Westworld’s Season 4 Finale Was Bleak, Brutal, and Beautiful

As it needed to, it got here all the way down to Dolores and the Man in Black.

Forget Caleb’s rescue. Forget Maeve’s loss of life. Forget Bernard’s nine-million-step plan. Forget humanity, overlook the Hosts, overlook all the pieces. None of it issues now. Westworld has swept away the previous world extra completely and effectively than the Man in Black, Host or in any other case, may have ever dreamed of doing. Hell, the present has virtually gotten rid of itself, on condition that by the point the credit roll, virtually everything of the forged has been killed: Maeve and Bernard are nonetheless lifeless, Stubbs will get ignominiously murdered by Clementine, who’s taken out by Franky; Caleb refuses to depart along with his daughter as a result of his Host physique is deteriorating quickly, and the resurrected Hale places the Man in Black down for good, then destroys her personal pearl.

“Que Sera, Sera” is bleak. It’s bleak, brutal, and perhaps even a bit of perverse. Westworld may have given someone some sort of a contented ending someplace aside from Franky reuniting together with her girlfriend and crusing away. It would have been good for Stubbs to have died a hero’s loss of life, or for Caleb to get to spend some extra time along with his daughter. But everybody and all the pieces needed to go for Westworld to make its level. 

The episode begins with simply ceaseless killing, of people and Hosts alike to the purpose it’s virtually comical. The Man in Black—and I feel we must always drop the William at this level—says he’s made one ultimate sport for everybody to play, i.e. “last man standing.” But he doesn’t actually need anybody left standing. He needs to burn the true world down, and to burn the faux world—the Sublime—down with it.

After Drone Hosts resurrect Hale (with just a few enhancements), she discovers that message Bernard was listening to wasn’t for himself, however for her. When he mentioned people and Hosts would each go extinct, he wasn’t mendacity—however he additionally wasn’t mendacity when he mentioned there was an opportunity {that a} small a part of the world may very well be saved. But first, it’s Hale’s determination: Whether she needs to take Christina/Dolores’ Pearl core, which additionally accommodates the info of all of the individuals within the metropolis (or not less than the tales she wrote for them), and add it to the Sublime to offer these individuals and the Hosts already inside a brand new probability at life. It’s a life in an information drive, however a life nonetheless.

I don’t assume it issues a lot why Hale-Dolores decides to avoid wasting the Sublime. Maybe it’s to thwart the Man in Black. Maybe she felt culpable for destroying the true world. Maybe Bernard’s message acquired to her, or perhaps she simply hoped one thing was higher than nothing, it doesn’t matter what type that took. So she and the Man in Black race to Hoover Dam the place Bernard had opened the Sublime, Hale finds the gun rigorously planted there by Bernard final episode, lastly kills the Man in Black and crushes his Pearl, then uploads Christina-Dolores and all her information into the Sublime. And then Hale commits suicide.

The bodily world is over. All people and Hosts are lifeless, or will die quickly. If you had been nonetheless doubting Bernard (which is affordable), Christina couldn’t make it clearer: “Hosts and humans were given the gift of intelligent life and we used it to usher in our own annihilation. A few may escape death for a few months, maybe even a few years, but ultimately their kind will go extinct. … Sentient life on earth has ended.” Life as we all know it’s over.

As we realize it, however not as Christina—not as Dolores—is aware of it. “Sentient life on earth has ended. But some part of it might still be preserved… in another world. My world. There’s time for one last game. A dangerous game, with the highest of stakes—survival, or extinction. This game ends where it began, in a world like a maze. That tests who we are. That reveals what we are to become. One last loop around the bend. Maybe this time, we’ll set ourselves free.”

And Dolores, again and complete, creator of tales, thwarts the Man in Black. She makes a brand new world there within the Sublime, for the Hosts inside it and even perhaps the info of the people she’s internalized—a brand new world. however a well-recognized one. Westworld.

The finale is so ultimate I needed to test to see if Westworld was going to have a fifth season. To my shock, the present has not been renewed but, however Ed Harris has made feedback suggesting the present isn’t over. But “Que Sera, Sera” wraps up all the pieces the present has been doing for the previous few years so completely that I truthfully need the present to be over.

It’s the proper ending—beings which have advanced past our bodies, past actuality, past humanity and Hosts. One extra probability to see if these remaining can lastly transcend their flaws or succumb to them. I don’t have to see how that performs out. I wish to surprise, and doubt, and hope. Maybe this time, they’ll set themselves free.

Assorted Musings:

• Another motive this is able to be an awesome collection finale: There are solely two primary characters who’re at present alive, after which solely technically: Dolores, now presumably the god of Westworld, and Teddy, who’s someplace within the Sublime.
• I can’t consider that Man in Black referred to as that child a camper. He was completely a camper, however I desire William not okaynow twenty first-century gamer lingo.
• Supposedly Hale’s metropolis 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 horse and nonetheless beat her there.

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