Bernard’s back, baby! After leaving him in a room at a motel in the season finale, he woke up from his VR trip. The Sublime, and waking up absolutely covered in dust, tonight’s episode reveals exactly what happened to everyone’s favorite Host, and it’s quite strange. Doctor StrangeOne might even say so.
The Sublime is a cloud-like, data server.Most of the Westworld Hosts uploaded their consciousnesses In the season two finale, they forgo their physical bodies. We’ve never seen inside the Sublime until tonight’s episode, “Années Folles,” and it’s not what I or Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) expected. When Bernard first arrives, he ends up in a business conference room and is greeted by Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon), the former leader of the Ghost Nation in the park, who explains the Hosts inside can create their own worlds—something that Bernard will also need to do if he’s going to learn how to save the real world.
So that’s what Bernard was doing the year-plus he was connected to Sublime—running scenarios to figure out a path to keep the world from ending. Bernard spent more than a millennium in Host Haven checking out different timelines and deciding how to proceed. It’s almost exactly like Doctor Strange in Avengers: Infinity War, although Bernard’s lucky enough to find multiple ways to save the world. Unfortunately, to succeed in any of those scenarios, he’s also going to have to die, much as Strange did.
This means that Bernard is essentially aware of this fact EverythingFuture: what people are going to say, what they’re going to do, and how they’ll react. Annoyingly, he resolutely refuses to give out any details about how or when the world will end, or why he’ll need to die to save it. Frustratingly, he won’t even explain what he’s doing in the moment—like say, suddenly beating two men in a diner parking lot unconscious and severing one of their heads—and about the only reason it’s bearable is because it annoys Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) immensely. Stubbs is back! He was gunshot and died in an ice-filled bathtub at a motel before Bernard went to the Sublime. He’s been taking care of Bernard’s body (but resolutely NotHe dusts him and then joins him on his quest to save the planet, mainly because there is nothing better.
The quest begins with the severed skull and a woman (Aurora Perrineau), who pull up to the diner where they were supposed to meet. Bernard instead gives Bernard the bag to her, revealing that the men were actually Hosts. sent to infiltrate the woman’s group, a militia that lives in the desert of the “Condemned Lands,” which implies something extremely bad happened there between now and the 2050s. Is anyone really surprised? All we know about these people is that they presumably hate Hosts, they don’t trust Bernard or Stubbs, and they’re looking for a weapon in the desert—a weapon that Bernard knows where to find, of course. I don’t have the faintest idea how these people are involved with the end of the world or what role they’ll have in the show, but right now, they’re too vague to be interesting.
The rest of the episode focuses on Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) and Caleb’s (Aaron Paul) time in Mobworld (or whatever the show eventually decides to call it). It’s kind of a disappointment because the pair spend more time below the park than above it, trying to figure out what William and Hale are up to rather than enjoying various gangster shenanigans. It’s also, humorously, a disappointment for Maeve, as the park is just a rebranded version of Westworld with the same locations, the same characters, and even the same storylines. Maeve says that the Hosts have different faces and were dumbed down to avoid any unpleasantness, such as the Westworld massacre. there’s still a Dolores-ish characterIn an effort to get a guest involved in her adventure, she drops her can. Maeve is unable to think of any other way than Hector, who is now a gangster rather than an outlaw. burst into the new Maeve’s speakeasy/brothel to rob her safe. Caleb and Maeve sneak aboard the park attendants disguised as undertakers who are collecting the Host bodies.
Mobworld and Westworld are only separated by i.It also includesThis storyline shows that new Dolores acquire fake consciousness and go on an imaginary rampage killing fake Guests. The real ones can enjoy the thrill of killing killer robots. (As before, the Hosts’ guns don’t work on guests.) This Delos has made a whole fake Delos floor under Mobworld for guests to enter, so Maeve or Caleb must sneak to an even lower secret level that controls all park functions.
It’s also where Hale (Tessa Thompson) is running her current pet projects, which are 1) infecting large numbers of flies with black goo,2) Controlling humans as humans controlled the Hosts. Maeve and Caleb watch in horror as a group of test subjects very unwillingly shoot themselves in the head in response to a sound generated by… some kind of device. Caleb is even more horrified when he discovers that Frankie (Celeste Clark) is among the new test subjects. Maeve overrides the Delos system at the very last second to open Frankie’s cell door and allow Caleb to wrench the gun from her hand, also at the very last second, but that’s when things break bad. William (Ed Harris), shows up to fight Maeve (a fight that he quickly loses but which he then stands up and accosts her once again). but that’s not Frankie at all, of course. It’s a Host whose face blossoms open releasing a swarm of flies—one of which crawls directly into Caleb’s ear.
After two episodes that gave us as many answers as it did mysteries, “Années Folles” wasn’t dire, but it was frustrating. It also didn’t FeelIt was amazing what happened. Sure, Bernard woke up and has a mission, but we have absolutely no indication of what his plan is or what the militia’s deal is. Caleb and Maeve sneaked into Delos. But we knew Hale was manipulating humans and creating flies that love crawling in human organs. Caleb now has his own fly stowaway. Mobworld was a complete failure.
Of course, that’s no reason to write season four off or fret that the next episode will also spin its wheels. But if Bernard doesn’t do some explaining soon, I hope Stubbs shoots him in the head.
Assorted Musings:
- The episode title, “Années Folles,” is French for “the crazy years.” It’s what Americans call the Roaring ‘20s.
- Peter and the unhoused man railed about the tower, but it appears that it is in the Sublime. I am very interested to see how this figures into whatever the hell Christina’s deal is.
- A Host’s gun failed to harm Caleb, so my theory he’s a Host is kaput.
- There was a C-storyline about one of Hale’s goons trying to kidnap Caleb’s wife and the real Frankie, but it was only so the show could trick you into thinking the real Frankie was in the cell. It didn’t work and they escaped anyway.
- I didn’t know that Hosts could divide their faces into quadrants. It was quite horrifying. They were not helpful.
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