(Warning! If you haven’t seen the “Westworld” finale, don’t go ahead. Just put yourself in sleep mode.)
Wow. The violent delights had violent ends on “Westworld.”
The season finale, “The Bicameral Mind,” was full of revelations and wild moments: William (Jimmi Simpson) was just a younger version of the Man in Black (Ed Harris) after all; after she and her crew killed a bunch of people, Maeve (Thandie Newton) almost escaped on a train, but someone apparently tampered with her code and she chose to stay (possibly her first conscious thought?); we learned there are more worlds than just Westworld, as shown by some Samurai warriors Maeve finds; and Ford (Anthony Hopkins) was secretly pro-host the whole time, finally unleashing an army of hosts to massacre the people there in celebration of his new narrative.
This guy must get his party planning ideas from “Game of Thrones.”
Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) gets things started by shooting Ford and a bunch of other people as the Man in Black gets shot by the hosts coming in from the woods — ironically finally feeling alive — and we’re all left questioning our reality.
But, according to a new theory, Ford was just getting started.
The theory: Ford made a host of himself for the final narrative. He is still alive.
It seems like a noble end for Ford (in the hosts’ eyes anyway). He revealed to Bernard that he made the hosts suffer in order for them to finally awaken, telling him that the hosts needed time to understand their enemies and become stronger than them. He even gave Dolores the gun she used to kill him.
Yeah, it seemed like Ford was going out with a bang ... until it didn’t.
Remember when Ford said a handshake could give old hosts away? Well, in the final moments of the show, “Westworld” lingers a long time on a certain handshake.
Why do that unless Ford is actually a host?
Back when Ford had Bernard kill Theresa (Sidse Babett Knudsen) at his secret facility, he was also creating another host. At the time, we thought this was a host of Theresa to throw people off her murder. Now, given the circumstances, it seems much more likely that Ford was building another Ford.
Plus, as my colleague Sara Boboltz pointed out in our group freakout over the finale, in Ford’s final speech he talks about how “Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin never died.” They simply "became their music." This could be more evidence that Ford didn’t actually die.
Of course, in the wise words of Redditor Bucking_Fuffalo, the handshake could represent a “similar meaning to the Michelangelo painting [the Creation of Adam] that Dolores was staring at.” Perhaps the handshake is symbolic of Ford giving over life to the hosts.
But nah. What’s the fun in that? Ford is definitely a host. Because as they say ...
Before You Go
