Winners And Losers of Westworld's Season 2 Finale: 'The Passenger'

CAUTION: Thems analysems and recap for season two, epemsode 10, “The Passenger,” contaemns spoemlers.

Dolores, Bernard and a few select others are truly free. They’re out. And perhaps in Bernard’s case — he has free will that he never previously had.

But to do what?

After an expansive and expository final episode of season two, a few hosts (we’re not totally sure which ones) have broken free from Westworld. There’s no saying what comes next for them and the show, as they boldly step outside the confines of the park’s limits. In the post-credits scene, we got a look at the state of the park, whenever host-William Delos (the Man in Black) was in pursuit of the computer immortality he was building for so many humans when he was alive. Presumably, that is the future. The park’s efforts toward that human record storage is, to some degree, still functioning.

But Westworld, as a theme park, must be sunk? The uprising and the real death of humans should be enough to score off the clientele. While the park has been the core setting for the last 10 episodes, the show-runners will have to grow more comfortable in the real world. That’s where the future of this show rests, and likely in Dolores and Bernard’s battle over whether it’s right to destroy humanity.

To the winners and losers …

Winners

5 lucky hosts (including Bernard): We know Dolores and Bernard are out. There were three more control units in Dolores-Hale’s purse as she left the park. Dolores has already recreated herself, which begged the question as to who was controlling Hale’s physical reincarnation in that scene when Bernard was remade at the end of the episode. In theory, it could be Dolores (controlling two bodies). It would be more likely, however, that Dolores has put someone else’s control unit in this version of Hale. We’ll (hopefully) find out next season who comprises the Final Five.

Maeve: One of her many admirable qualities is that she seems to resort to violence a bit less than Dolores. So when she does, those scenes seem to carry more weight. That’s why the running of the robotic bulls felt epic. Maeve then helped lead some of the hosts to Robot Elysium (that weird heaven, dubbed the Valley Beyond). Even though Maeve died, there’s reason to believe her control unit is undamaged and thus she could get revived. Dolores may have also helped Maeve get out.

Teddy: He’s not dead yet. He’s like The Black Knight (from the Monty Python and the Holy Grail). He’s more dismembered by the day, but “not dead yet.” He didn’t damage his control unit when he shot himself in the head. The question is whether his control unit made it out in Dolores-Hale’s purse. We last saw him in Robot Elysium. Does that mean his data has moved beyond the possibility of entering the real world?

Dolores: It seems only a robot can recreate a human, as Dolores is Bernard’s creator. Hosts once needed humans for creation. Now humans needs hosts for recreation. A strange dependency. (I can’t help but note a quick irony: human desire for immortality may have ruined humanity, because that desire led to the creation of an archive of humanity, which hosts could access and leverage in the destruction of humans. Oops.) Dolores’ intentions at their core can change — something hosts can do but humans apparently cannot, according to the show. But Dolores’ intentions were pretty ominous last we heard. “I don’t want to play cowboys and Indians, Bernard. I want their world. The world they’ve denied us.” She’s in that world. But how does she plan to own it? Again, that brings us back to the show-runner’s vision for season three.

Sizemore: He’s dead, but he (sort of) died a winner when he entered the gunfight to buy Maeve’s posse some time. Finally, he didn’t need a host to find his own words. He finished as the hero of his own story and as a martyr. Was it stupid? For sure. But heroes tend to toe that line. That said, could he have bought even more time while not dying? For sure. So there was a lot rationally not to like about his exit. But this show tends to deviate from rationality. You’ve got be be OK with that.

Losers

Humans: “The copies didn’t fail because they were too simple, but because they were too complicated.” That’s one hell of an existential burn by a computer. The process of preserving a human’s existence took so long because the computers gave humans too much credit and, thus, too much complexity. Apparently, we’re not that complicated.

MiB: He’s been a host. But for how long? His timeline is even more confusing. Has he been a host since we met him as the Man in Black in season one? Did he really kill Emily? I’d wager a guess that he did kill Emily, and that’s why she’s training his computerized self into immortality. Like Delos’ darkest moments with Logan, MiB’s core moment with killing Emily will probably be key to bring him back. Perhaps that’s why she’s serving as his guide. That said, Dolores seemed to insinuate that MiB was irredeemable, which would be bad news.

Ford: He’s dead and gone — maybe. A conspiracy theory: Ford controlled hosts like he was an admin. So that probably made him a host, right? Remember when he froze that host while pouring wine in season one? That probably meant he was a host. A human can’t possibly have the power to freeze hosts with their minds. It had to have been that the Ford we have known was already some form of host, right?

Logan: “I’m all the way down now. I can see the bottom. Don’t you want to see what I see?” I’m not crying, you’re crying!

Elsie: Dead at the hands of Hale. Real Hale (I think). Elsie trusted a human and got killed. Had she trusted Bernard, a robot, maybe she would’ve lived.

Hale: The scene when Dolores-Hale shoots Human-Hale was an absolutely shocking twist with a brilliant (and violent) reveal. What’s even more bizarre about this scene is that Hale doesn’t know what is in the body that’s about to kill her. She doesn’t know Dolores has taken over her own skin, which makes the revengeful murder even more bizzare. In Hale’s final moments, she’s probably wondering if she’s killing herself.

Teddy: That shot of him standing alone in the Valley was pretty damn sad.