valley with drowned hosts last episode.
This is shaping up to be the central mystery of the season, and it’s kinda hard to imagine
a payoff that justifies this hype.
Like, the maze was the centre of last season, and it paid off in only very vague ways.
So maybe we shouldn’t expect hard answers here.
But this episode does make sense, in a way that most of last season didn’t.
Back then, we didn’t know characters’ motivations, which people were robots, or
even which timeline was which.
But this episode’s pretty clear.
We get the backstory of Arnold and Logan and Delos, while in the present Dolores fights
her war against humans.
Maeve tries to find her daughter.
And William pursues his quest.
We know who people are, and what they want, which gives the show space to explore some
cool themes – from the Bible, to modern technology, to elephants.
So let us know in the comments what you think of this new Westworld.
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