8 Questions We Want Answered In The Westworld Season 1 Finale

Somehow HBO's Westworld has managed to live up to all the initial lofty hype - it was touted as being "the next Game of Thrones" - and delivered a tightly-plotted rollercoaster of a first season, filled with terrific acting, great writing and shocks galore. One of the main draws of the show has been the various building mysteries surrounding the early days of the park and its hosts. The questions over the Man in Black's true identity and which characters are really hosts have kept many Westworld fans up at night over these past few weeks. Thankfully, some major revelations were dropped regarding a few of these mysteries in the past couple of episodes. Namely, we learnt Ford's loyal right-hand man Bernard is actually a host replicant of Ford's old partner, Arnold. Arnold died many years ago, it turns out, due to Dolores undergoing a malfunction and killing him. Still, many questions remain unanswered. Thankfully, co-showrunner Lisa Joy has promised that the super-sized 90 minute long season finale will answer all our questions except one: "what happens next?" Here, then, are the 8 big mysteries we want cleared up before Westworld takes a break. 8) What Exactly Is The Maze? The big Macguffin of this season is the Maze, that which is so eagerly sought by the villainous Man in Black. While many of the park's narratives revolve around a hunt for something, the Maze is said to the deepest level of the 'game' which Arnold hid at Westworld's centre. Within the Maze, the Man in Black believes he will find the true meaning of Westworld. With one episode to go, we still don't know much about it at all. Except that it is apparently located at "the city swallowed by sand" and has something to do with Dolores. Given how the pattern of the Maze can be found printed on each of the host's scalps, it's pretty clear by now that it's not a physical maze but rather a metaphor for the minds of the hosts. In particular, Dolores has been lost in her own head for many weeks now as she tries to sort out her jumbled memories and find out the truth about who she really is. Paired with the information that we learnt about the host's early programming in the penultimate episode, it seems likely that the Maze could be Arnold's test of a host's true sentience. What exactly that entails we look forward to finding out. 7) How Do They Reset The Park Every Night? This isn't a plot-specific question but a general point that has been niggling at viewers over the weeks. Just how do the Westworld staff reset the park and its inhabitants every night? Early episodes presented it as very much a Groundhog Day-type situation - where Dolores would wake up in bed each morning, reliving the same day. Yet as we've explored the depths of the park further, there doesn't seem to be a clear shut-off point where the hosts are all reset and put back in place for the following day. We also want to know just how the maintenance guys get the fixed hosts back in place without interrupting the rest of the park. And are some hosts on different sized loops from others? Sweetwater, for instance, seems to reset everyday while the outer edges of Westworld - where the Man in Black and William and Logan play - seem to be active continuously for days on end. The mysteries that drive the narrative are the prime concern of the finale, of course, but it would be nice to get some hint towards the inner working of the park as well. 6) Are Elsie And Stubbs Alive? So much for the guests and staff of Westworld being safe from the hosts. Thanks to Ford's evil ways, Bernard is responsible for the death of his lover Theresa and God knows how many others who have pried into the boss' business over the years. Maeve has also now got the power to maim her creators, like viciously slitting open Sylvester's throat. Apart from tragic Theresa, though, we are not totally sure if all these Westworld employees are actually dead. Take Elsie, for instance. She was a major presence in the first half of this season and it was genuine shock when she was kidnapped by an unseen assailant while investigating the glitches in the park. It was later revealed that this was Arnold and he seems to think he's killed her. But, we haven't seen a body for her yet so she could be alive. Likewise, while searching for Elsie, Luke Hemsworth's character Stubbs was attacked by the Ghost Nation. Our bet is that they didn't kill him and just incarcerated him in the same place as Elsie. Surely Ford isn't stupid enough to kill off multiple members of staff in close proximity. 