History Recap / WestworldS02E02Reunion

* ColdBloodedTorture: Dolores has Angela torture one of the Westworld guards to tell them how many Delos soldiers are likely on the way to confront them. She does this by forcing his face into a vat of the raw material hosts are 3D Printed from. Apparently it burns like hell.

* CrazyPrepared: William took the precaution of hiding a med kit in a tavern in the park, just in case he ever got his wish and the stakes became real.

** Armistice, sans tattoo, is one of the Sheriff's deputies in Sweet Water when James Delos visits the park for the first time.

* IronicEcho: "Have you ever seen anything so full of splendor?" Spoken by Dolores when Arnold shows her the East Asian cityscape visible from his hotel room. Arnold actually replies with a variation of the arc words "It doesn't look like anything to me", and tells her he likes seeing it through her eyes. Later in the same scene, she looks at the city again and repeats her "splendor" line, which visibly disappoints Arnold as it means she is still adhering to her programming. Several years later, she looks at a different cityscape over the ocean, and repeats the exact same question to herself while an inebriated Logan watches. Finally, William parrots it back to her when showing her his "weapon" he's having built within the park.
* KickTheDog: In a flashback, William has Dolores removed from the park and has her play the piano at James Delos's retirement party, in a twisted completion of his previously good-natured desire to "get her out of the park", i.e. rescue her. Then he subtly shows off his wife and child to Dolores, as if to show her how happy he is without her.

* LastSupperSteal: The group of Confederados Dolores's group confronts are arranged this way. To add to the imagery, Dolores kills the man in Jesus's position, Major Craddock, and then promptly has a tech "resurrect" him by bringing him back online.

* NeedleInAStackOfNeedles: In flashbacks, Logan is taken to a room full of people and told one is a host, and is challenged to determine which one. After scanning the room for a bit, he determines Angela, one of his guide, is the host because she's too perfect. She smiles, then the whole room stops moving; they're all hosts.

* RagsToRiches: Implied by the narrative, and confirmed in the Inside the Episode feature. James Delos has a course Scottish accent that is completely at odds with the opulent surroundings of the Delos beach house property.

** Logan, and by extension Delos, was one of the original backers of The Argos Initiative, the startup created by Ford and Arnold that first developed the host technology, and would later found Westworld before Arnold's change of heart.

** Logan survived William's humiliation of him, but was ousted from his position and completely went off the wagon into drug use.

** Not all of the hosts in the present day have started killing guests. All of them do seem to have had their PerceptionFilter deactivated, and are now MadeOfIron within the context of their loops. This means their narratives are going OffTheRails because they are now harder to kill. When they reach the end of their loops, they seem to go into full improvisation mode.
* RunningGag: William once again rescues Lawrence from execution, but has a harder time of it because the locals can fight back and are harder to kill.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Retroactively. The last time we saw Lawrence in Season 1, he was playing card tricks for the Delos Board during the Gala. Somehow he ends up trapped by a trio of bandit hosts who are still playing their loop, and has yet to become aware of his true nature, thus requiring William to save him again.

* CompartmentShot: The shot from inside the wall of the taverne when the Man in Black picks up the med kit.

** Angela and Akacheta, like Dolores, are some of the first generation of purely mechanical hosts, and originally had a much larger role in the creation of the park.

** Not all of the hosts in the present day have started killing guests. All of them do seem to have had their PerceptionFilter deactivated, and are now MadeOfIron within the context of their loops. This means their narratives are going OffTheRails because they are now harder to kill. When they reach the end of their loops, they seem to go into full improv mode.

Back when Ford and Arnold were still scrounging up funding for Westworld, Arnold brings Dolores online in his hotel room prior to a pitch for investors and lets her see the true world. Ford comes in and asks if she’s ready, but Arnold says her latest update still isn’t finished and they should use the other host they’ve made. Ford accuses him of protecting Dolores as his favorite, but acquiesces. Arnold then shows Dolores the house he’s having built so he can stop splitting time between his work and family, and says Dolores and Charlie have the same optimistic view of the world which has become so rare. Dolores impresses him by speculating that this might be because light can be as scary as dark, but then lapses back into the same lines she was saying before, showing she’s still stuck in her program and isn’t actually alive. The disappointed Arnold takes her back to the hotel.

Blaine runs into an outpost where the staff still have no idea about the hosts rebelling. But he’s barely begun explaining when Dolores, Teddy, and Angela walk in, thanks to Angela following Blaine here after letting him go. Angela shoots one of the techs, Jacobson, but Dolores tells her not to kill him yet. As Teddy stares in shock at the truth of his existence, Dolores confronts Blaine, who says she has no idea what’s waiting for her in the real world. Dolores remembers Arnold showing her the world and retorts that she’s already been there.

