This recap/review of Westworld is written with the expectation that everyone who reads this and comments below will have seen the episode already. Thus, if you've yet to see the episode in question, DO NOT GO ANY FURTHER. SPOILERS!
EPISODE: Season 1, Episode 10: The Bicameral Mind
PLOT: The Man in Black (Ed Harris) and Dolores’s (Evan Rachel Wood) quest for truth leads to a grim realization.
REVIEW: So William (Jimmi Simpson) is The Man in Black. People have speculated about this for weeks, and to their credit, the showrunners (including Jonathan Nolan – who directed this week’s episode) didn’t draw out the mystery too much. They revealed early on that this theory is right, with Harris’s “William” telling Wood’s Dolores that, when he realized she was in a loop all along and that his emotions had been manipulated, it made him into the man he became, thinking of the hosts as only for his satisfaction.
This is only one of many revelations made this week. For one thing, the infamous Wyatt we’ve been hearing about? Yeah, it’s Dolores, who controlled Teddy (James Marsden) at one point, and had him execute many of the original hosts. This was all Arnold’s (Jeffrey Wright) ploy to keep the park from ever opening, part of which was a death wish he had resulting from his son’s death – which ended with his programming Dolores to kill him.
Through it all, Ford (Anthony Hopkins), emerged as the villain/hero. Even Maeve (Thandie Newton) is shown to be under his control with her “waking up” just being another of Ford’s programs although his wish to see them free appears genuine, for now. In the end, she stays in Westworld, fulfilling Ford’s ultimate plan, of a new kind of host, one aware of their place and eager for freedom, to the end that he has Dolores blow his brains out in front of the Delos staff. The apparently lobotomized hosts are all now awake, with Clementine (Angela Sarafyan) even taking a chunk out of William’s arm – something he loves as the game is now real.
Running ninety minutes, this is a long episode but it ranks as one of the best and a top notch capper to a great season. In a way, the episode works a bit like a finale, as if they didn’t know if they’d be back. Thankfully, the ratings have been good and it’ll eventually be back, but they almost could have ended it right there and it would have been satisfying. There are loads of great set-pieces, with the highlight being Hector (Rodrigo Santoro) and Armistice’s (Ingrid Bolso Berdal) shootout with security, filled with nifty touches like their amazement at the effectiveness of their new guns.
Overall, it’s a fitting end to a very complicated, but ultimately amazing season. For all the poisonous buzz going-in, HBO legitimately has themselves another amazing show and I’m eager to see how season two rolls out. Cue the theories, with one already guessing whether Ford is actually dead, or if he simply made a host version of himself to take Dolores’s bullet, and whether or not he actually wants them to be free. We’ll see!