Yep. There have been other moments like that in this series. but that one is probably the worst example. The people behind this show can seemingly be pretty lazy and dumb at times.

Maybe it resets things enough to be interesting again, but at this point I just don't have any faith in the show runners to stick the landing anymore.

It's hard to care about the overall destination when the journey is a muddled mess where the viewer is given very little to be invested in.

It was definitely muddled, and I don't blame you at all for feeling the way you do. I'm mostly right there with you. That said, for me, they pulled off the impossible and actually created a scenario heading into the final season that seems relatively cool/smart, and if anything, is the promise of the premise as it pertains to the themes they've been dissecting all series. I'm sure the clunkiness will continue, but at this point I've accepted that as a feature not a bug, and am looking forward to seeing how they wrap this thing up. Especially if means bringing back basically everyone from the past four seasons (albeit digitally), humans and hosts alike.

PatAg said:

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TCTTS said:

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This, to me, was the key exchange tonight…

DOLORES
I've watched the people in their world for years. I've seen the best of them and I've seen the worst of them. And I remember it all.

TEDDY
They're not like us. Their codes are written in their cells. They'll never change.

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This is a Razzie level of writing

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Ha, I honestly didn't mind it.

I know she wasn't there TO fight him. But the fight was meaningless. I guess they just needed a way to get rid of her and had Frankie kill her.

A.I. female wants to change people for the sake of change, not much different than a human female.

Humans are incapable of change? Humans have been changing and evolving for thousands of years before the existence of A.I. Don't bother calling us back Dolores

Bregxit said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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A perfect encapsulation of this finale is the Clementine vs Caleb fight scene.

Why the hell was this scene in there? What purpose did it serve? We have zero history between these two characters, no clear understanding of why she wants to kill him, and have no rooting interest in this fight between a low level sidekick host and a corrupt version of Caleb that we know is gonna die soon.

They played that scene up almost like it was something they'd been building to, but you could literally remove that whole sequence and lose nothing.

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Clementine was not there to fight Caleb. She was there to extract the rebels' location from Frankie. Remember?

"I'll die before I tell you!"

"No, you'll die AFTER you tell me."

Caleb intervened and the fight was on.

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It may be true that story-wise she was there to try to find the rebels location (also kind of an out of nowhere story line).
But to me that scene existed clearly as a showdown between Caleb and her....with no backstory to support it being meaningful.

Why did Frankie pretend her gun was empty?

So we could have the fight scene that wasn't needed

Bregxit said:

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PatAg said:

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Bregxit said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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A perfect encapsulation of this finale is the Clementine vs Caleb fight scene.

Why the hell was this scene in there? What purpose did it serve? We have zero history between these two characters, no clear understanding of why she wants to kill him, and have no rooting interest in this fight between a low level sidekick host and a corrupt version of Caleb that we know is gonna die soon.

They played that scene up almost like it was something they'd been building to, but you could literally remove that whole sequence and lose nothing.

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Clementine was not there to fight Caleb. She was there to extract the rebels' location from Frankie. Remember?

"I'll die before I tell you!"

"No, you'll die AFTER you tell me."

Caleb intervened and the fight was on.

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It may be true that story-wise she was there to try to find the rebels location (also kind of an out of nowhere story line).
But to me that scene existed clearly as a showdown between Caleb and her....with no backstory to support it being meaningful.

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I think it was to wrap up Clementine or people would have wondered about it. Everyone loved Clementine in the past seasons.

She hasn't had a chance to play the game (hunt outliers) much as she is always serving Hale. Hence when Hale says she could use her help and Clementine is like "hey I want to go play" Hale says okay go ahead. The rebels are the last outliers left for her to hunt.

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Yes, that is what they said in this episode.

redline248 said:

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Why did Frankie pretend her gun was empty?

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Yeah, that made absolutely no sense. Kill Clementine right then and there with a sure shot, or risk letting her live, just to deliver a bland one-liner two minutes later.

I just don't agree here because there aren't any humans to test. Any humans in the simulation will be hosts created by memory based on memories from Dolores. That's not the same thing.

Which part don't you agree with? Because Dolores literally says that's what she's going to do. Now, whether her test subjects will actually be "human" or not is certainly up for debate. That said, the theme that humans are "simple"/easily predictable/easily "code-able" has run throughout the course of the series, and that's all someone like Halores-created Caleb was. A memory recreated (along with whatever behavioral/memory data she had on him/was able to scan from him). Also, again, Dolores has all the human data from the Forge as well. Meaning she has intimate data on every human whoever visited the park. Combined with her perfect host memory, at least according to the show's "rules," she should be able to recreate enough humans digitally, to run whatever test she's going to run.

So the sublime requires the largest server farm in history powered by the Hoover dam, but Dolores has not only herself but all of humanity's data on a device the size of a golf ball?

Was Dolores speaking literally or figuratively (or spiritually such as explored in Pixar's 2017 hit film "Coco")?

Sometimes information presented in a bit of an "on the nose" fashion is a good thing. Had I known definitively that all of the human data was also on Delores' pearl it would have made the ending a bit more impactful. Also original Dolores is truly dead so why the big deal one of her copies was running the computer controlling the humans?

A digital copy of someone just isn't the same imo. I'm not a host, living as a god forever in endless lives decided by me just sounds miserable.

The show keeps saying that the humans are these simple things that aren't as evolved by them. Yet when they try to copy a human exactly, they can never* make it work. And the humans are not only able to resist programming, but also able to screw up hosts programming, for reasons that may or may not have been explained.


