Westworld is rounding into its second-season finale with plenty of questions still unanswered, which means that the always-productive fan theorizing around the show is reaching a fever pitch. Even the title of the last episode—“The Passenger”—is being scrutinized, and one fascinating theory suggests the seeds for its big reveal were planted in the season’s earliest scenes. (Spoilers below, obviously.)
You may remember that, in the first episode of this season, Delos agents found Bernard washed up on a beach, having forgotten everything that happened to him in the previous two weeks. Over the next few episodes, the show established the three main timelines we’d be seeing this season, but regardless of what we saw happen to Bernard during and after the host revolt, he still seemed to be acting pretty weird in that initial beach scene. He’s lost his memory, he doesn’t appear to need his glasses anymore, and he claims to be responsible for the deaths of all the hosts in the flooded valley.
One fan theory on Reddit proposes that the season finale title “The Passenger” may refer to the fact that the Bernard we see wash up on the beach isn’t just Bernard, but is rather Bernard’s body carrying the consciousness of another host. Who is this passenger? Maeve, of course. Last episode, we saw Ford unlocking something in Maeve’s code that would presumably allow her to continue living despite the physical damage done to her body. It’s not so crazy to think that she now has access to the host web and could transfer her consciousness to another host. Moments later, Bernard excised Ford’s consciousness from his own mind, leaving an opening for someone else to move in. Someone like Maeve.
“Here’s the kicker,” writes well-named Reddit user ePaperWeight. “In this last episode it was revealed that Hale used Maeve’s code to turn Clem into a host WMD.” So, when Bernard/Maeve looks out at all the dead host bodies floating in the lake in the season premiere and says “I killed them,” it’s possible that’s what they are referring to.
As far as Westworld theories go, it’s pretty good. We’ll have to wait until Sunday to see if the show’s writers think so, too, or if they’ve got something even crazier up their sleeve. (Succession world, maybe?)
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