Westworld finale recap: The two Robert Fords

The season finale provides frustratingly few answers to a very long list of questions

Westworld is built on loops. The series is explicitly about repetition and the breakdowns repetitions eventually bring about — especially if you pay close enough attention — so it's fitting that its first season ended with a spectacular reenactment. Ford has made the biggest loop of all. The church we've seen in flashbacks has been rebuilt, the town around it has been unearthed and restored. The first and biggest surprise is that Ford's long-awaited "new" narrative, titled "Journey Into Night" — a narrative we've watched him plan with his younger self with apparent excitement — begins with Ford's death at Dolores' hands.

This is an apparent reprise of his partner Arnold's death over three decades earlier. "That is the gun you used to kill Arnold," Ford tells Dolores before going out to address the guests at the gala. "You were always drawn to it, so I had Bernard leave it somewhere where you might find it." It's less a command than a suggestion, and that's supposed to be the point. This is Dolores' opportunity to develop free will. "Journey Into Night" begins, Ford tells his audience, "in a time of war, with a villain named Wyatt. And a killing, this time by choice." The show has been shot through with allusions to gods and "blood sacrifice." This is a historical reenactment, and to hear Ford tell it, it's an intensification of the original. Arnold killed himself through Dolores — or so Ford thought at the time. This time, the blood to be spilled is Ford's, and Dolores will pull the trigger because she chooses to. And she does!

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.