5) What Really Happened At Escalante? Unlike some of the other hosts, James Marsden's Teddy has yet to break out of his loop. Instead, he's had his backstory fiddled around with by Ford. Instead of a generic dark past, he now witnessed a mass shooting at the town of Escalante, committed by his insane ex-commanding officer Wyatt. In the penultimate episode, we found at that Wyatt somehow controlled Teddy and forced him to kill as well. This begs the question: what exactly happened at Escalante? Well, clearly Wyatt's supernatural control of Teddy resembles the way the hosts respond to voice commands from Westworld's staff. Or, alternatively, hosts with the power to control other hosts like Maeve and Bernard. If that's the case, it seems that Teddy's memories are not just a bit of fiction implanted by Ford but a memory of a real event. Interestingly, it seems that Ford is trying to force Teddy into gaining sentience. Quite why he is doing that, when he has always maintained that he doesn't share Arnold's belief in this area, we don't know. 4) Why Did Dolores Kill Arnold? As previously mentioned, Arnold's much-discussed "accident in the park" was actually caused by Dolores, who killed him in as yet unknown circumstances. So what made Dolores turn on her creator? Well, given the clues, there is one answer that springs to mind. For our money, Escalante is the same "city swallowed by sand" that both the Man in Black and Dolores have been drawn to. From what we can gather, it was the site of a terrible tragedy where the hosts went rogue thirty years ago. The same occasion that Dolores killed Arnold. Given that, what if Wyatt is really Dolores - only Teddy remembers her as Wyatt due to Ford's coding? Under Arnold's influence, Dolores might have finally cracked in Escalante, somehow unlocking the command ability in the process. Assuming that the commonly discussed two timelines theory is correct (we'll get in to that later), this could have happened after she ran away from William in the last episode. Most of all, we're pretty sure this is the case due to the dramatic irony. Wouldn't it be suitably harrowing to have Teddy's enemy and his beloved be one and the same? 3) Will Maeve Escape? Thandie Newton's Maeve has grown into one of Westworld's MVPs over the season. The brothel madame was smart enough to wind two techies around her little finger, in particular using Felix's fascination - perhaps attraction - for her to change her core directives. Her aim, naturally, is to get out of the hellhole that is Westworld. Yet the odds seem stacked against her.... Since finding out that it's impossible for a host to escape the park undetected, Maeve has changed her plan to include a full-on robo-attack of the facility. But will this uprising go to plan or will Maeve just be reset and put back in her loop - or, even worse, confined to the basement? While we would love to think that at least one host will make it on their own, something tells us thing aren't going to end well for Maeve. For instance, there's still the mystery of who hacked her personality. Clearly, she's just a cog in a wider conspiracy. The most likely scenario is that Charlotte and the board are using her to ship out Ford's secret sauce information. Whatever the outcome, we really hope we see more of Newton next year. In a show full of outstanding performances, she's one of the best. 2) Have We Really Seen The Last Of Bernard? Speaking of which, Jeffrey Wright is another actor who deserves an Emmy for his performance in Westworld. He was great as the troubled Bernard but rose to a whole new level when it was revealed that the character was Ford's puppet. The penultimate episode saw his best work yet as he faced off against Anthony Hopkins, forcing Ford to let him access his earliest memories. Unfortunately, Ford couldn't let him live after that and forced the host to blow his own artificial brains out. It was a truly shocking moment that seems to squarely suggest that we've seen the last of Bernard on the show. The handy thing about robots though is that their bodies can be rebuilt and their minds re-uploaded. Ford constructed Bernard to replace his dead friend Arnold in the first place, so he might well build Bernard 2.0 for the same purpose. Alternatively, season 2 could go further into the backstory of the park and explore Ford and Arnold's fractured relationship. That would mean that, yes, the Bernard that we've known is dead but at least we'd still have more from Jeffrey Wright on the show. 1) Is William The Man In Black? The most prevalent fan theory surrounding Westworld is the idea that good guy William is really the evil Man in Black. The idea goes that what we've been watching is really taking place in different time zones - the Man in Black stuff is in the present and the William/Dolores storyline is in the past. There were several clues in earlier installments to this being the case - such as an older Westworld logo being seen when William arrives and hosts in different roles from when the MiB meets them. After the revelations of episode nine, this theory seems all but confirmed. Yet, there is still room for the show to pull the rug from underneath us yet again. In the last episode, William snaps when Logan stabs Dolores and sends her running away. He hacks Logan's men into bits and then holds a knife to his real-life boss and prospective brother-in-law's throat. Apart from showing that William has a dark side, it also makes clear that these hosts are the cruder, more robotic ancestors to the very lifelike versions we've seen in the present. Likewise, the reveal that the scenes between Bernard and Dolores seen earlier in the season actually featured Arnold confirms that the show has been operating on differing timelines all along. Such overwhelming evidence does suggest Billy boy will turn out to Ed Harris' cold-hearted cowboy after all, then. But who knows? Maybe Westworld will have another trick up its sleeve? Either way, we can't wait to find out.