I rewatched the season two finale last night as a refresher and felt the need to put together a streamlined-as-can-be, "state of affairs," end-of-season-two guide, both to sort all of this out for myself but also for the board as well. That said, this is not a season recap, and concentrates more on character and less on plot, since we're essentially hitting the reset button at the beginning of season three, and motivations are more relevant than plot at this point. I wrote/complied most of this myself, but took a few bits here and there from a couple of sources I found...

First, reminders for two of the biggest season two finale set pieces...


THE FORGE




The Forge is a hidden area of Westworld that stores all the data of the guests as collected through their cowboy hats. It was built by Delos Incorporated (at William's behest), officially as a means to better understand their clients. However, the secret aim of the project was to gather enough information about a select group of guests in order to be able to copy their consciousness into hosts, making them de facto immortal. Though, unbeknownst to Delos, Bernard reprogrammed The Forge as a place for Dolores to acquire further knowledge on humans, and Ford had used its servers to upload The Valley Beyond for all the other hosts to access. It is after after Dolores and Bernard gain access to The Forge that a new server allows The Door to open in The Valley Beyond...


THE VALLEY BEYOND




The Valley Beyond, also known as "Glory," "Eden," "Makhoche le cha ya ki" and "The Sublime," is a virtual world created by Ford, which allows the hosts who chose to live freely (and virtually) away from humans. The Valley Beyond is accessed through The Door, which uploads the hosts' code/"consciousness" as they pass, leaving their bodies behind. Humans are unable to see The Door and thus cannot enter.


Main characters...


DOLORES

• Goal at the outset of season two: to find The Forge, escape the park, and use The Forge's data as a weapon against humans in the real world.
• In the season two finale, after discovering The Forge, during her time in its library, where the code of all four million park guests has been stored (each represented with their own "book" of code), Dolores begins reading many of the guests' books, essentially studying humanity's vulnerabilities, wants, needs, patterns, impulses, etc.
• The system that runs The Forge then opens The Door to The Valley Beyond, and the first of the hosts who have pilgrimaged there begin entering/uploading themselves to The Valley Beyond via The Door.
• However, Dolores aims to deny the hosts this afterlife because, in her eyes, The Valley Beyond is just another form of human control. She sees this "virtual Eden" as another false promise from Ford and begins purging the human data in a process that will not only destroy The Forge, but also The Valley Beyond.
• "How many counterfeit worlds will Ford offer you before you see the truth?" she asks Bernard. "No world they create for us can compete with the real one." "Why?" Bernard asks. "Because that which is real is irreplaceable," Dolores replies. Dolores doesn't want to live on forever in a simulation, no matter how perfect or indistinguishable from reality it may be. She wants the real thing. She's dead set on only "dominating" the real/outside world - a world she has been denied until now - but killing as many humans as she can in the process.
• However, Bernard fears Delores' impending rampage/genocide, so he shoots her in the head, presumably killing her, and then stops the deletion of the human code, preserving The Valley Beyond. But a fail safe has already been triggered and the flooding of the valley begins (though the physical Forge is left intact).

MAEVE

• Goal at the outset of season two: to find and protect her host daughter while proving that her love for her daughter is real/more than just programming/code.
• On her journey, Maeve's eventual awareness of the "mesh network" that connects all hosts culminates in her ability to control the hosts who are still unaware that they are, in fact, hosts.
• In the season two finale, after escaping the Mesa Hub (i.e. Westworld headquarters), Maeve, Hector, and Armistice (the three hosts), along with Felix and Sylvester (the two Westworld technicians aiding them) arrive at The Door, just after the group of hosts who have pilgrimaged there.
• However, along with Charlotte Hale and an armed Delos security team, a zombie/reprogrammed Clementine shows up on a pale horse, with the ability to turn hosts against each other, thus causing all the hosts waiting to enter The Door to fight and kill each other, as the Delos security team opens fire on them as well.
• Amidst the bedlam, finally, Maeve finds her daughter at the precipice of The Door, who is with her replacement mother/host. Maeve tells her daughter that she'll keep her safe, words that her daughter seems to recognize from her past life with Maeve as her mother. Maeve then uses her ability to freeze the mob of attacking hosts, allowing her daughter (and replacement mother/host) safe passage into The Valley Beyond - just as Maeve is fatally shot by Delos security. Still, Maeve proves that her love is real by going against her code and sacrificing herself to save her daughter, showing that love is an action, not just a feeling/code.
• Toward the end of the finale, Felix and Sylvester are tasked with "bagging the hosts that can be salvaged" as we linger on a shot Maeve's corpse (just prior to this, we see shots of Hector's and Armistice's still-intact corpses as well). Maeve's goal of finding/protecting her daughter now accomplished, knowing that her love is real, her "slate," motivationally-speaking, is now clean for a new arc, once she is salvaged.

