Westworld (HBO/Sky Atlantic) [** Spoilers **]

Penn

That's going to need a rewatch to digest, though would probably have to rewatch the whole season.

Unfortunately, whereas in the season 1 finale they dealt with the differing timelines really well and simply, here it was overdone and encompassed too much of the story throughout the season.

I enjoyed many of the scenes and resolutions to some of the story arcs and characters, but the whole thing really didn't come together coherently enough due to mixing with the timelines of the story so much. It really made it a season that would have to be binge watched to properly keep track of.

Still though, excited for what next season could bring. I do think they need to start properly aiming at the endgame, as if they try to start stretching it out any more, it'll snap.

Penn

Penn wrote: »

Still though, excited for what next season could bring. I do think they need to start properly aiming at the endgame, as if they try to start stretching it out any more, it'll snap.

I think it may have already snapped with how far they stretched out that episode.

They went completely bat**** crazy for the finale. A shame because the show now seems to be heading in a direction I have little interest in following.

brevity

I liked it.

Tipsy McSwagger

Best show on TV, by a mile. And I have no fcuking clue what is going on after watching that episode.

Degag

Why wasn't MIB able to kill Dolores when Bernard was?

Liam O

I felt myself being unsatisfied by a lot of the resolutions in the last couple of episodes. The whole William thing is hard to grasp at the moment having just watched it. He was on the medical stretcher also holding his hand right? If he was fixed in the underground lair as he presumably would be he'd not have that problem right? The daughter being there too, host or no last episode/this episode.

As said above there seemed to be a lot of pointless threads this season that went nowhere. I thought it was building up nicely but I don't really get what the payoff was supposed to be for a lot of characters. The stakes just didn't feel high at the end and I didn't really care about most of the hosts. You see most of them dead throughout the season so hard to see what they were building up to. A lot of the interesting relationships just ripped apart for very little emotional payoff.

Maybe I need to rewatch/read the recaps but it's a lot of time to put in for something that you need to read up on to understand what's going on after a season finale. A lot of style over substance imo and I feel a bit let down with the previous William stuff as he is a very interesting character.

alchemist33

Degag wrote: »

Why wasn't MIB able to kill Dolores when Bernard was?

For some strange reason he forgot he needed a headshot until - what luck for her - the next bullet was the mangled one.

Effects

alchemist33 wrote: »

For some strange reason he forgot he needed a headshot until - what luck for her - the next bullet was the mangled one.

What's more confusing is how she got the mangled bullet into the chamber and how it fired without a casing or propellant.

Rob2D

What the f**k did I just watch........

Shouldn't have watched that before bed. Now I'll never be able to get to sleep!

Royale with Cheese

I'm finding the alternating timelines very hard to follow. At what point does the final scene with William's fidelity test take place, is that a flash forward?

jcsoulinger

Effects wrote: »

alchemist33 wrote: »

For some strange reason he forgot he needed a headshot until - what luck for her - the next bullet was the mangled one.

What's more confusing is how she got the mangled bullet into the chamber and how it fired without a casing or propellant.

Yep that was the most ridiculous thing I've seen in a supposedly smart show in a long time, we are supposed to believe that she put the mangled bullet which looked more like a pancake in the chamber and then a good bullet in after it, and then somehow having the foresight to know exactly what would happen in the next scene.

jcsoulinger

Effects wrote: »

alchemist33 wrote: »

For some strange reason he forgot he needed a headshot until - what luck for her - the next bullet was the mangled one.

What's more confusing is how she got the mangled bullet into the chamber and how it fired without a casing or propellant.

Yep that was the most ridiculous thing I've seen in a supposedly smart show in a long time, we are supposed to believe that she put the mangled bullet which looked more like a pancake in the chamber and then a good bullet in after it, and then somehow have the foresight to know exactly what would happen in the next scene.

jcsoulinger

jcsoulinger wrote: »

Yep that was the most ridiculous thing I've seen in a supposedly smart show in a long time, we are supposed to believe that she put the mangled bullet which looked more like a pancake in the chamber and then a good bullet in after it, and then somehow have the foresight to know exactly what would happen in the next scene.

Agreed, its like they just decided to throw anything into this episode regardless of weather it made any sense.

cumulonimbus

The thing that made no sense was the annoying storyteller guy sacrificing himself for Maeve.

The cool thing was the humans not being able to see the valley beyond - it was the humans turn to say "it doesn't look like anything to me". :pac:

corwill

Have to say, I was disappointed with an awful lot of that episode, and I've been easier pleased than most by the show up until last night.

Penn

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

I'm finding the alternating timelines very hard to follow. At what point does the final scene with William's fidelity test take place, is that a flash forward?

Yeah it seems to happen in the future, given the state of the inside of the Forge, the fact it's hinted he never went down into the Forge after being shot by Dolores (since he never met Bernard coming back up or when Bernard exited the Forge), and that he survived and was in the medical tent at the end. Seeing as he's technically still alive and will likely still be human for at least the start of Season 3, the final scene with him in the Forge is likely going to be after his actual death as a way to bring him back.

The main timeline-related issue I have is between Bernard and Maeve. Bernard still clearly had Ford in his head when he passed by Maeve on the table and Maeve was able to read a bit of Ford (which was a great scene between them, one of my favourites of the season). But where that places Bernard in relation to Dolores' story is a bit jumbled. Definitely need to rewatch the whole season with the knowledge of where it ends up to see how the pieces fit together.