*(Except for William apparently? And all the data copied from the guests?)

There is just a lot that doesn't make sense, and I have no idea if it's because I'm not getting it, the show is hiding it for the future, or the show doesn't care to explain it in the first place. And at this point, I feel tired trying to figure out the difference between those three things.

I really wish they would have ended the series last night. I don't see how next season wraps up the show any more satisfactorily, outside of explaining plot holes from earlier seasons and giving everyone member berries from season 1.

I guess it's fitting a show featuring discount Hemsworth was made by discount Nolan.

I disagree that it's some kind of brilliant/intriguing setup for a next season.

Rocagnante said:

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So the sublime requires the largest server farm in history powered by the Hoover dam, but Dolores has not only herself but all of humanity's data on a device the size of a golf ball?

Was Dolores speaking literally or figuratively (or spiritually such as explored in Pixar's 2017 hit film "Coco")?

Sometimes information presented in a bit of an "on the nose" fashion is a good thing. Had I known definitively that all of the human data was also on Delores' pearl it would have made the ending a bit more impactful. Also original Dolores is truly dead so why the big deal one of her copies was running the computer controlling the humans?

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No, all of the Forge data is already on the Hoover Dam server farm. Dolores Prime beamed the Sublime AND the Forge data there. So the only human info she has in her pearl are the memories of those she personally knew/studied/remembers.

I really enjoyed this season. There seemed to be a few big themes, but they weren't always handled clearly.

Caleb and MIB are playing to different sides of "made in His image." Both hosts get the part of humanity that the person they're based predominantly displays. Whether for good or bad, humanity overrides technology. The end result comes back to the person it's based on what he or she embraces.

Hale is "God" who made a heaven that her people don't want to go to. Despite the opportunity to transcend, there's something about the base and evil life on earth that proves too attractive to at least some of the hosts. Hale schemed against humanity with the belief that the hosts would prove to be better, but when given the opportunity, they're not. Even Clementine, who has been there to see this heaven get built, chose to go hunt people rather than transcend. It's a profound proof of her failure.

Dolores sort of explores the theme of what if our creator doesn't fully realize what she's doing. Circling back to the "made in His image" theme, she's the lonely god who creates a man and a woman in particular to assuage her loneliness.

That's what I got out of it, anyway. I think sometimes they have big ideas, then struggle in telling the stories around it.

Definitely Not A Cop said:

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A digital copy of someone just isn't the same imo. I'm not a host, living as a god forever in endless lives decided by me just sounds miserable.

The show keeps saying that the humans are these simple things that aren't as evolved by them. Yet when they try to copy a human exactly, they can never* make it work. And the humans are not only able to resist programming, but also able to screw up hosts programming, for reasons that may or may not have been explained.


*(Except for William apparently? And all the data copied from the guests?)

There is just a lot that doesn't make sense, and I have no idea if it's because I'm not getting it, the show is hiding it for the future, or the show doesn't care to explain it in the first place. And at this point, I feel tired trying to figure out the difference between those three things.

I really wish they would have ended the series last night. I don't see how next season wraps up the show any more satisfactorily, outside of explaining plot holes from earlier seasons and giving everyone member berries from season 1.

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My guess is that this is the exact answer Dolores comes to as well; that humans ARE, in fact, too complex to simply be "remembered" code. Dolores has enough human data to recreate a representative version of humanity in a new, digital Westworld park. But I'm betting that she ultimately comes to the same conclusion as you - that, say, her 90%-there version of humanity isn't good enough, and that other 10% is the magic stuff that makes humanity so special or whatever, etc.

Very well said.

CC09LawAg said:

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I can't believe that was how Stubbs went out. They tried to subvert our expectations with him going out as some big sacrifice multiple times and then take him out like that?

Lame.

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He'll be back in Dolores' digital Westworld. In fact, I'm betting they bring damn near everyone back.

Assuming the show is renewed, of course.

Yes. All season they acted like they had total control of the humans, and there was only one city left of them. But as soon as the MIB makes them go crazy, there is no stopping the destruction of the world because of how badly they are out numbered? How is that possible? How are any of the crazed humans going to kill a single one of the transformer looking hosts? And what was the point of the armless robots from last episode?

And again, does anyone understand why Caleb couldn't adapt to being put in a host body, but MIB is fine? Was he just the exception?

That's a great point. Maybe it was a little obtuse on purpose. We don't really know what a host heaven would be like because we aren't them. We don't really know what heaven is for people, either. We get to hear about it second hand.

bobinator said:

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I think one of the largest missteps of this season is the audience having ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what "transcending" means for the hosts. Should we feel happy for those that reach that point? Why would they want to do it? Why would they not want to do it?

There was some dialogue about Halores being sad that the hosts spent so much time in the "human cities," what other option did they have? Was there some kind of host eden out in the desert or something?

Like I don't think we understood the "real world" of this future enough to care about anything in it. Are there other rebels? Why are these ones even allowed to exist?

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I'm just going to assume Halores created her own Sublime for the hosts who transcended, even though it was confusing as hell and not at all clear. The easier thing to explain, though, would have been the state of the rest of the world, the human/host dynamic in the rest of the world, etc. It's clear they simply didn't have the budget to show any of that, but for as much exposition as this show delivers, we could have easily been given a few more lines of dialogue with all that context. No idea why they didn't make more of an effort there.

The only issue is that the person that created their heaven was still there and among them.

I think Halores Heaven needed better branding.

Yes, scale was also a huge problem this season. Are there billions of controlled humans out there? How many hosts are there? Are there outliers in every city? etc, etc, etc