Westworld
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MaybeWestworldisnt canceling the apocalypse.
With one episode left to go, season four is torching the world left and right.
The farmer and the cowman cant be friends.
Several characters died, another got thrown an existential curveball, and another rebooted his villain era.
Heres where we stand after episode seven, Metanoia.
Bernard has been leading our heroes down a path that ends in Doomsday.
The episode opens with one of the many simulations he ran in the Sublime.
Do it, the Maeve simulation says.
Is that what you would really say, or is that my impression of you?Bernard wonders.
Well, why dont you ask the real me?
Isnt that the point?
Isnt that what autonomy is, to be asked what we want?
Like any creator, Bernard is afraid of the answer.
Is it better for Maeve to be with her daughter or to stay and fight?
Is it Bernards business to decide?
Bernard and Maeve head to New York/Hale City with Stubbs and Frankie.
All of the characters are in the same time and place!
After the ordeal he went through in the previous episode, Caleb-279s rescue is relatively easy.
Hale stops by to taunt him one last time.
She tells him she plans to shut down the cities and placing humans in cold storage.
(You would be too!)
She prepares to transcend and is interrupted by Maeve.
The two duke it out.
If youve been waiting for robot vs. robot fights all season, the time has come.
Civilization is just a lie we tell ourselves to justify our real purpose, human William says.
Were not here to transcend.
Were here to destroy.
In case we havent noticed, lies are a big theme this season!
Maya quips that art is lies that tell the truth, a Pablo Picasso quote.
Caleb assures Frankie that Hales world is a lie.
Teddy says, the things that feel the most real are nothing but stories that we tell ourselves.
Unsurprisingly, Williams nihilist philosophy is the bleakest version of that.
So host William kills Maeve, and then Hale, and then Bernard.
Apparently, Bernard saw all of this coming.
Flashbacks to his conversations with Akecheta in the Sublime reveal that this is the path hes been chasing.
Theres no way to save the world, he tells Maeve.
Maeve then tells Hale that theres hope for the next world, and thats what shes fighting for.
Is that the Sublime?
How will she get there if she and Bernard have both been shot in the pearl?
I cant say Ilovedwatching host William kill three Black characters in quick succession.
The optics are bad, but … William is bad.
Hes always been the Big Bad ofWestworld.
He initiates a tone sequence that instructs all humans and hosts to fight to the death.
I dont care how dark the world is, thats not what heroes do.
Theres time only for one more game, he says.
If you choose to give her that choice, you cant miss.
Reach with your left hand.
Who is he talking to, Teddy?
She wakes up in her apartment, still fully clothed and with a worried Teddy at her bedside.
He explains to her that he and Charlotte Hale are permutations of Dolores.
She submerges herself in the bath.
Ramin Djawadis score absolutely pops off.
Is she trying to baptize herself or drown herself?
The image evokesSir John Everett Millaiss Ophelia.Teddy bangs on the door until she emerges.
The world was cruel to her, and to survive it, sometimes she could be cruel too.
Is Christina an experiment of what Dolores would be like without the trauma?
And with Hale seemingly dead, how will we ever find out?
When Williams sequence hits, Christina is rightfully confused.
One minute she was able to control everyone.
Teddy tells her that they kind of cant.
Youre not in this world, he says.
Its real, but youre not.
Its a major record scratch moment.
James Marsden says what?!
On one level, that does make sense.
It could explain why she has such godlike powers over this world.
It almost certainly explains why Teddy said he and her were reflections of humanity and not hosts.
It doesnt explain how she can pick up and touch things in the world.
I feel confident that the finale will explain it.
This season has been really good about closing one door before opening another.
There are just so many doors.
These are problems for next week.
Speaking of costumes, how did host William just have his human doppelgangers old outfit on hand?
How haveanyof these hosts obtained clothes that match the humans theyre copying so easily?
Do they have a textile 3-D printer?
Its one of the silliest things Ive had to suspend my disbelief for this season.
But that, of course, is not the case.
So far, its not Stubbs whos destined for death in every possible future; its Bernard himself.
Ariana DeBoses character has not appeared since the fifth episode of the season.
Ever since Teddy showed Christina the truth about her world, Maya has been MIA.
Christina hasnt seen her in the apartment nor attempted to contact or check in with her.
But even still … its a little rude for Christina to forget about her roommate.
As a New Yorker, I really enjoyed seeing Manhattan and Brooklyn in season four.
That ended with the underground scene in this episode.
Who has gone through the biggest metanoia in episode seven?
Is it host William who kills his more authentic human self?
Is it Christina who has reflected on who she is more than previous versions of Dolores ever did?
Or is it Hale whos ready to transcend and move on?
Metanoia is also a rhetorical equipment that means correcting a statement you just made for emphasis.
Remember how this show is about robots?
