The Westworld season 2 finale messed me up so much that I'm not sure if I'm the one writing this article or if I've been replaced by a host. Just as soon as one mystery appeared to be solved, the creators of the HBO show threw in a post-credits scene that definitely has us questioning the nature of our reality — or, at least, everything we've watched on the show so far.
Luckily, The Wrap was just as freaked out by this last-minute reveal, which showed Emily (Katja Herbers) interviewing the Man in Black (Ed Harris) the same way William (Jimmi Simpson) interviewed the host Delos (Peter Mullan), and they decided to ask the creator herself to explain. This bonus scene is confusing for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that we just saw the Man In Black getting treated on the beach, and ending with the fact that this interrogations means the Man In Black is a host/human hybrid. But has he always been? Have we been watching a robot this whole time? Lisa Joy, please help us.
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"When you see that post-credit vignette, it’s really just a tease of what’s to come," she told The Wrap. Basically, everything we understood up until that final scene is correct. William/Man In Black was human. He did kill his own daughter. He did end up getting saved. What we see at the end, in classic Westworld style, is a new timeline — a timeline we've jumped back and forth between from the moment earlier in the episode when we see the injured Man In Black approach the elevator, and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), who had just killed Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) come up the elevator. The two don't end up meeting face to face, because those two shots are from different timelines.
But what does this new timeline, this Man-In-Black-Is-A-Host/Hybrid timeline mean?
"We get the feeling that, in the far-flung future, the Man has been somehow reconjured and brought into this world and he’s being tested the same way the humans used to test the Hosts," Joy explained. "And that is a storyline that one day we’ll see more of."
As for the Emily we see in the final scene, that's a host. She's definitely dead IRL. But now we have to wait until season 3 to see what they're up to. Thank God, another Westworld mystery.
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