To read our review of last week’s Westworld episode, “Metanoia,” click here. With Westworld getting so big with its robotic apocalypse, and even bigger with the ultimate end point for all of humanity, there was no story left… but to go back to the park. Shrink it all back to something smaller. Give us Westworld again. It was almost comical how far the story traveled beyond the park of the first two seasons (while still keeping it in the title), so much so that this season and the previous one featured new parks, just to make things feel tied up. There weren’t any huge surprises in “Que Será, Será” (since there was no return from last week), but it still unfolded nicely as an “aftermath”-type finale that leads us into the next — and likely final — stage of history. “Que Será, Será” focused on Hale’s final showdown with William, Caleb and Frankie’s escape and angry goodbye, and – finally – Dolores’ true role in it all. The Christina/Dolores reveal felt right, but also touching. It wasn’t too hard to figure out that she had dreamed about Teddy (especially after they revealed that she had also created Maya, her evil boss, and even the paranoid Peter) to help her wake up, but that didn’t stop the emotion of the moment, and the tender scenes between them, from work. In fact, this is the most attention their relationship has received to date. The biggest revelation at play here, that breaks it all, was that Dolores’ world was digitally separate from everyone else’s. It was a ghost that had surrounded itself with a small circle of ghosts. Side Quest: Hale falling to the floor of the digital map of the city, which shocks Dolores’ reality, was quite the radio. So Bernard was sending a message to Hale, as it turned out, a message that turned Hale into a de facto hero — or even a stand-in for Maeve, if you will — for this finale. She was now out to stop William from getting his murderous gloves on Sublime, and the gun Bernard had hidden last week in the barrier was actually meant for her. We left off with Dolores running a giant Westworld sim inside the Sublime, which represents a “final test” for both humanity and the hosts (or possibly just the hosts since there’s no real way for people to hide in there, correctly;). Anyway, whatever stories take place in this new park are there to determine if sentient life will continue, not necessarily human life… as far as we can tell. Damn, Stubbs almost made it! There was a fun little twist last week when Stubbs lived and Bernard died because Stubbs assumed he would be the one to be killed. And this week it certainly looked like he was going to make it, but then Clementine crushed him, rather uncharacteristically. Look, Stubbs was never full of character. He started out as a blank slate and then became the guy who rolls his eyes at Bernard, but his survival from last week’s initial cleanup shows promise. But now it’s done. Clementine, too, was never a developed personality, but at least she got to make a menacing move before it was all said and done. The use of music at the end of these last two episodes of Season 4 really helped ground the story and gave these long chapters a landing spot, while also reminding us of Jonathan Nolan’s love of David Bowie and Radiohead (which we knew from Person of Interest, even though Nolan didn’t end up using “Heroes” in the POI finale). Anyway, Ramin Djawadi’s (Game of Thrones, Person of Interest) instrumental version of Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song” was brilliant (pun intended!). If humanity needed to go extinct, then you could do worse, musically. Again, when you have so much going on in your story, and life itself is at stake, it helps to get through it all when you have a song and some somber voice. Hopefully the Sublime Park Season 5 storyline will incorporate Frankie and the rest of the humans in some way. “ The idea here is that people only have a few years. Some will remain as extremes, in the bad countries, but they will not last. It’s basically The Road script. This is kind of a bummer for Frankie, considering everything she and her mom (and dad) did to try to save everyone, and even more of a dead man’s hand when you consider that Caleb was going through his final moments (in his final form) to make sure Frankie survived. But now it’s like… he survived for what? Hopefully the Sublime Park Season 5 storyline will incorporate Frankie and the rest of the humans in some way. It seems easy to bring back anyone who has ever been a host (even if they never made it to Sublime) because there’s always a bot trick available, but humans are a different matter. Speaking of bots, it was great to see previous Westworld hosts Steven Ogg and Jonathan Tucker return, if only briefly, for some Purge Planet mayhem. Ogg was axed during the entertaining “chain of murder” opener, while Tucker was murdered by William on the way to the Hoover Dam. It’s a small thing, sure, but little nuggets like these help tie things together when the story gets really big. It reminded us of where we came from and foretold, as we would discover, where we would return. “One last loop around the bend.” If you’re looking for more on the series, check out all of our burning questions following the Westworld Season 4 finale.
