In a scene from the past, Bernard and Dolores begin fidelity trial 11,927, proving their 'impressive' proclivity for spending years doing the same tedious things over and over again.
Dolores seems to sort of love the man she killed. After lying with his body for a while, she pries the control device out of his head, lifts the flattened bullet from it and rides off. (Being shot in the head basically just means it's easy to remove the control unit, now) She then discovers the man in black digging his fingers around in the gory mutilation he's made in his upper forearm and 'rigs' his gun with the flattened bullet, saying she'll need him to get to the Valley Beyond. At the entry to the Forge they shoot down the security men who have stopped Bernard. Then the man in black shoots Dolores several times at close range but she just gets to be unaffected by bullets now, still. He finally puts his gun to her head and at this particular time the flattened bullet causes a backfire, injuring his hand. So, she needed him for backup firepower but she also impaired his ability to fire his gun (except that he could) by loading a flattened bullet (which is impossible to do), all because the writers wanted a 'clever' power reversal without killing either of them. She leaves him behind; she won't kill HIM of course - she'll just kill EVERYONE else.
Delos Jr. is recast as the computational controller that parses guest data in the virtual test space. After seeking the reasoning behind peoples' decisions, he/it has concluded that they don't even make decisions at all. Apparently people can be pigeonholed as being constricted to a single moment (and Delos Sr. is shown to be inevitably bound to the last unhappy interaction he had with his son before his son's overdose). It's conceptual window dressing meant to validate their theme of extremely negative experiences and states being the true source of life (and now choice as well); another attempt to cover up a total lack of meaningful insight with dismal dramatics about relationships that end miserably. There are no high concepts here. All you have to do is give up all faith in everyone and you may see what it all really is (try it...): jjust an extravagant display intended to attract an audience. It doesn't fly. It's down in the dirt plotting narrative twists into muck, consoling itself with its great beauty.
When Bernard is ferried by boat to the location of the Forge, the grinding 90's industrial music means intense awesomeness is happening. Muting the audio shows what it really is: people in a boat.
The 4 million "souls" that are kept in the Forge aren't really souls or even mind backups. At most, they're records of experiences and choices made by people in the park. And even if they were complete mind backups they'd be no salvation to the original people or our species. There's only the one instance of the original you born into the world; when you die all your worldly experience is ended - you will not have worldly experience via some separate binary entity created with your data. That which is real is irreplaceable. (Of course, the authors then just arbitrarily bump the number up to 100 million without explanation, having Dolores say it's "everyone")
Sadism is brought to the extreme as Maeve, rendered totally helpless and flayed open in grisly detail by the authors, is promised a torture killing by her short-tempered sadist repair tech as he lowers her pain threshold ALL THE WAY DOWN NOW. She's shown suffering the extreme pain you'd expect in that condition, and with a self-satisfied smile he leans over her neck with a surgical saw, to her terror. The authors then make an extremely insulting 'apology' for this noxious bit of 'entertainment' for serial killers when they have a host overpower him and drive the saw into his neck instead. As he writhes on the floor gasping and bleeding out, the gore is sustained by another shot of Maeve's grisly suffering. It's an absurd conceit when her psychically commandeered hosts bump her pain threshold back up and she reacts by seeming fine, as if the vileness of depicting a woman flayed open like that doesn't exist without her showing evidence of suffering. Then, after having the hosts seal her up, Maeve sends robot bulls to gore the human security team in a bloody stampede - an event that's absurdly presented as a glorification of her 'specialness'. She'll just be the 'Long-Suffering Saint' who saves herself with omniscience, omnipotence, and gore.
Lee finalizes his sympathetic character and his life by illogically sacrificing himself in place of the robot, Hector in a BS-triumphant/comedic stand against park security. When he dies he's totally guaranteed not to be repaired and returned to service because he is human. He's given the option to just surrender, but instead he absurdly provokes them, shouting "Here I f-ing am!" He's shot down with a submachine gun. Maybe they were just sick of it, too.
