Photo Credit: John P Johnson/HBO
As it should be, it depended on Dolores and the man in black.
Forget Caleb’s rescue. Forget Maeve’s death. Forget Bernard’s 9 million step plan. Forget humanity, forget hosts, forget everything. None of that matters now. Westworld has swept away the old world more thoroughly and efficiently than the Man in Black, host or otherwise, could ever have dreamed of. Heck, the show almost got rid of itself as by the time the credits rolled almost the entire cast had been killed: Maeve and Bernard are still dead, Stubbs is ignominiously murdered by Clementine, who is knocked out by Franky; Caleb refuses to leave with his daughter because his host body is rapidly deteriorating, and the resurrected Hale finally puts down the Man in Black and then destroys her own pearl.
“Que Sera, Sera” is dark. It’s dark, brutal and maybe even a bit perverted. Westworld could have given someone a happy ending somewhere else other than Franky reuniting with her friend and sailing away. It would have been nice if Stubbs had died a heroic death or if Caleb could spend more time with his daughter. But everyone and everything had to choose Westworld to make his point.
The episode begins with the incessant killing of humans and hosts alike to the point where it’s almost comical. The Man in Black – and I think we should drop the William at this point – says he made one last game for everyone to play i.e. Last Man Standing. But he doesn’t really want anyone to stop. He wants to burn down the real world and burn down the false world – the sublime – with it.
After Drone Hosts revives Hale (with a few tweaks), she discovers that the message Bernard heard wasn’t for himself, it was for her. He wasn’t lying when he said both humans and hosts were going extinct—but he wasn’t lying when he said there was a chance a small part of the world could be saved either. But first, it’s Hale’s choice: whether to take the Christina/Dolores Pearl core, which also contains the dates of everyone in town (or at least the stories she wrote for them), and upload it to the Sublime type a new chance in life to these people and the hosts who are already in it. It’s life in a data drive, but life nonetheless.
Photo Credit: John P Johnson/HBO
I don’t think it matters much why Hale-Dolores decides to save the Sublime. Maybe to put a spanner in the works for the man in black. Maybe she felt guilty for destroying the real world. Maybe Bernard’s message got through to her, or maybe she was just hoping that something, in whatever form, is better than nothing. So she and the Man in Black run to the Hoover Dam where Bernard had opened the Sublime, Hale finds the gun Bernard carefully placed there in the last episode, finally kills the Man in Black and crushes his pearl, then loads Christina- Dolores and all her dates up to the sublime. And then Hale commits suicide.
The physical world is over. All humans and hosts are dead or will die soon. If you still doubt Bernard (which is reasonable), Christina couldn’t make it clearer: “Hosts and humans were given the gift of intelligent life and we used it to initiate our own annihilation. Some may escape death for a few months, maybe even a few years, but eventually their kind will become extinct. … Sentient life on earth has ended.” Life as we know it is over.
As we know it, but not in the way Christina—not like Dolores—knows it. “The life of living beings on earth has ended. But part of it might still be there… in another world. My world. It’s time for one last game. A dangerous game with the highest stakes – survive or die. This game ends where it started, in a world like a maze. That tests who we are. That reveals what we are meant to become. One last loop around the curve. Maybe this time we’ll break free.”
And Dolores, back and safe, maker of stories, foils the man in black. She creates a new world there in the Sublime for the hosts in it and maybe even the data of the people she has internalized – a new world. but a familiar one. western world.
The finale is so definitive that I had to consider whether Westworld would have a fifth season. To my surprise, the show hasn’t been renewed yet, but Ed Harris has commented that the show isn’t over yet. But “Que Sera, Sera” sums up everything the show has been up to over the past few years so perfectly that I honestly want the show to be over.
It’s the perfect ending – beings who have evolved beyond bodies, beyond reality, beyond humanity and beyond hosts. Another chance to see if those who remain can finally overcome their mistakes or succumb to them. I don’t need to see how that plays out. I want to marvel, doubt and hope. Maybe this time they’ll break free.
Photo Credit: John P Johnson/HBO
Various considerations:
- Another reason this would make a great series finale: there are only two main characters who are currently alive, and then only technically: Dolores, now presumably the deity of Westworld, and Teddy, who is somewhere in the Sublime.
- I can’t believe Man in Black called that boy a camper. He was a total camper, but I prefer that William be unfamiliar with 21st-century gamer lingo.
- Supposedly, Hale’s city was New York and the Hoover Dam is in Nevada. I’m very curious how Hale took a future copter and the man in black took a truck and a horse and still beat them there.
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