In flashback, Logan and a young William sit at a bar in the middle of “glad-handing” for Delos. William quickly gets bored and leaves the job to Logan. Angela and Native American host Akecheta arrive soon after, having been very secretive until now in their contacts with Delos. Logan is very cynical about their claims to have created perfectly lifelike robots, so they take him to a crowded lounge and challenge him to pick out which person in the room is a host. After a trip around the room, Logan sees Angela standing stock-still in the middle of the floor and is amazed to realize she’s the host. He continues to demur on funding, to which Angela causes everyone in the room to freeze, revealing they’re all hosts, including Clementine at the piano. After more stammering about how this technology can’t exist yet, Logan finally accepts it and kisses Angela, who eagerly reciprocates as all hosts will come to do. He promptly takes Angela and a few other hosts to his room for sex, with a confused Dolores watching.

As Angela stabs Blaine to death, Dolores has another tech named Phil show Teddy his program, including his previous deaths. Teddy quickly grows enraged and almost strangles Phil, who coughs out that it’s all just for fun, causing Teddy to let him go as the full existential horror hits him.

Lawrence has been strung up by ranchers the Pardue brothers after he tried to steal one of their horses. As they prepare to torture him, William arrives and shoots them all, noting that Lawrence is intended to get out of this situation on his own, showing the Pardues are getting stronger. Just then, one of them overcomes his death wounds and nearly kills William before Lawrence is able to toss him a gun and he shoots the host in the head, destroying his core.

William and Lawrence enter a bar, where William opens a secret compartment in the wall with an emergency pack for guests in serious trouble. He tells Lawrence the truth about the park and says they now have a chance to have a real revolution. When Lawrence asks why he should help, William expounds of the idea of judgement from God, which the park was supposed to be safe from, except the Delos board was watching instead. Now he plans to “appeal” his own judgement, which can be done at a place three days to the west. Lawrence says the only way to avoid Confederados that way is going through Pariah, much to William’s amusement considering how they first met.

Dolores pushes Jacobson’s face into the burning host-making chemicals to make him talk about how security will respond to the rebellion. He shows them the spot where 800 men will be rallying, which Teddy says doesn’t make a difference as they can’t possibly beat them, but Dolores is confident she can get more allies to even the numbers. She looks over the available deactivated hosts and tells Phil to turn a Confederado back on, then comments to Jacobson that he never even knew what he was guarding, but she does.

Shortly after William and Logan’s trip to Westworld, Logan’s father and company CEO James Delos helicopters into Sweetwater, where all the hosts have been frozen. William accompanies him, and makes his pitch for Delos to invest in the park. James is hesitant to follow Logan’s idea as he wants to spend his money on real things, and William counters that they can use the park to observe people with no inhibitions and market to them more effectively, leading to the situation Delos is in now.

The reactivated Confederado is sent to find the others in the group like he instinctually programmed to, with Angela following to tell the others when they’re located. Maeve’s group approaches them, and Dolores tries to convince her to join them. Maeve counters that there’s more than one way to fight back against humanity, and if Dolores truly does want all the hosts to be free, that should include not having to follow her orders as well. Dolores is forced to concede the point and lets them pass.

Angela brings the group to the Confederado group, but their leader Major Craddock is still fully in character and disdainful of teaming up with a woman. Dolores says she doesn’t blame any of them as they don’t know any better, and so Teddy and Angela gun them all down. Phil promptly brings them all back online, and Dolores declares that by killing Ford she actually killed the god of the hosts, so now the fundamentalist soldiers should follow her.

Another flashback is set at James’ retirement party, at which Dolores provides entertainment. William is there with his wife Juliet and daughter Emily, and he starts to approach Dolores but is waylaid by James, who has an illness that’s forcing his retirement and is subtly resentful of William taking his place sooner than he’d hoped. Later, Dolores encounters a drug-addled Logan, who sardonically accuses the Delos board of causing the eventual extinction of humanity through their funding of the hosts.

William and Lawrence reach Pariah, which is just as filled with dead bodies as Escalante. They’re confronted by the host who replaced Lawrence as El Lazo and all his men, who have descended into a drunken stupor now that they’ve finally finished their storyline of driving out the “invaders” and have no idea what to do next. William offers them a real victory, but El Lazo says he can’t stand the thought of it, comparing himself to an elephant trained to not try to pull up its stake. William tries to force the issue by holding El Lazo at gunpoint, but Ford takes over this host as well and makes all the hosts kill themselves, also telling William he’ll see him in The Valley Beyond. The frustrated William curses at Ford by name, leading Lawrence to ask if he’s the one who built the place they’re going to. William replies that he built it, and it’s his greatest mistake.

Some time after James’ retirement, William has an interview with Dolores, purely to display his power over her as he denies he ever had real feelings for her, and looks forward to exploiting her and the other hosts. He then shows her a “deeper secret,” taking her to the river she once led him to after painting it, where there is now a massive construction project going on.

Dolores’ group arrives at the fort where the leader of all the Confederados is staying, and when Teddy doubts they can convince him to join, she says he’ll have no choice if he wants to achieve his goal. She reveals The Valley Beyond is actually the place William showed her so long ago, and is a weapon she plans to destroy all humanity with.