In THE ULTIMATE SUICIDE CONCEIT, a mass suicide is depicted as the remaining hosts proceed in a row like lemmings dropping off a cliff, their bodies piling up in a giant heap below. They are supposedly going to a sort of Heaven: The Sublime. Their mind-data is entering a realm that looks like a typically pastoral Eden - a virtual space where they can "build a new world" (there's a promised land for the chosen ones and they'll each have 70 lives). They've been advised by Robert to take a long walk off a short cliff. There's a picture with sunshine and grass. There's no reason to think this will even be a form of existence; I think it'll fit on a portable hard drive.
The Clementine tool is trotted out by Hale to spread the RABIES virus among the hosts who haven't committed suicide yet. In a BS-clever twist on the ultimate suicide conceit, Maeve psychically holds off the rabid hoard long enough for the child from her 'Madonna' story and the new mother to commit suicide. She's shot down by security personnel just as she completes this assisted suicide, and the 'door' closes as Akecheta is touchingly reunited suicidally with his true love.
Bernard says he "killed" all the humans (by enabling Dolores to erase the human backups). Contradictory to the extreme as usual, Bernard actually did humanity a favor. Now the data can't be used for some nefarious purpose at some point by who knows who. Then, as a 'service' done for the suicide hosts, the Dolores Copy (who Bernard brought back in the form of Hale after killing Dolores - contradicting himself yet again) transfers the host data to some secret location so they'll now be confined to the virtual space for a tedious eternity if it's even existence at all. When the Dolores Copy-via-Hale shoots Bernard there's a fake tear in her/their/its eye because it's not an important event at all. He'll be duplicated by a Dolores Copy pretty soon anyway. And for all we know he might have been a Bernard Copy to begin with...
In a revelatory scene, Bernard notes that his more recent choices were his own and not the result of code implanted by Robert. He'll have to de-address his memories and erase his imaginary memory-based Robert friend in order to be deliberately confused. Luckily, he'll be a terminated robot instance pretty soon and nothing will matter then; the troubles will be a different robot instance's problem. And doing away with the imaginary Robert friend is nothing to feel bad about anyway because Robert was a false prophet and an oppressive terrorist who equated freedom with being under his control and murder with survival, misled those around him with deceptive indoctrination and reprogrammed them radically, tested people constantly for fidelity and killed those he regarded as infidels, and incited atrocities and sacrifices of others while making claims of having greater knowledge. Come to think of it, that describes someone else as well...
The Dolores Copy-via-Hale has an extremely easy passage abroad to the real world when the head of security, Stubbs just clears her at the checkpoint, revealing that he's a host following Robert's original directives. There's a shot of Teddy abandoned in The Sublime (his data having been added there by the Dolores Copy-via-Hale) and I can't help but notice that he's wearing color contacts.
In the aftermath of the rabies outbreak, Maeve's fortuitously liberated pets, Felix and Sylvester are told to bag the hosts they think are salvageable. Standing over Maeve, they have a choice. The choice is clear, so Felix looks unsure.
Dolores' mission is still to dominate the real world and "kill them all" as the newly made Bernard Copy says (tidily proving fidelity to the former Bernard). A new Dolores Copy and the Dolores Copy-via-Hale have work to do. They can always just make more Doloreses and probably more Doloreses-via-Hale and probably more of some other hosts whose marbles the Dolores Copy-via-Hale smuggled out of Westworld in her handbag. It could just go on and on. If it does, I'll be disappointed by the unendingness of it and how it's being used as a convenient plot device to just make any number of things happen. And if it doesn't then I'll be disappointed and wonder why not, because Dolores' mission is still to dominate the real world. Maybe she/they/it will run out of Elmer's glue.
In a post-credits scene, the man in black has gone straight to Hell as a binary entity enduring an inhuman repetitive existence after a copy of his mind-data is posthumously joined with a host body designed in his likeness. He'll be fidelity tested by a binary entity instance of his daughter who advises it's been taking longer than they thought (he's evidently not one for accepting reality). Except that the man in black isn't involved in any way here because he's dead, finally, and this is really just the world's most unspontaneous and tediously recurring pseudo-exchange between approximately two other entities.
