HBO
The fourth episode of HBO’s Westworld in the already action packed second season airs this Sunday, May 13, 2018. In this episode, the official synopsis sounds like a new story is about to unfold for William, The Man in Black: “This game is meant for you, but you must play alone.” The Man in Black offers to lead the way and Delos gets a visitor.
We kick off this week with young William and his father-in-law, Jim Delos, where William pretty much has the old man in holding, asking him questions to better understand the human baseline for fidelity to use within the hosts. A creepy way to interact with your in-laws? Yeah, I’d say so.
Westworld Season 2 Episode 4 Viewing Details
Date: Sunday, May 13, 2018
Time: 9:00 P.M.
Episode: “The Riddle of the Sphinx”
TV Channel: HBO
Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, James Marsden, Thandie Newton, Jimmi Simpson, Luke Hemsworth
Is This Now?
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Bernard runs into an old colleague he choked out and left to die in the park back in season one. Elsie isn’t too thrilled to see him, even after he frees her. His “health” is deteriorating as he falls in spasm in front of her and she realizes his true nature: his entire life is just a manufactured cornerstone. Elsie helps him — for now, saying he needs more cortical fluid.
Is there a drug store nearby?
Remembering the underground facility that brought Bernard to that location in the park in the first place, he taps into his memory and shows Elsie that Ford indeed held a secret base within the park. He also tells her Delos has big plans for the data they’ve recovered (monitoring the guest interactions from the hosts) now that Ford is dead.
Upon learning that Ford is dead, Elsie gives Bernard the massive dose of cortical fluid he needs to keep his brain afloat, despite not trusting him. Turns out based of his code, Bernard’s brain is swiss cheese and he can’t tell whether he’s living in the present of in a memory.
Up In Arms
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As The Man In Black and Lawrence make their way through William’s own narrative puzzle, he comes across Major Craddock, recently freed by Teddy last week. He’s REALLY pissed off about being double crossed by Dolorous/Wyatt too, if that wasn’t clear enough from his pro-murder stance this week.
He’s holding everyone captive until he gets his hands on a bag of weapons, which Lawrence knows where they’re buried. He tells The Man In Black they’re in an unmarked grave and he’s looking to make a deal, because no matter how desperate Major Craddock is for revenge, only William can show him the true path.
I Know The Way
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The Man In Black… following a narrative established just for him, is traveling with Lawrence and now roped into helping Major Craddock. These are all just steps in the game that will bring him to where he believes he ultimately needs to be.
While Craddock has his men beat Lawrence, he sits down with The Man In Black to figure out his true intentions, along with making sure William knows his in return. Even when threatening Lawrence’s wife, William doesn’t make a move on Craddock yet, despite how Craddock is ranting about how familiar he is with death.
All the talk of family and mastering death brings The Man In Black to some semblance of the young William we once knew. He flashes back to his own wife’s suicide and he tells Craddock that death is always true and he has never known a single true thing in his life. He asks Craddock, “If you’re so familiar with death… you didn’t recognize Him sitting across from you this whole time.” The bottle breaks and William sticks the jagged edges into his throat as he frees Lawrence and guns down his other men.
The eerie relationship between young William and his father-in-law proves that the man has been DEAD for 7 years and William has been monitoring his functions as a host. He has all the same memories as Jim Delos, which shows how the conditioning we saw in the opening of the episode has been taking place over several years, and this is the Jim Delos we’re left with. William doesn’t seem to mind, as he terminates this version of Jim based on slight cognitive glitches and plans to start again. William is no longer the sentimental carefree man we once knew, that’s for damn sure.
William visits Jim again when he’s a much older man (The Man In Black) back in his room of captivity. He’s still having cognitive glitches, to which William says this is the 149th time he’s been brought back online. William tells him, people just aren’t meant to live forever, and with that, everyone prefers the memory of someone to who they actually are.
In a creepy twist, the door Elsie unlocks at the secret base reveals that Jim Delos never actually was decommissioned. He was existing all this time in the prison William had built for him still hoping to live forever. Bernard and Elsie seal the room and set it ablaze.
In an even creepier twist, the girl who got attacked by the tiger, Grace, she’s William’s daughter. Talk about one hell of a family filled episode!
