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Westworld season 2 episode 1: The premiere's confusing twist ending explained
*Spoilers for the season 2 premiere follow*
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Westworld has only been back for a few hours and it's already confusing fans.
The second season premiere debuted on HBO and Sky Atlantic with a 70-minute long episode which caught up with the titular park now overrun by conscious hosts following the climax of the season 1 finale which aired a whole 15 months ago.
Written by Lisa Joy and Robert Patino, the episode - titled 'Journey into Night' - ended with the reveal of something shocking to key Delos figures, including Head of Operations Karl Strand (Gustaf Skarsgård): an entire uncharted ocean filled with the corpses of the park's hosts, including Teddy (James Marsden) who is seemingly deceased for the final time.
But what happened to them? Enter left: Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright), whose host status is thankfully unknown to all but one (potentially two) of his colleagues, who makes the revelatory claim that he's the one responsible for the massacre.
“I killed them,” he says. “All of them.”
This begs the question which viewers should expect to ask multiple times this season - what the hell does it mean? The moment's placement at the end of the episode hints at an air of finality to the lives of these hosts, however, we know that they're able to be resurrected.
Of course, it could be that when hosts die in a time post-Robert Ford's death, this may put a full stop to their existence altogether considering pretty much all of the park's lab technicians are either dead or hiding for survival.
Then there's the case of showrunners Joy and Jonathan Nolan messing with timelines, which they've done to thrilling degrees in the past. The Hollywood Reporter points out that this ending occurs a fortnight after Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) killed Ford (Anthony Hopkins) meaning fans now have two uncertain timelines rolling out - one with Teddy riding alongside Dolores, another with his journey at an end.
The scene links back to the premiere episode's first - with Wright's character telling Dolores about a dream he had. “I dreamt I was on an ocean with you and the others, on the distant shore. You had left me behind, and the waters were rising around me.” It remains unknown whether this scene takes place between Arnold and Dolores years before or between Bernard and newly-conscious Dolores, however, the evidence put forward by the ending hints it could be the latter... which would create a third timeline within the two-week timeframe.
And breathe.
You can read our review of the episode here.
Westworld season 2 debuts on HBO in the US and through Sky Atlantic and NOWTV in the UK.
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