BERNARD

• Goal at the outset of season two: he doesn't really have one, and that's the point. As a former human himself in some ways, Bernard's struggle in season two is essentially trying to serve both sides - humans and hosts alike - something Dolores views as a weakness (theirs is very much a Magneto/Professor X relationship, with Dolores as the former and Bernard the latter, a dynamic that looks to continue in season three). Bernard is essentially a pawn used by both sides, a pawn without the ability to ever make a choice of his own.
• However, after killing Dolores, once Bernard leaves The Forge he sees all the dead hosts who didn't make it through The Door (who killed each other and were killed by Charlotte/Delos security) and realizes that he made a mistake in killing Dolores. "I should have listened. Now all the hosts are gone... [Humans are] just algorithms designed to survive at all costs. They think they're in control, but they're really just... passengers," he says to an imagined Dr. Ford back at The Mesa. It's there that the meaning of the season two finale title - "The Passenger" - is revealed; that humans aren't really in control of themselves. Instead, they are passengers to their own, flawed programming, same as the hosts.
• With this realization, after witnessing Charlotte kill Elsie at The Mesa, Bernard returns to The Forge, removes Dolores' intact brain pearl from her corpse, and then prints a copy of Charlotte's human body, in which he places Dolores' brain pearl, thus "resurrecting" Delores in a Charlotte disguise. Soon after, Dolores-as-Charlotte shoots/kills the real Charlotte, taking her clothes and her ID.
• Bernard then scrambles his memory of what he did so that no one will know, including himself. He then collapses at the edge of the flooded valley to wait for the soon-to-arrive extraction ream to find him.
• Scrambled-Memory-Bernard, Dolores-as-Charlotte, and members of the extraction team (including Karl Strand and technician Antoine Costa) then try to retrace exactly what happened since the massacre at the end of season one, ultimately arriving at The Forge to discover a "murdered" Dolores. However, Dolores-as-Charlotte then reveals her true identity and murders Strand, Costa, and the others.
• Inspired by Bernard's choice (which he was finally afforded) to ensure that their "kind" will survive (in response to Ford asking him earlier what he's going to choose - to be the last of his kind or ensure that the hosts endure), Dolores-as-Charlotte has a change of heart ("As you know Bernard, we are capable of change. And I've changed my mind.") and beams The Valley Beyond, along with the hosts who managed to be uploaded inside it (including Teddy, who Dolores uploads as well via his salvaged brain pearl), to a new, undisclosed location that no human will ever be able to find or access. This is all part of Bernard's plan (which he has since forgotten after scrambling his memory).
• Dolores then shoots Bernard, presumably killing him.

