Episode two of Westworld’s second season, titled “Reunion,” delved deep into the show’s past. We even learned how Ford and Arnold convinced Logan Delos to consider investing in the park. And as the scenes with Delores later prove, the past holds a key to a mystery on Westworld.
Delores’ Past
The episode opened with a huge curveball: Delores has been outside the park before! We see her and Arnold in a city on the mainland. Delores is marveling about the city lights. “It looks like the stars have been scattered across the ground,” she says. “Have you ever seen anything so full of splendor?”
In a later scene, we learn that Delores has been to the mainland again. This time, she’s at a party William is hosting following the events of the William-Logan timeline in Season 1. Delores is playing piano for Williams’ guests. (And did anyone notice that Williams’ wife did not look happy about that?) Later in the scene, we learn what happened to Logan after last season. He became a drug addict, while William took over Delos Corp. But there is much more significance to Delores’ trips to the mainland.
Last episode, she told Teddy: “It won’t be enough to win this world . . . we’ll have to take that one from them as well.” I wondered how she could ever accomplish this if she’s always lived in the park. But now we know the truth. She has seen the outside world numerous times, and that makes her even more dangerous.
In the episode’s final flashback, we see William and Delores in a lab within the park. “You really are just a thing,” he tells her as she sits naked, like the hosts used to do. “I can’t believe I fell in love with you.” What follows may be the cruelest thing he could have said to her: “It turns out you’re not even a thing. You’re a reflection. You know who loves staring at their reflection? Everybody. Everybody wants a little bit of what I found here. And I can’t wait to use you and everyone of your kind to help give it to them.”
Unfortunately for William, Delores now remembers her past. Which means it was probably a bad idea for him to reveal his darkest plans for the park. “But there is something else,” he tells her. “There’s something beyond that. I think there is an answer here to a question no one’s ever dreamed of asking. Do you want to see it?”
Next, we see him showing her a site within the park with taraforming machines tearing up the earth. As William gazes upon it, he says her line from the opening scene: “Have you ever seen anything so full of splendor?”
Flashforward to the post-uprising timeline, after Delores has turned the Confederados to her cause. She tells Teddy that if the general wants to get to”Glory” he’ll have to listen to her.
“Glory?” Teddy asks. “The Valley Beyond. Feels like everyone’s got a different name for it, but they’re all bound for the same destination.”
“It doesn’t matter what you call it,” she says. “I know where we’re going to find that. An old friend was foolish enough to show me, long ago. And it’s not a place. It’s a weapon. And I’m going to use it to destroy them.”
Yep, it was a bad idea for William to reveal the park’s darkest secret to Delores. But the big mystery now is: What is the weapon?
William’s Secret
Earlier scenes with William, aka the Man in Black, may hold clues about the weapon. In one scene, William is showing his father-in-law, James Delos, the park. Delos seems skeptical about the whole thing. “Half your marketing budget goes to figuring out what people want,” William tells him. “Here they’re free, nobody’s watching—at least that’s what we tell them. This is the only place in the world where you get to see people for who they really are. And if you don’t see the business in that, you’re not the businessman I thought you were.”
From last episode, we know Delos is harvesting guests’ DNA and recording their park experiences. It looks like this was Williams’ plan for the park all along. Yet we can only imagine how Delos is misusing that precious data.
Another scene, after the uprising, shows the man in Black and his sidekick host Lawrence returning to Pariah. There, they encounter the current version of El Lazo. The Man in Back tells El Lazo, “There’s a place out west. If we reach it, I’ll show you a treasure beyond your wildest dreams.” El Lazo seems uninterested. He’s tired of fighting and believes his revolution is won. “You want a real victory?” the Man in Black asks. “I can help with that. The real ending. The truth.”
William’s trip to Pariah doesn’t go as planned (more on that in a moment). But when he and Lawrence are forced to leave Pariah alone, Lawrence asks a question about this place they’re looking for. “This place of Judgment,” as Lawrence refers to it. The Man in Black’s response is telling.
“I built it,” he says, “and this place we’re going is my greatest mistake.”
This has to be the same place William showed Delores in the flashback discussed earlier. So it looks like she and William are heading for the same destination, and I can only imagine what their next reunion will hold!
Ford’s Game
The scene between El Lazo and the Man in Black also provided some more clues as to the game Ford is playing. The Man in Black holds El Lazo at gun point and demands that he order his men to follow the Man in Black to this mysterious place. Then El Lazo switches into Robert Ford mode. “This game was meant for you William,” El Lazo says with a smile. “But you must play it alone.”
In the next breath, El Lazo’s men all turn their guns on themselves and die in spectacular fashion. And right before El Lazo takes his own life, he says something really intriguing: “I’ll see you in the Valley Beyond, William.”
So does this mean that Ford—however he’s playing this game after death—is somehow waiting for William in the mysterious place where he is headed? Even more, this may be a clue to the riddle Ford told William last episode: “The game begins where you end, and ends where you begin.”
Whatever William planned for Westworld—a plan Ford probably never liked—may have begun in the very place he revealed to Delores long ago. Might this place—which I suspect could be the hub to which the various parks are connected—be where the finale of Season 2 goes down?
There’s only eight more episodes until we find out.
* Images courtesy of HBO.
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