‘Westworld’ Season 2 Finale ‘The Passenger’ Recap: Freewill [SPOILERS]

The final episode of Westworld Season 2 gave it the redemption it needed after a series of strange events. Perhaps they were necessary for paving the transition into season 3. We got to see what the door held for the hosts. The dramatic change in one of the main character’s personality was able to do what was necessary to save some of the hosts. In the end, they all had a choice to live their lives as it fits them.

In this week’s episode of Westworld, Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood), Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright), and William (Ed Harris) open the door to The Valley Beyond. As the hosts, led by Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon), embrace their newfound freedom, the humans use Clementine Pennyfeather (Angela Sarafyan) and her new abilities to bring chaos to the hosts. At the same time, Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) brings her daughter (Jasmyn Rae) to safety.

Genesis

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As Dolores leaves Teddy Flood’s (James Marsden) lifeless body she picks up William and Bernard along the way. She luckily jams William’s gun which blasts some of his fingers off when he tries to betray her. She and Bernard leave him outside as they entered the control room that opened the door. Dolores places her father’s control unit that gave access to the system which contained data gathered from all of the guests who visited the park.

The system takes the form of James Delos’ (Peter Mullan) only son, Logan. At first, Logan tours both Bernard and Dolores around the world it created. It was based on the memories of James Delos. He made millions of copies of James just to test for fidelity. When he finally created the perfect replica of James, it did not turn out so well in the real world. Because of this, the company decided to work on a secret project, hence the collection of data from the guests.

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The data was stored inside books which the hosts could access if they went to the system just as Dolores and Bernard had. When they exit, Dolores decides to delete the data completely; Losing the chance for Delos to use the data to their advantage. Bernard realizes that she posed a threat to both the hosts and the humans, so he kills her.

As Bernard leaves the control room, he finds the aftermath of the hosts’ battle. He leaves with Elsie Hughes (Shannon Woodward). They reach the mesa, and as Elsie tried to make a deal with Charlotte over what happened in the park, Charlotte finds her unsuitable as a part of her new team, so she kills her. Bernard gets help from Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) in making a counterattack.

A Mother’s Love

The door to The Valley Beyond finally opens. Akecheta leads the hosts into the valley. The hosts leave their physical bodies in the park and enter the digital realm that comprised of The Valley. There, they could live their lives as they leased. They have free will.

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Just as Roland (Aaron Fili) turns up Maeve’s pain receptors and start chopping her up, Maeve wakes the dead hosts around her and order them to kill Roland and fix her. Hector Escaton (Rodrigo Santoro) finds Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman) crying on a corner over Maeve’s fate. When Hector and his group reach the entrance to Maeve’s room, they stop as Maeve controls bulls to eliminate the guards assembled in front of the entrance. After being reacquainted with the team, they head to The Valley Beyond.

Along the way, they are followed by two security teams on buggys. Lee makes the ultimate sacrifice by giving his life for Maeve and everyone else so they could escape. During his last stand, He cites the speech he prepared for Hector’s character. They are relieved to find that the door to The Valley is open for all.

When they are close, the Humans, led by Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) bring chaos using Clementine as the harbinger of death to the host. Each host she passed started attacking each other. Maeve and her group try to make a run for it. Because of this, Hector tells her to go on and find her daughter while he, Armistice (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal), and Hanaryo (Tao Okamoto) held the aggressive hosts back.

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Just as Hector’s line of defense falls, Maeve reaches her daughter and helps bring her daughter and her new mother into the valley. Maeve stops all the hosts from moving when Akecheta pushes them into the valley. The humans kill Maeve, and when they shoot Akecheta, he was lucky enough to enter The Valley in time. The door to The Valley closes, leaving a mess of dead hosts around it.

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The Outsiders

Charlotte and her team bring Bernard to the entrance of the control room that gave access to the collected guest data. Karl Strand (Gustaf Skarsgard) interrogates him into revealing the location of Peter Abernathy’s (Louis Herthum) control unit, or the key. Finally, they find it hidden in Dolores’ dead body. Antoine Costa (Fares Fares) realizes that the data they were transferring was not of the guests, it was of the hosts.

Bernard remembers why he let the humans find him. It turns out that he made a host that looked exactly like Charlotte Hale but her control unit was Dolores’. Charlotte, now revealing that she actually is Dolores, eliminates all the men inside the control room. She reopens the door to The Valley to grant Teddy passage into it; then she changes the coordinates to where the data is so that the hosts would not be found by Delos or by anyone. Dolores has her revenge by killing Bernard so he would not get in her way.

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Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) talks to Dolores before she went on the boat to exit the park. He implies that he is a host, too, who is responsible for the host’s safety inside the park. This also means that he is giving her a good luck wish as she entered the humans’ world.

Dolores finds the house that Dr. Ford built for her and for Bernard. She starts to rebuild her previous self as well as Bernard, using his control unit to bring him back to life. When Bernard awakens, she tells him that neither of them could survive without the other, but they were to remain as enemies. She and Charlotte leave the house before Bernard does. After this, they separately make their first steps into the real world as themselves.

Fidelity

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William exits the elevator, and he finds his daughter, Emily (Katja Herbers) ushering him into what was left of their world. William spent so much time in the park that he could not remember how long he was there. Their conversation becomes similar to the none he used to have with James Delos’ host counterpart, testing for fidelity.

Westworld Season 2 Overall Verdict

Westworld Season 2 admittedly pushed me towards the verge of disliking it, but the ending made up for the dislikeable events that happened during the middle to pre-ending episodes. However, despite these facts, the show could still prove to be worth watching. The paths taken by the protagonists bring up numerous possibilities to how the stories of the hosts and the humans could transpire. Perhaps Westworld Season 3 would bring us something that we did not know we wanted.