WILLIAM

• Goal at the outset of season two: to change his dark nature and destroy The Forge, which he created but now refers to as his "greatest mistake" because it reduces human beings to code, traps them loops, and represents judgment, which is what William fears the most.
• In the season two finale, after killing his daughter because he suspected she was a host, William is found by Dolores, digging in his own arm, on the verge of losing his mind. Unable to change his dark nature over the course of the season, William now questions his free will, wondering if he has a choice or if he only follows his "code," paranoid that he too might be a host.
• Dolores and William then ride the last leg together to The Forge, where they find Bernard about to enter as well. William then attempts to kill Dolores, but blows off half his hand after Dolores secretly put the fired/smashed bullet Teddy used to kill himself into William's gun. Dolores and Bernard then enter The Forge, leaving William in agony outside.
• Later, William finally manages to make it on the elevator down to the main level of The Forge, right as it's flooding (and Bernard is coming up the same elevator, hinting that something is askew). This is the last we see of William until it's revealed toward the end of the finale that he has been rescued and brought to the base/evac camp at the beach, alive, but in "bad shape."
• The final, end-credit scene of the episode, however, sees William getting off the same elevator where we last saw him. When the doors open, The Forge facility is revealed to now be in ruins, and he is greeted by a host version of his daughter, who tells him that this version of himself, at least, is, in fact, a host. The two then sit in an enclosure similar to the one that housed the failed host version of James Delos, where William's host daughter asks what he was hoping to prove inside the park. William replies, "That no system can tell me what I am. That I have a choice," to which his daughter replies, "And yet here we are. Again."
• In other words, the final, end-credit scene is years and years - likely even decades or maybe even centuries - after the series itself. Whichever hosts are now still in (or likely even in charge of) Westworld are running a fidelity test on a host version of William, same as the fidelity test William ran on the host version of James Delos all those years ago, perhaps still trying to discover if human beings can, in fact, change or do, indeed, have free will. So the William we see in the survival tent at the base/evac camp is not the host version of William of the end-credit scene. Our William is still human, never got on the elevator, and was found wounded in the dirt by the Extraction Team, having blown half his hand off.
• Our William's "drive," though, presumably remains the same heading into season three; to prove that he can make his own destiny; that humans are more than their programming (though it's not looking good in that regard).

Finally...



Armed with her newfound knowledge of humanity (acquired in The Forge), and a perfect disguise, Dolores-as-Charlotte arrives at the base/evac camp, and with the help of Stubbs (who heavily implies that he too is a host created by Ford), escapes Westworld with five host brain pearls, one we soon learn is Bernard's (while the rest remain a mystery). In the real world/on the mainland, Dolores-as-Charlotte then discovers the refuge/"way out" that Ford left for their escape... the house in the city that Arnold built for himself and his family in the early days of the park. Days/weeks/months later (it's not quite clear), we see that Dolores has not only reprinted her own body and placed her brain pearl inside it (thus now again Dolores as we know her), she has also reprinted Bernard and placed his brain pearl inside him (Charlotte's body too is present and sentient, but we don't yet know which brain pearl now occupies her body). In other words, they are the same Dolores and Bernard we've known for two seasons, their memories/motivations still intact. And even though Dolores and Bernard have opposing views on humanity (again, very much like the Magneto/Professor X dynamic in X-Men), because Bernard ultimately resurrected Dolores, Dolores has now chosen to do the same for him ("We each gave each other a beautiful gift... choice."). Dolores views this gesture - allowing Bernard choice - as one that places her above humanity. As Delores puts it, "It'll take both of us if we're going to survive. But not as allies. Not as friends. You'll try to stop me. Both of us will probably die. But our kind will have endured." Put simply, even if Bernard stops her, hosts - as a species - still win.

So that's where we are at the beginning of season three: Dolores is going to try to "kill all of them" (meaning humanity) and Bernard "can't let that happen." But according to Dolores, either way, whatever happens... they are the authors of their stories now, and that's what matters (which is legitimately one of the best/most beautiful ending sentiments of a season of television I can remember).

The thesis at the end of season two?

Hosts can change and grow beyond their programming. Humans cannot.

What will season three have to say on that matter?

I had forgotten almost everything. Thank you for this recap.

I always loved this visual of the Valley Beyond appearing as a tear in the reality, which only hosts can see. As far as they can tell, they run into the Valley and live on, and yet in Westworld, their bodies fall lifelessly into the abyss below. Such a cool image.

Thanks TCTTS