Last night's season finale of Westworld certainly answered a lot of questions. Naturally, it also raised a lot more. Still, it was a pretty satisfying conclusion to a rollercoaster of a season—and could theoretically act as a series finale. Of course, audiences will get more when Season 2 airs in 2018. Until then, here are the 12 big revelations we'll be talking about non-stop from "The Bi-Cameral Mind."
1) The maze is consciousness.
As established in last week's episode, the maze is not for the guests—only the hosts. This week, in a series of flashes between the past and the present, we see Dolores standing in "the city swallowed by sand" (remember what Angela said last week?). It's the town where that terrible massacre occurred—the one Dolores keeps flashing back to. In the present, TMIB tells Dolores that Ford dug it up, and he demands Dolores take him to the center of the maze. "It ends in a place I've never been, a thing I'll never do," she says, walking him to the church graveyard—to a grave with her own name on it. She digs into it and finds a canister...and inside is the maze.
Flashing to the past, Arnold says, "Very good, Dolores." He tells her he always pictured consciousness as a pyramid, but in the end he learned that "consciousness isn't a journey upward, but a journey inward—a maze." Arnold, realizing the hosts are close to consciousness, no longer wants to open the park.
So, Dolores had solved the maze once before—back when Arnold was alive, before the park opened. But Ford doesn't believe the hosts have consciousness, so Arnold decides to put a stop to the park—by making Dolores and Teddy kill the other hosts. "You're going to help me destroy this place," Arnold tells Dolores.
2) Yep, The Man in Black is William.
Suprise! TMIB is pissed the maze has nothing to do with the park guests. He thinks the maze will give the park meaning by allowing the hosts to fight back (technically, he's not wrong). "We can make it true," he tells her. "Don't you want that, Dolores? One true thing?" Dolores tells TMIB she already has "someone true"—William. Yep, she remembers him! TMIB laughs. He tells her William looked all over the park for her: "He found something else. Himself." In another flashback, we see William shooting up hosts on his search for Dolores; he picks up a black hat from one of the corpses (subtle) and tells Logan he wants to buy Westworld with Logan's father's company—Delos, which we know from earlier episodes owns Westworld in the present-day.
William abandons Logan at the edge of Westworld (it's unclear exactly what happens to him, though last time we see him he's tied up naked atop a galloping horse) and eventually returns to Sweetwater—where he runs into Dolores, who has been rebuilt to her old self. "My path always led me back to you, again and again," TMIB/William tells Dolores. "I grew tired of you, of course. You were lost in your memories, even then."
This drawn-out scene ends with Dolores bemoaning what William has become, prophesying about the future of Westworld—she promises TMIB, "One day, you will perish... This world doesn't belong to you or the people who came before. It belongs to someone who has yet to come"—and giving TMIB a proper beatdown. In the end, he gets the best of her and stabs her in the stomach.
3) Maeve sets her plan in motion by unlocking park security and retooling Hector and Armistice into killing machines.
After Sylvester and Felix rebuild Maeve from last week's fire, she deactivates park security and makes changes to Hector and Armistice, upping their aggression and dropping their pain sensitivity. Both hosts are being worked on in the lab by techs when they "wake up"—they immediately kill both techs in a gruesome bloodbath.
4) Not everyone working at Westworld is a host.
Just in case viewers were holding on to the theory that all workers at Delos are hosts, Maeve alleviates those fears. Felix, Maeve, Armistice and Hector go down to where the decomissioned hosts are stored. They find Bernard's body and Maeve tells Felix to rebuild and revive him. Felix panics—he had no idea Bernard was a host—and immediately begins questioning his own reality. "Oh, for fuck's sake," Maeve tells him. "You're not one of us. You're one of them." Bullet dodged.
5) Maeve's desire for escape is a storyline.
When Felix rebuilds and awakens Bernard, Maeve asks him to explain who edited her code before she gained consciousness. Bernard looks at her information and realizes that her desire to escape, as well as "mainland infiltration," are actually written into her storyline—implemented by someone using the name Arnold. Poor Maeve. She refuses to believe him, though: "These are my decisions. No one else's."
We still have no idea who is behind all of the present-day changes made under the name "Arnold." My money's on Ford.
6) Dolores is Wyatt.
This explains why she kept flashing back to that massacre. That "city swallowed by sand" is Escalante, where Teddy witnessed himself/Wyatt massacring the other hosts. Arnold merged Dolores with another character long in development—Wyatt—in order to prod her to carry out the host massacre, thus stopping the park from opening. Which leads to his second motive...
7) Arnold made Dolores kill him to stop the park from opening.
"The stakes must be real, irreversible," Arnold tells Dolores. "He can bring all of them back. Not me. I hope there's some solace that I left you no choice." Using the backdoor control—"these violent delights have violent ends"—Arnold commands Dolores to kill him. She shoots him in the back of the head.
8) Bernard had Arnold's back story.
Yes, Arnold's dead son, Charlie, was the inspiration for Bernard's tragic backstory. Ford tells Dolores that she was Arnold's surrogate child—and the maze was inspired by one of Arnold's son's toys. Using the reveries—yes, Arnold created the reveries—Dolores was able to solve the maze.
Arnold plays Charlie's favorite song on a gramophone as he goes to his death: "I want to see him again." Oof.
So why did Bernard have to go through all of Arnold's pain? "It was Arnold's key insight, the thing that led the hosts to their awakening—suffering," Ford tells Bernard.
10) Maeve does have free will.
With the help of Hector, Armistice and Felix, a bloody showdown with Westworld security allows Maeve to exit the park undetected. She boards the train for the mainland. But despite Bernard's news that Maeve's escape is plotted for her, she sees a mother and daughter on the train and decides to return to the park for her own daughter. She has no idea what's in store for her.
11) Yes, Ford wanted the hosts to have consciousness all along.
Wow. Ford tells Bernard that the pain of Arnold's death made him realize he was wrong. "Arnold didn't know how to save you," he laments. "I do. You needed time to understand your enemy. To become stronger than them." So Ford planned on freeing the hosts all along; he just needed time—35 years to fix his mistakes—and a reason for it. Now that Charlotte Hale and the board are pushing him to retire, he can set his hosts free—after they get rid of the board.
12) The hosts are in charge now.
Dolores realizes she has reached consciousness—she's been hearing her own voice all season—and she has the power to finally take control. In an absolute wallop of a final scene, Ford takes the stage at the board's gala (held at Escalante—so quaint!). Charlotte Hale thinks he's about to make his retirement speech, but instead he announces his "final story." A crowd of hosts emerge from the forest, armed and dangerous. Dolores approaches Ford from behind. She shoots him in the head, then turns the gun on the crowd. Westworld as we know it is no more.