Dolores seems to sort of love the man she killed. After lying with his body for a while, she pries the control device out of his head, lifts the flattened bullet from it and rides off. (Being shot in the head basically just means it's easy to remove the control unit, now) She then discovers the man in black digging his fingers around in the gory mutilation he's made in his upper forearm and 'rigs' his gun with the flattened bullet, saying she'll need him to get to the Valley Beyond. At the entry to the Forge they shoot down the security men who have stopped Bernard. Then the man in black shoots Dolores several times at close range but she just gets to be unaffected by bullets now, still. He finally puts his gun to her head and at this particular time the flattened bullet causes a backfire, injuring his hand. So, she needed him for backup firepower but she also impaired his ability to fire his gun (except that he could) by loading a flattened bullet (which is impossible to do), all because the writers wanted a 'clever' power reversal without killing either of them. She leaves him behind; she won't kill HIM of course - she'll just kill EVERYONE else.
Delos Jr. is recast as the computational controller that parses guest data in the virtual test space. After seeking the reasoning behind peoples' decisions, he/it has concluded that they don't even make decisions at all. Apparently people can be pigeonholed as being constricted to a single moment (and Delos Sr. is shown to be inevitably bound to the last unhappy interaction he had with his son before his son's overdose). It's conceptual window dressing meant to validate their theme of extremely negative experiences and states being the true source of life (and now choice as well); another attempt to cover up a total lack of meaningful insight with dismal dramatics about relationships that end miserably. There are no high concepts here. All you have to do is give up all faith in everyone and you may see what it all really is (try it...): jjust an extravagant display intended to attract an audience. It doesn't fly. It's down in the dirt plotting narrative twists into muck, consoling itself with its great beauty.
When Bernard is ferried by boat to the location of the Forge, the grinding 90's industrial music means intense awesomeness is happening. Muting the audio shows what it really is: people in a boat.
The 4 million "souls" that are kept in the Forge aren't really souls or even mind backups. At most, they're records of experiences and choices made by people in the park. And even if they were complete mind backups they'd be no salvation to the original people or our species. There's only the one instance of the original you born into the world; when you die all your worldly experience is ended - you will not have worldly experience via some separate binary entity created with your data. That which is real is irreplaceable. (Of course, the authors then just arbitrarily bump the number up to 100 million without explanation, having Dolores say it's "everyone")
Sadism is brought to the extreme as Maeve, rendered totally helpless and flayed open in grisly detail by the authors, is promised a torture killing by her short-tempered sadist repair tech as he lowers her pain threshold ALL THE WAY DOWN NOW. She's shown suffering the extreme pain you'd expect in that condition, and with a self-satisfied smile he leans over her neck with a surgical saw, to her terror. The authors then make an extremely insulting 'apology' for this noxious bit of 'entertainment' for serial killers when they have a host overpower him and drive the saw into his neck instead. As he writhes on the floor gasping and bleeding out, the gore is sustained by another shot of Maeve's grisly suffering. It's an absurd conceit when her psychically commandeered hosts bump her pain threshold back up and she reacts by seeming fine, as if the vileness of depicting a woman flayed open like that doesn't exist without her showing evidence of suffering. Then, after having the hosts seal her up, Maeve sends robot bulls to gore the human security team in a bloody stampede - an event that's absurdly presented as a glorification of her 'specialness'. She'll just be the 'Long-Suffering Saint' who saves herself with omniscience, omnipotence, and gore.
Lee finalizes his sympathetic character and his life by illogically sacrificing himself in place of the robot, Hector in a BS-triumphant/comedic stand against park security. When he dies he's totally guaranteed not to be repaired and returned to service because he is human. He's given the option to just surrender, but instead he absurdly provokes them, shouting "Here I f-ing am!" He's shot down with a submachine gun. Maybe they were just sick of it, too.
