Is The Man In Black A Human Or Host? Westworld Co-Creator Lisa Joy On Season 2 Finale & Whats Next
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains details about tonights season 2 finale of Westworld on HBO From ..
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains details about tonights season 2 finale of Westworld on HBO
From the moment Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) died at the end of Westworlds season 1, a robot apocalypse has ensued throughout this past season, with hosts and humans as collateral damage. And while the Delos SWAT team appears to have quelled the android uprise, were left with the notion at the end of tonights 1 1/2 hour episode 20, “The Passenger”, written by husband and wife Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, and directed by Frederick E.O. Toye, that our world is about to be stirred up by the likes of robo-Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), robo-Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson), and the venerable host Bernard (Jeffrey Wright).
However, the most jarring part of tonights season 2 finale came in the post-credits epilogue. Doubts are raised greatly here about the Man in Blacks (Ed Harris) humanity and whether or not his real daughter Emily (Katja Herbers) even died in the penultimate episode (Joy provides some insight and teases in our interview below).
He arrives to the parks Forge nerve center in shambles and finds himself in a similar studio where the host of the parks owner James Delos was tested (and failed). We find Emily questioning Blacks reality, a role typically reserved for a human. She informs him that hes not living in a simulation, and that she has to check his diagnostics for “fidelity”. Though Emily was scanned as a human in episode 19, that whole technology is for naught as we see robo-Charlotte foil the scanners as she boats to the real world.
Prior to all of this, Maeve (Thandie Newton) attempts to lead the hosts to the Valley Beyond in a very Moses-like metaphor. Similar to the way that heaven is described in the Bible, the Valley Beyond is a similar place: Many are called, but few are chosen to pass through the heavens pinhead needle gate. Those making the segue include Maeves daughter as well as Ghost Nation warrior Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon) and his loved one. Their bridge is closed, and Westworld is flooded by Dolores (hence the shot in the season 2 opener where we see the hosts drowned in a lake). Meanwhile, Bernard, who as a host has all the free will a human could envy, shoots Dolores, enables robo-Charlotte to shoot the real Hale before fleeing the park by boat. She resurfaces with Dolores and Bernard in the latters opulent home that sits adjacent to a citys Central Park.
Below, Joy expounds more on anything you may have been confused about tonight, as well as what to expect in season 3 of Westworld.
Wait a second, isnt Dolores in Charlotte? Why are they standing together in the end?
JOY: What Dolores has done is that shes smuggled herself out of the park while impersonating Hale. She has put herself back into her body, and yet Hale is still there. The question is where is Hale now? And thats a question well be visiting next season.
As Charlotte buzzes away from the island, in a bag she carries several pearls from The Forge.
JOY: In those pearls are a handful of hosts that she is smuggling out of the park. Which hosts they are, well be exploring.
We see the Man in Black digging in his arm, and hes not in a lot of pain. Does that make him a host? We see that theres actually a back-up of him that exists.
JOY: This season weve been seeing him in a lot of pain and as he digs into his arm, he suffers from madness. He himself doesnt know if hes a host or not. Weve basically had two time lines this season in the classic film noir structure. Weve seen him playing the game and figuring his footsteps to the Valley Beyond, but hes become confused on his side of reality, questioning his nature. If you immerse yourself in the game for too long, do you lose the sense of what is real and not real? He struggles with this and it leads to the moment where he kills his daughter Emily thinking she might be a host. He was in fact mistaken, and hes digging into his own skin for answers and doesnt find any wires by the time Dolores arrives. By the end of this time line, hes being shipped out into the real world. He did kill his own daughter, hes in the prison of his own skin, locked in his own confusion and guilt.
The chapter that occurs after the credits [editors note: Where the Man in Black arrives in an apartment that looks a lot like the one that housed android James Delos being interrogated by daughter Emily as though she is the human, and he the robot] is a little piece of what to come in the future. It gives full closure of the timelines by validating what happened in the park as the Man in Black leaves.
And Bernard?
JOY: Hes leaving his home in the end to be in the real world. Dolores is being totally upfront with him. That they escaped the park, and even if theyre working as foes, it will take both of them to survive. The real world is what were investigating next season.
Tessa Thompson told Deadline at the beginning of the season that “women rule supreme this season, its all about the women”. That said, how much did the Times Up era inspire the season 2 writers room?
JOY: By the time Times Up started as a movement we had written all the scripts and were shooting. Im inspired by that movement today and every day. The series is a reflection of a movement thats been occurring in society before Times Up. Its been women struggling in all forms of oppression, theres been networks to cope with it, and theres been a lot of suffering. The fact is that Im a human being alive in the world and Im a woman and I know these things. Ive been affected by them. Fiction has always been a way of examining society and its flaws and trying to expose them. You find pains and struggles reflected in art.
Human-wise…whos even alive? There was a big bloodbath. Even the noble Delos tech employee Elsie was shot dead. Lee Sizemore is dead. Ashley Stubbs looks like hes alive.
JOY: There is management outside of the park. Like any corporation, the brass isnt centralized at the business operation. Theres more people to meet. Sylvester (Ptolemy Slocum) and Lutz (Leonardo Nam) survived, good on them. The series deals with a large period of time, and in a story about A.I. youll say goodbye to humans along the way.
We see all these James Delos hosts. Will they be walking around in season 3?
JOY: They werent physical copies, but occurring in this digital space that Dolores and Bernard entered. As we saw in episode 4, the mind tended to reject their bodies when bringing these humans back to life. He went insane and that hasnt worked thus.
Was there an alternate ending? Was there a version of tonight where some character arcs ended differently?
JOY: I dont think so. We got to all of our endings. Its a long finale, and we managed to cram a lot in there. We told the story that we set out to tell. This chapter is now finished and we have a small fleet of hosts in the real world.
Jonathan Nolan and Space X CEO and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk are close friends. They had a panel at SXSW this spring. Musk has said that A.I. is humanitys biggest existential threat. Have his theories inspired the Westworld writers room?
JOY: For me, the series is a morality tale about the fear of humans. The protagonists I empathize with the most are Dolores and Maeve. Its the examination of human nature, this unique experiment and the extreme human experience. From the A.I.s point of view, you see some of the humans flaws in stark light. Theres violence and tribalism and a lot of darkness in humans which the series explores. It also makes the light brighter, when you see Maeves character sacrifice all she has to save her daughter; a parents overwhelming love for a child. Theres a human instinct programmed in her, and she choose to preserve and understand the beauty of it, the beautiful thing about being human. Its fun writing Lee Sizemore as narcissistic idea under duress which is what happens when youre the worst of mankind, but sometimes you see the best manifest itself.
