Westworld season 2 episode 9 review: Bill & Ted's bogus journey

William followed the age-old rule of 'if in doubt, commit filicide'

(HBO)

Westworld reached the penultimate episode of its second season tonight (*spoilers ahead*), and William and Teddy had both had about enough of being led around on seemingly never-ending respective quests.

It was a toss-up as to which character had a more disproportionate solution to their circumstances, however, William shooting his daughter dead and Teddy shooting himself in the head.

Becoming convinced that Emily was merely another host pre-arranged by Ford to mess with him, Bill could have erred on the side of caution and simply tied up or wounded what was still conceivably his daughter, but instead decided to pump her full of lead. Emily not possibly being able to know he'd kept a profile of his time in the park unless she was programmed to know it by Ford was his evidence, only he moments later realised, after already having pulleed the trigger: "Shit! I forgot I left a USB with it on in the family home!" I hate it when that happens. Moral of the story here: Stop and have a think for a second before you decide to murder your daughter.

It was a melodramatic moment in a very melodramatic episode, which centred around a flashback that told the story of William's wife Juliet's death. There weren't actually any surprise twists here, Juliet having been driven to drink and ultimately suicide by William's mean streak, as we assumed.

Just as Clara Immerwahr, the real-life wife of the "father of chemical warfare" Fritz Harber, ultimately ended up killing herself, it would have made sense if Juliet had been driven to suicide by William's plan to essentially clone human beings without their knowledge, but instead the flashback suggested it was all down to his conduct in the park. This didn't make a whole heap of sense as William is certainly not the only one who has used the park to indulge in the rape and murder of robots, and had society deemed this morally wrong the park would have been closed before it even opened. Anyway, that's that sub-plot sorted, and William is now left to stagger through what remains of this quest he believes he has been put on by Ford, surely hoping there is more than just a chest containing a gilded shield and +200XP at the end.

Teddy meanwhile, in a decision perhaps even more rash than William's, was so perturbed by Dolores' mission of revenge and her tampering with his settings that, instead of just re-jigging his settings and taking up crochet on a ranch, he promptly put a bullet through his own temple. It was an overdue goodbye to a largely boring character, though no host is ever truly dead in Westworld - only decommissioned - so we can't rule out a comeback.

That just leaves Maeve and Bernard, who were both haunted by the Ford.exe file coursing through their registries, and driven toward a showdown at The Door/The Valley Beyond/The Forge/I lose track.

Over the course of this season, Westworld has constructed quite the narrative spider web, and everything really now rests on whether it can all be paid off in next weeks' finale.

Westworld concludes Sunday night on HBO in the US and through Sky Atlantic and NOW TV in the UK.