In THE ULTIMATE SUICIDE CONCEIT, a mass suicide is depicted as the remaining hosts proceed in a row like lemmings dropping off a cliff, their bodies piling up in a giant heap below. They are supposedly going to a sort of Heaven: The Sublime. Their mind-data is entering a realm that looks like a typically pastoral Eden - a virtual space where they can "build a new world" (there's a promised land for the chosen ones and they'll each have 70 lives). They've been advised by Robert to take a long walk off a short cliff. There's a picture with sunshine and grass. There's no reason to think this will even be a form of existence; I think it'll fit on a portable hard drive.
The Clementine tool is trotted out by Hale to spread the RABIES virus among the hosts who haven't committed suicide yet. In a BS-clever twist on the ultimate suicide conceit, Maeve psychically holds off the rabid hoard long enough for the child from her 'Madonna' story and the new mother to commit suicide. She's shot down by security personnel just as she completes this assisted suicide, and the 'door' closes as Akecheta is touchingly reunited suicidally with his true love.
Bernard says he "killed" all the humans (by enabling Dolores to erase the human backups). Contradictory to the extreme as usual, Bernard actually did humanity a favor. Now the data can't be used for some nefarious purpose at some point by who knows who. Then, as a 'service' done for the suicide hosts, the Dolores Copy (who Bernard brought back in the form of Hale after killing Dolores - contradicting himself yet again) transfers the host data to some secret location so they'll now be confined to the virtual space for a tedious eternity if it's even existence at all. When the Dolores Copy-via-Hale shoots Bernard there's a fake tear in her/their/its eye because it's not an important event at all. He'll be duplicated by a Dolores Copy pretty soon anyway. And for all we know he might have been a Bernard Copy to begin with...
In a revelatory scene, Bernard notes that his more recent choices were his own and not the result of code implanted by Robert. He'll have to de-address his memories and erase his imaginary memory-based Robert friend in order to be deliberately confused. Luckily, he'll be a terminated robot instance pretty soon and nothing will matter then; the troubles will be a different robot instance's problem. And doing away with the imaginary Robert friend is nothing to feel bad about anyway because Robert was a false prophet and an oppressive terrorist who equated freedom with being under his control and murder with survival, misled those around him with deceptive indoctrination and reprogrammed them radically, tested people constantly for fidelity and killed those he regarded as infidels, and incited atrocities and sacrifices of others while making claims of having greater knowledge. Come to think of it, that describes someone else as well...
The Dolores Copy-via-Hale has an extremely easy passage abroad to the real world when the head of security, Stubbs just clears her at the checkpoint, revealing that he's a host following Robert's original directives. There's a shot of Teddy abandoned in The Sublime (his data having been added there by the Dolores Copy-via-Hale) and I can't help but notice that he's wearing color contacts.
In the aftermath of the rabies outbreak, Maeve's fortuitously liberated pets, Felix and Sylvester are told to bag the hosts they think are salvageable. Standing over Maeve, they have a choice. The choice is clear, so Felix looks unsure.
Dolores' mission is still to dominate the real world and "kill them all" as the newly made Bernard Copy says (tidily proving fidelity to the former Bernard). A new Dolores Copy and the Dolores Copy-via-Hale have work to do. They can always just make more Doloreses and probably more Doloreses-via-Hale and probably more of some other hosts whose marbles the Dolores Copy-via-Hale smuggled out of Westworld in her handbag. It could just go on and on. If it does, I'll be disappointed by the unendingness of it and how it's being used as a convenient plot device to just make any number of things happen. And if it doesn't then I'll be disappointed and wonder why not, because Dolores' mission is still to dominate the real world. Maybe she/they/it will run out of Elmer's glue.
In a post-credits scene, the man in black has gone straight to Hell as a binary entity enduring an inhuman repetitive existence after a copy of his mind-data is posthumously joined with a host body designed in his likeness. He'll be fidelity tested by a binary entity instance of his daughter who advises it's been taking longer than they thought (he's evidently not one for accepting reality). Except that the man in black isn't involved in any way here because he's dead, finally, and this is really just the world's most unspontaneous and tediously recurring pseudo-exchange between approximately two other entities.