I’m Still Trying to Find the Words to Talk About Last Night’s Episode of ‘Westworld’
I’d heard mention that a few episodes in the second season of Westworld would stray a little bit past the typical fifty-two minute mark of most HBO “hourlong” series. So far, that’s happened with every episode. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what will be filler with end credits and previews of the episode to follow– but so far, Westworld has kept it pretty tight with actual story. This week’s episode was masterfully executed by everyone involved and it’s still on repeat in my head. If ever you heed the spoiler warning, do it now. If you haven’t seen this episode you need to watch it before reading this.
First off, let’s give the episode’s director Lisa Joy a standing ovation. Joy is co-creator of Westworld, but this was her debut directorial effort and I’m confident it won’t be her last. This episode is like watching someone paint on a canvas. I’m not talking Bob Ross, I’m talking Picasso. Joy knocked this episode out of the park, bringing to life a script written by Lisa Atwater and Joy’s husband, co-creator Jonathan Nolan. I always prepare myself for something special when a series’ creators either get their hands directly on the script or behind the camera. This episode did not disappoint me. The cadence of each scene is perfect as we are tossed around through time, minds, and the park. It is brilliantly claustrophobic, but epic at the same time. Lisa Joy succeeded in every way possible with “The Riddle of the Sphinx”.
The show opens with a slowly moving shot around a very modern, Nordic-style apartment. From a record player, The Rolling Stones’ Play With Fire plays in a melancholy echo of analog solitude. We see all sorts of analog anachronisms that are nearly antiquated, even in today’s world: the record player, the hourglass, and a first-edition, leather-bound book. We can hear an exercise bike in the background and are soon staring at the face of James Delos. First impressions would suggest he’s in some fishbowl health spa or treatment center, as a couple episodes ago we were informed Delos was in poor health. He’s informed that he has a visitor– his son-in-law, heir apparent William. William sits down with the old man, offering him a bottle of scotch, while Delos complains he’s been stuck in this spa for sometime only living off grapefruit juice. William mentions some continued tests they need to do, hinting that there is a bigger meaning to why Delos is confined, and that they need to keep him there a bit longer. Delos seems disturbed by this and wants to know why, so William hands him a piece of paper, and once Delos unfolds it, he’s visibly shaken. We don’t see it though…yet.
There’s a quirk that viewers will no doubt pick up on, as you need to have hawkish sensibility when taking in this show: Delos has the same shaking, misplaced hand motions we’ve seen in Bernard and other hosts that aren’t quite functioning the way they should be. He can’t quite poor cream into his coffee, spilling it onto the saucer instead of into the liquid. Delos seems confused by this, but doesn’t take any action to correct himself. If you’re accustomed to the curveballs the hosts have thrown at us with their reveals, it won’t take much to figure out this is not Delos, but the host version of him. That’s not revealed in the opening scene, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
Bernard has been reunited with Elsie, via zombie Clementine. I’m a huge Clementine fan and have a feeling she’s going to be a bigger part of this season than the glimpses we’ve had of her so far, but in this fourth episode, she serves as a guide to Bernard, bringing him to the cave where he left Elsie chained up. Elsie’s not happy to see Bernard, and as soon as he sets her free amidst profuse apologies, she gets a gun pointed at him and is ready to leave him behind. Elsie has no idea what’s happened with the hosts rising up in the park and she is pissed. If you watch closely, Bernard has the same confused and clunky mannerisms as James Delos, which makes me wonder if Bernard is one of the first hosts created in the park.
The situation becomes dire for Bernard, as Elsie diagnoses him as in need of some serious repairs, but they are very far from any facility that can help with those. Suddenly, a memory comes to Bernard and he realizes that they are sitting just outside a very, very secret facility in the park. He watches his former self open the secret entrance to it, and he and Elsie follow. Bernard’s mind and memories are later revealed to be fluid, as Elsie’s diagnostic of him shows his memories have no timestamp. It’s all one big fog for Bernard, which begs the question: Where does Arnold end and where does Bernard begin? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Bernard is being juxtaposed with the story of host-James Delos.
We’re back with James Delos, and for a moment, we could be tricked we are watching the same scene. It’s not though, as we finally get to see what’s written on the piece of paper William passes to James. It’s every word James said, right up until William hands him the letter. It’s officially confirmed that James Delos has passed on and we are looking at host-Delos. The essential masterplan of Delos’ acquisition of Westworld is revealed– immortality via mind transfer to the hosts. Only, it’s not that simple, as William reveals the process is still in refinement. No host version of James Delos has been able to sustain cognitive functions past seven days, and as soon as William informs him of this, we see host-Delos start to slip. He can’t quite form words, only expressions, and he’s extremely frustrated. William reassures him that they will get it figured out, only to have the host-Delos and his surroundings incinerated as soon as he’s clear of the fishbowl they’ve been keeping him in.
Bernard and Elsie are now in the secret facility, where monolithic and faceless versions of hosts and human corpses lay about the blood soaked lab. Elsie realizes Bernard is free of the controls placed upon him, but Bernard is still very much stuck in his own loop. He’s having flashbacks of his time creating something in this lab that looks like the brains we see in the host, but a bit more intricate. Bernard soon remembers that he had all the people in the lab killed, from an order by Ford. As we see the scene unfold, we’re not sure if we are watching Bernard as an unreliable narrator or a character living a scene that is part of the narrative (that’s why this show is so brilliant). Both he and Elsie suddenly hear some racket from a sealed door at the end of the facility. They approach it, but Bernard is very nervous to go in. He realizes that whatever is inside is what the Delos Corporation is waiting to secure before they start a rescue operation.
