5) Death On The Beach
This show isn’t exactly full of moments of triumph, but the finale does contain one scene which makes you punch the air. Finally, Teddy appears to break out of his programming when he rides in out of nowhere and rescues his beloved Dolores from the Man in Black’s clutches.
Having been mortally (well, temporarily speaking) stabbed by old William, she pleads with Teddy to take her to their planned romantic getaway – “the place where the mountains meet the sea.” When they get there, Dolores dies in his arms by the moonlit water.
Of course, we should know by now that things are not always as they seem in Westworld and it turns out that the pair have been unwittingly acting out one of Ford’s scenes in front of the board of directors. And the show isn’t over yet…
To further prove that everything is deliberate in this show, the dialogue and staging of Dolores’ death scene is very similar to a scene in West Side Story – which is based off Romeo and Juliet, the play from which Dolores gets her oft-repeated phrase: “these violent delights have violent ends.”
4) Ford’s Death
Speaking of that phrase, the violent delights that Ford created in the park were always going to come back to bite him someday. What we couldn’t expect is that he would embrace them willingly. And at the end of a speech in front of the entire board of investors – trust him to go out with a dramatic flair – Ford is shot in the back of the head by Dolores. Exactly the same way in which his partner died all those years ago.
We probably should have expected that a star of Sir Anthony Hopkins’ stature wouldn’t stick around for season 2, but no one predicted that Ford’s big final narrative would have started with his own death. Although, then again, it was really his way of making himself immortal. As he says, he’s like Mozart and Beethoven now. He might be dead, but he lives on through his creations.
Published: Dec 5, 2016 08:31 pm