In a flashback, Arnold organizes a demonstration of the hosts to convince Logan to invest in Westworld. Logan's father, James Delos, is critical of his son's actions until William persuades him that the park can be used to spy on the guests. James proceeds to buy out the park and name William as his successor. Dolores encounters an embittered Logan, who tells her that they have doomed humanity. William shows her a special project that he is constructing within the park.

In the present day, Dolores raids a refurbishment outpost and shows Teddy his true nature as a host. She then decides to recruit the Confederados to her cause and reveals she is searching for "the Valley Beyond", which houses a weapon that can be used against the humans.

William rescues Lawrence and heads to Pariah to recruit the host currently playing El Lazo. El Lazo, however, passes on a message from Ford, stating that William must complete the game on his own. He and his gang then commit mass suicide to prevent William from recruiting them. Undeterred by the setback, William continues on his quest to destroy his "greatest mistake".

* WhamLine: "What's that?" spoken by Lawrence regarding the med kit William uses. It means his PerceptionFilter, and by extension those of all of the hosts, has been deactivated.
* WhamShot: Dolores runs into Logan at Jim's retirement party, revealing that he survived William abandoning him naked at the edge of the park.

--> [[spoiler: '''Dolores:''' ''(after having "killed" and resurrected a group of hosts to work in her service)'' You're right. We have toiled in God's service for long enough. So I killed him. If you want to get to Glory, you won't be looking for His favour. You'll need mine.]]

William follows the quest Ford left for him, while Dolores searches for a weapon she can use against the humans.

* ShoutOut: Giancarlo Esposito [[BreakingBad once]] [[BetterCallSaul again]] plays the head of a criminal empire. He's even doing doing Gus Fring's accent to add icing on the cake.

* BackFromTheDead: In order to convince Major Craddock that she should be in charge, Dolores has him and his men shot then forces Phil, a Livestock Management technician, to revive him, telling him that she killed God.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: William pitches to James Delos the idea of using Westworld for data mining on the Guests.

* FreezeFrameBonus: Armistice, sans tattoo, is one of the Sheriff's deputies in Sweet Water when James Delos visits the park for the first time.

* GrewASpine: In flashbacks, James Delos is clearly impressed with William's newfound confidence and willingness to talk back to him.

* RefugeInAudacity: When pitching the continued funding of Westworld to James Delos, who doesn't care about the long-term potential of the park, William points out that it can serve as a prime source of market research data and questions James's competence as a businessman if that fact eludes him. James calls William "a cheeky little cunt" for being so brazen, then goes along with the idea because he has a point. He's also impressed that William is able to speak to him that way.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: William pitches to James Delos the idea of using Westworld for data mining on the Guests.
** Phil, the lifestock Management technician is kidnapped and tied up by Dolores, Teddy and Angela, forced to walk as the trio rides. Phil is African-American while Dolores, Teddy and Angela are modeled after Caucasians.

** Phil, the lifestock Management technician is kidnapped and tied up by Dolores, Teddy and Angela, forced to walk as the trio rides. Phil is African-American while Dolores, Teddy and Angela are modeled after Caucasian-Americans.

* IronicEcho: "Have you ever seen anything so full of splendor?" Spoken by Dolores when Arnold shows her the East Asian cityscape visible from his hotel room. Arnold actually replies with a variation of the arc words "It doesn't look like anything to me", and tells her he likes seeing it through her eyes. Later in the same scene, she looks at the city again and repeats her "splendor" line, which visibly disappoints Arnold as it means she is still adhering to her programming. Several years later, she looks at a different cityscape over the ocean, and repeats the exact same question to an inebriated Logan. Finally, William parrots it back to her when showing her his "weapon" he's having built within the park.

* NeedleInAStackOfNeedles: In flashbacks, Logan is taken to a room full of people and told one is a host, and is challenged to determine which one. After scanning the room for a bit, he determines Angela, his guide, is the host because she's too perfect. She smiles, then the whole room stops moving; they're all hosts.

** Angela, like Dolores, is one of the first generation of purely mechanical hosts, and originally had a much larger role than simply being a guest concierge.

* BackFromTheDead: In order to convince a host that she should be in charge, Dolores has him shot then forces a technician to revive him, telling him that she killed God.

** The Lifestock Management technician is kidnapped and tied up by Dolores, Teddy and Angela, forced to walk as the trio rides. The tech is African-American while Dolores, Teddy and Angela are modeled after Caucasian-Americans.

* RaceLift: In universe, Lawrence has been replaced as "El Lazo" by a new host, played by Giancarlo Esposito.

* ChekhovsGunman: The camera pays a lot of attention to a specific male host at the demonstration party for Logan, played by Jonathan Tucker, despite the fact that he does nothing of importance. 35+ years later, he turns up as the head of the Confederados, Major Craddock.