‘Westworld’ Season 2, Episode 9 ‘Vanishing Point’ Recap: Games [SPOILERS]

Westworld continues to bring its viewers to disturbing revelations as it reaches its current season’s end. This episode shows how ruthless both the Hosts and the Humans can be. The loss of characters, both old and new, leads to a variety of effects to the plot. This season generally shows brutality and destruction in the paths taken by the protagonists.

In this week’s episode of Westworld, Grace (Katja Herbers) confronts her father, William (Ed Harris) about the suicide of her mother, Juliet (Sela Ward). As Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) develops a weapon against the hosts, Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) and Elsie Hughes (Shannon Woodward) journey to the valley, Teddy Flood (James Marsden) makes a realization that makes him fear for Dolores Abernathy’s (Evan Rachel Wood) safety.

Alone

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Bernard watches as Charlotte has Roland (Aaron Fili) syncs the code he copied from Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) into Clementine Pennyfeather (Angela Sarafyan). They do a test run and Bernard witnesses the horror that the code could unleash on the hosts who start attacking each other. He leaves to look for Elsie. On his way to the basement, he approaches the door to Maeve’s room. In his head, Robert tells him to pause as he gives his final message to Maeve.

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Bernard meets Elsie in the basement. Before they leave, he tells her that what he found in the CR4-DL: data about their guests. Also, Delos plans to use the data to make duplicates of the guests’ personalities into the hosts. This is why they had to reach the valley immediately, so they leave on a vehicle. Back at Maeve’s room, Robert expresses his deep regret over what happened to Maeve as he makes his final goodbye.

Bernard and Elsie reach the rallying point. Elsie gets off the vehicle to scavenge some ammunition from the dead bodies. Meanwhile, Bernard is driven mad by Robert’s consistent intervention, so he wipes Robert’s code out of his system. When Elsie finds him bound to the steering wheel, she grasps her gun, but Bernard tells her that needed to finish the mission alone, so he leaves her with the data they salvaged from the CR4-DL.

Tragedy

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William is at a charity benefit dinner he hosts at his house. He is with his wife, Juliet. As she leaves, he starts having hallucinations as he mistakes one of the servers as Dolores. William realizes that something was wrong. However, this was just a dream of a distant past. William wakes up to Grace while they wait for extraction at a rallying point. While he does not wish to leave the park yet, Grace is intent on bringing her father home. She confronts him about the night of her mother’s suicide.

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The night at the dinner, William meets Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) at the bar. He gives William a Datacard before he looks behind and sees his wife bumping into one of the servers. He decides to take her home. At present, William reveals that company was using the clothes as scanners to monitor their activities in the park. He asks Grace if she wanted to bring her mother back, but she only wanted to know why her mother killed herself.

When William and Juliet arrive home, they start arguing. As their argument gets heated, Grace intervenes, telling her mother that they will send her back to rehab. Juliet insists that William is lying about who he is as he took her to their bedroom. William puts her to rest in their bed. Before he left the bedroom, he keeps the Datacard Robert gave him in one the books in their room.

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As William and Grace discuss the interventions they had to do with Juliet, a drop of water drips on the dining table. William and Juliet’s bedroom was above the dining room, so he ran up the stairs. He finds Juliet in the bathtub overdosed on some medication. Back at the park, William finally has the strength to stand up. He starts to think that Robert made a host that resembles his daughter. They begin to argue about this, but Grace insists that she read his profile on the Datacard, saying that Juliet left it for her. The rescue team arrives. Since he thinks that this was all part of Robert’s game, he kills the men as well as Grace, only to find out that she was grasping the Datacard Robert had given him on the night of Juliet’s suicide.

William places his gun against his head as he reflects on his actions. It turns out that he told Juliet that she was right about her suspicions. William was not the man she thought he was. When he left the bedroom, Juliet checked the Datacard hidden in the book. She finds footage of William’s exploits in the park. This made her decide to kill herself. Now, he killed his own daughter, too. Still, he could not bring himself to commit suicide, since his actions were not his own, to begin with.

Safety

Dolores and Teddy encounter a group of Ghost Nation Native Warriors as they head for the valley beyond. Wanahton (Martin Sensmeier) gives them a last chance to leave, but they refuse, so he and his warriors attack. Dolores and Teddy lose all their warriors. When Teddy makes sure that their enemies are all dead, he finds Wanahton but is unable to shoot him, so Wanahton escapes. Dolores kills off one last wounded warrior before they leave.

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As they rest in a broken down tavern, Teddy reflects on his memories. He knew that no matter what happened, no matter how much he changed, he would always love Dolores. However, the changes Dolores made on him was a threat to her survival. He knew that he could not protect her anymore, so he decides to kill himself. Dolores cries out in pain as Teddy fell on the floor, blood oozing out of his head.

Westworld continues next Sunday, June 24th, with “The Passenger” at 9/8c on HBO.