Skerries

Effects wrote: »

What's more confusing is how she got the mangled bullet into the chamber and how it fired without a casing or propellant.

she put the mangled bullet into the central chamber where the shotgun shell was so when he changed over to the shotgun part that is what caused the explosion

Effects

Skerries wrote: »

she put the mangled bullet into the central chamber where the shotgun shell was so when he changed over to the shotgun part that is what caused the explosion

Ok. I'll have to look back over that.

nc6000

Will we be seeing PamplonaWorld next season?

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

Rob2D

OK I've been walking around in a daze at work this morning trying to make sense of all this. Much like William wandering the park!

In the end I think it all comes back to Ford and William. All the other stuff happening seems a little complicated but it's simple really. They're all just doing what "Ford programmed them to do." Survive/escape or whatever. I think back in season 1 when he's having lunch with yer'wan and he mentions his disillusion with the world and says "I rather thought I'd make my own". I don't think he meant the park here, but rather he wanted to literally remake the world in his image/that of his creations.

So they get out and far far in the future the hosts still haven't fully realised what it is to be free/alive. And that's where William comes in. His entire journey as he said himself was to try prove his readout wrong and that "no system can tell me who I am". This indicates that even though he is simple like all humans to the point of returning over and over again to scene of his daughter's murder, he at least on some level knows and is trying to change it. And this is what the hosts need in the future and why they re-create him and have him run a loop over and over to see if he can break the cycle for them and solve the free will equation or whatever. Even though host Emily at the end says it's taking much longer than they hoped.

Only thing I'm not 100% on is if Ford foresaw that as well and left bits of himself to act as a guide for William or if that was just the hosts doing too. I like to think it was Ford being that smart and seeing so far ahead.

Penn

Rob2D wrote: »

Only thing I'm not 100% on is if Ford foresaw that as well and left bits of himself to act as a guide for William or if that was just the hosts doing too. I like to think it was Ford being that smart and seeing so far ahead.

Ford definitely saw something in William. He could see that William sees the park for what it is, and that he's probably closer to the hosts mentality than humans. Ford probably did recognise that if anyone could truly bridge that gap and be the right test subject, it'd be William.

Mc Love

Still confused haha

Roar

So... the cops KNEW internal affairs was setting them up?

errlloyd

Clareman wrote: »

It seemed to me that they had the whole thing wrapped up nicely, 2 season arc and that was it but then they got another season so need to do something else, so did the Man in Black kill his daughter or not? I mean she was on the beach with a load of other bodies but was that just a host? What timeline is the Man in Black in at the end? They seem to just being cryptic for the sake of it.

That is very far in the future.

In real time the MIB never makes it to the door. His injuries are too bad, he gets picked up by Stubbs team sometime later.

What we see is his memory going through it's fidelity test. In the same way they always bring James Delos back to his last conversation with Logan, they always bring William back to the time he killed his daughter, questioned his own reality, and tried to shoot dolores. It's his fidelity test.

Sad Professor

I feel like this episode was consciously making a mockery of how dumb the park security guys are. Like early in the episode when one of the security guys shouts "freeze all motor functions" before getting shot in the head. Did the guy not get the memo about the hosts being in revolt and not responding to voice commands? It's been like 2 or 3 week at that stage since the rebellion began, you think he would have noticed that most of his buddies are dead.

When I think about it though cops behaving like video game NPCs from the 90s is a Nolan trademark. In The Dark Knight, for example, the cops can still be heard shouting "freeze" at Batman even after he's rendered half of them unconscious and proceeds to to kick another one out the window. This is particularly unrealistic in an American context where we know cops don't say things like "freeze", even at unarmed people they just open fire. But I suppose after the Stubbs reveal it's possible that all the security guys are hosts and Ford programmed them to be dumb.

Troyaferd

Ford, William/The Man in Black and Dolores are possibly some of the most pretentious and annoying characters on TV in a long time. Unbearable

Talisman

Looking forward to Deckard retiring a few of the skin jobs in 2019 - would be a nice lead in to Blade Runner.

Tipsy McSwagger

Troyaferd wrote: »

Ford, William/The Man in Black and Dolores are possibly some of the most pretentious and annoying characters on TV in a long time. Unbearable

Ye you already posted that.... yesterday morning. Has someone wiped your memory??

corwill

Sad Professor wrote: »

I feel like this episode was consciously making a mockery of how dumb the park security guys are. Like early in the episode when one of the security guys shouts "freeze all motor functions" before getting shot in the head. Did the guy not get the memo about the hosts being in revolt and not responding to voice commands? It's been like 2 or 3 week at that stage since the rebellion began, you think he would have noticed that most of his buddies are dead.

When I think about it though cops behaving like video game NPCs from the 90s is a Nolan trademark. In The Dark Knight, for example, the cops can still be heard shouting "freeze" at Batman even after he's rendered half of them unconscious and proceeds to to kick another one out the window. This is particularly unrealistic in an American context where we know cops don't say things like "freeze", even at unarmed people they just open fire. But I suppose after the Stubbs reveal it's possible that all the security guys are hosts and Ford programmed them to be dumb.

The QAs that Dolores and MiBilly took out from horse back were flipping hilarious. Numerical advantage, behind cover, with automatic weapons, and the two of them still swatted them aside. Corporate team-building paint ball sessions have nothing on these guys for utter uselessness.