Season 2 of Westworld on HBO premiered last Sunday. Going into it, I wondered if the show’s writers could pull off the same mysteries and magic that made last season so special. It’s probably too early to tell if Season 2 will live up to Season 1’s high standards. But one thing’s for sure: Season 2 of Westworld has plenty of new mysteries.
If Season 2 is anything like Season 1, we’ve just scratched the surface of puzzle-like plot. But here are five big mysteries that leapt of the screen from this season’s first episode, “Journey Into Night”:
How Did Maeve Get So Powerful?
Maeve was probably my favorite character from Season 1. And when she chose to return to the park to find her daughter at the end of last season, you knew it would be a big part of Season 2.
When we first see Maeve in this episode, she is in the control center where she finds Lee Sizemore about to be eaten by the cannibal character he created for his latest narrative. With a single sentence, she freezes the cannibal mid-bite. Later, we see her command the sheriff with a word, and put one of her dying brothel workers into a peaceful sleep.
Sizemore asks Maeve if she was responsible for the uprising in the park. “No,” she says, “but I suspect I share the sensibilities of whoever did.”
That line was telling. We know Ford put the escape narrative into Maeve’s programming, but it seems as if he gave her his old ability to command the hosts too. It will be interesting to see how she uses this power as she, Sizemore, and Hector traverse the park to find her daughter. It’s also worth noting that she could have used her power on Hector, but she didn’t. When she asked him to join her on her journey, she let him make up his own mind. “Where you go,” he tells her of his own free will, “I follow.”
What Game is Ford Playing Now?
The fact that Ford may have given Maeve new powers suggests he is not done playing games in Westworld. For proof, we have the scene with young Robert (the host designed to look like Ford as a boy) and his conversation with William, the Man in Black. The boy is speaking with the adult Ford’s voice, and addresses the man in black by name. Then Ford warns him: “Now you’re in my game.”
“In this game,” the boy says, “you have to make it back out. In this game you must find the door.” So like last season’s Maze, finding the “Door” promises to be a big part of the Man in Black’s narrative this season. What follows next is a riddle. “The game begins where you end,” the boy tells William, “and ends where you begin.”
“Even now you still talk in code,” William tells Ford.
“Everything is code here, William,” Ford replies. “You know that more than anyone. Don’t worry, the game will find you.”
Another thing we know from Sizemore’s earlier dialogue with Maeve is that Ford has been “terraforming” and reshaping the park. As a result, none of the old park maps are valid. This help explains how lakes are appearing in the park where they never were before. All of this appears to be part of Ford’s new game. Yet it remains to be seen what that game entails.
One last thought is that Ford may still exist. Not physically of course, but could he have transferred some piece of his consciousness to certain hosts before he died? Or might Ford have created a virtual Ford before he died to play out his final chess match with the Man in Black?
What is Delos Up To?
One of the episode’s eeriest scenes involved those white “drone hosts” in the underground lab where Charlotte takes Bernard. From that scene, we learn that Delos is secretly logging records of guests’ experiences and collecting their DNA. Whatever the reason, this can’t be good. Even more, we learn that Delos has suspended the extraction protocol to get the board members out of the park until a particular host makes it to the mainland. (Yes, in this episode we finally learn that the park is on an island somewhere near Asia.)
Charlotte reveals the host is Abernathy, Delores’ old father. He is carrying some form of “insurance” for Delos. “So Delos is willing to let us all die until they can retrieve one host?” Bernard asks.
“Yes,” Charlotte says.
All of this is classic Michael Crichton. He wrote the original Westworld more than a decade before Jurassic Park. But both stories share a similar plot, including a secretive corporation that is up to no good.
What Has Delores Found?
Delores goes full Wyatt in this episode. Teddy, however, seems disturbed about her ruthless ways, particularly when she suggests taking the fight to the humans on the mainland. She also claims she can see the past, the present, and the future. And she knows how the story ends: “With us, Teddy. It ends with you and me.”
Still, Teddy seems skeptical. But then Talulah Riley shows up and says, “We found it.”
Delores tells Teddy: “I need you to see this. I need you to see the truth.”
This is one mystery that will likely be resolved next episode, and I can’t wait to find out what it is. Also, at the very end of the episode we see what appears to be a host that looks a lot like Teddy dead under water, suggesting that Delores’ wishes won’t be coming true. This is the show’s biggest mystery by far, and it all centers around Bernard.
What Did Bernard Do?
It appears much of Season 2 will concern the fourteen days between the uprising the arrival of the Delos security force led by Karl Strand (played by Gustaf Skarsgård, who was Floki on Vikings). We know this because Bernard’s scenes are taking place on three different timelines.
The first time we see Bernard—or maybe it’s Arnold—he’s having a discussion with Delores. We know that 30 years ago, Arnold had these discussions with Delores as he found her consciousness to be awakening. She’s even wearing the familiar blue dress she wore 30 years ago during those discussions. But then he tells her, “I dreamt I was on an ocean. With you and the others on a distant shore.”
This line holds so many allusions to the end of the episode, where Bernard stands at the edge of the sea looking at horde of drowned hosts. It’s even led some to speculate that this scene is actually taking place in future, after Delos has regained control of the park.
The next scene shows Bernard experiencing a series of violent memories. In one, Delores tells him, “You don’t know who you are, do you?” In another, he sees Abernathy, and in one more he appears to be in a gunfight in the control room. Then he asks, “Is this now?”
We find him next on the beach where he is discovered by Strand’s team and Stubbs, who disappeared near the end of last season. Strand reveals that communications have been down for two weeks, suggesting these scenes are taking place about fourteen days after the uprising. By the end of the show, we discover a huge number of the hosts have been drowned in a sea that is not on any maps. Strand tells Bernard that “there are hundreds of guests out there that need my help. Which means, I need yours. Can you tell me what happened?”
Bernard speaks as if he’s awakening from a fog. “I killed them,” he says. “All of them.”
This is episode one’s biggest mystery. And it looks like a good deal of Season 2 will give us the clues to what really happened.
We know this because the show also flashed back to the moments after the uprising. There, we find Bernard hiding in a barn with Charlotte and the rest of the Delos board. From there, they go to the secret bunker. Bernard is leaking cranial fluid and is nearing a critical state. He manages to inject more fluid into his brain that he extracts from another host. When Bernard connects to the tablet computer, we learn one of the symptoms of this critical failure is memory loss. That explains why Bernard two weeks later cannot explain what happened. Fortunately, we have nine more episodes to discover the truth for ourselves.
* Images courtesy of HBO