Back to host-Delos, a much older version (Ed Harris) of William enters the fishbowl. Since this is the first time host-Delos has seen the William we know as “man-in-black”, he doesn’t recognize him. When host-Delos does, he gets some bad news. The entire Delos family, save William’s daughter, has passed away. Juliette (William’s wife and Delos’ daughter) committed suicide, Delos’ wife passed away, and Logan overdosed (no one saw that coming). Host-Delos is also informed that he is the 149th version and that it’s taken much longer to implant a human mind into a host. William expresses that he doesn’t believe it’s possible, because every time, no matter how long, Delos reaches an impasse of what the scientists call “cognitive plateau”. It’s posed to host-Delos that perhaps humans were not meant to live forever and that this is the existential barrier. Furthermore, William let’s Delos know what he really thinks of him, in a pretty gut wrenching scene, as host-Delos is trapped somewhere between freeze frame and loop. When William exits the fishbowl, it seems the merciful thing to do would be to incinerate host-Delos, but William instructs the tech to keep him alive for observation. One can’t really tell if William is being sadistic or genuinely wants to continue the research, but my guess is it’s somewhere in between.
Now, Bernard and Elsie are in the fishbowl. It’s in shambles. Shattered, the technician we’ve just seen is dead, and it has all the trappings of a mad robot escaped and turned on his creators. Host-Delos is revealed– a terrible version of himself and he goes right after Elsie. Bernard defends her and ultimately takes down host-Delos. Host-Delos is the bridge between humanity and the hosts, and I have to think Bernard realizes he must be, too. Did Arnold know that he would end up as Bernard; or, did Bernard choose to forget Arnold? At what point did the host overtake the human?
So, we’ve established the endgame of the park is to draft templates for humans to embody themselves in hosts. I think. That’s the problem: this episode seemed to answer one dimension of this question, but it still feels like the puzzle is further away than it ever was. Not only that, but the questions have taken a turn where I don’t even know what I should be asking at this point. I very much feel like the passenger, but don’t even know what kind of vehicle I’m in or where it’s going. And you know what? That’s exactly what I expect and have come to love about this show. No complaints here!
The other half of this episode covered the journey by the Man in Black and his kinda-trusty sidekick, Lawrence. They’ve returned to Lawrence’s town, which is under siege by Confederados. Craddock is in super villain form, terrorizing the local population and murdering at will. He’s after a secret cache of weapons, which William gives up, seeming to betray Lawrence. The best part of this episode is when it seems to be the worst for Lawrence, his wife, and his daughter. Lawrence is tied-up, thrown into the mud on a rainy night, and being savagely beaten. William and Craddock are seated at a table, with Craddock declaring himself to be an agent of death. Craddock’s resurrection via Dolores seems to have given him a sense of divinity, only he’s loyal to death, and believes he is doing death’s bidding. William had promised to make a deal with Craddock earlier, to help him and his men ‘get where they want to go’. It’s vague, but Craddock seems to be looking for the purpose and the escape that all the newly conscious hosts are looking for, but he’s blinded by the inherent wickedness he’s awoken to.
Craddock has been dishing out shots of liquid nitroglycerin, taking off limbs of hosts or threatening to force them to drink it. He’s really turned into quite the sadist. He pours a shot and hands it to Lawrence’s wife, ordering her to take it to Lawrence and force him to drink it. As this is happening, the Man in Black flashes back to the moments where he discovered the body of his late wife. Whatever force for good the Man in Black had, it seems to revisit him and temporarily clear his mind of the obsession with Ford’s legacy game in the park. The Man in Black informs Craddock that he’s nothing close to death because he’s never seen real death, then he dispatches with Craddock and the Confederados. I’m great with that, as they were pretty useless characters to me and am happy we can focus on more meaningful ones.
When the Man in Black, Lawrence, and a crew of men go to leave the next day, Ford visits through Lawrence’s daughter. She informs the Man in Black that the game he’s playing isn’t one he should look ahead to solve, but look behind him. In a pretty stunning shot, the Man in Black and their crew ride out into the park, only to encounter a lone rider. It’s the mystery woman from last week’s episode, who managed a pretty daring escape of her own from the Lakota hosts earlier in the episode. She rides up to the group and the Man in Black seems shocked with recognition. “Hi, dad,” is all she says.
I don’t really want all the answers, and I doubt Westworld will get anywhere close to answering them, until the last episode of the last season. Let’s hope that’s far away, but I’m astonished at how skillfully they continue to convolute things, just as they seem to be answering the biggest question in regards to the purpose of the park. I would kill to get a look at the dry-erase board in the writers room as Atwater and Nolan penned this script. It’s just so genius in the delivery of the answer that poses every question we never thought to ask. I still don’t know what those are and I’m not going to even bother looking. Westworld continues to delight me and this is my favorite episode of the series so far. I’m very happy to be blind-folded and along for the ride.
RATING: 10/10
Kyle Larson lives in Portland, Oregon. He’s also a contributor to Star Wars News Net. When he’s not writing about Star Wars and movies; you can find him trail running, roasting coffee, or working on his science-fiction novels.
