Maeve escapes the Mesa and reunites with her group, and they, Bernard, Dolores, Akecheta, William, and Delos all converge on the Valley Beyond. Dolores and Bernard enter first and find the Forge, a more advanced version of the Cradle. Dolores reads some of the guest data as the Forge opens "the Door" for Akecheta and his followers to upload their minds into "the Sublime", a digital world cut off from the physical world. Bernard kills Dolores to prevent her from destroying the Forge and flees with Elsie back to the Mesa.
Maeve and her group sacrifice themselves holding off Delos forces and the infected Hosts to ensure Akecheta and her daughter escape to the Sublime. Charlotte murders Elsie to keep her quiet, which convinces Bernard to build a host version of Charlotte with Dolores' control unit. Dolores kills and replaces Charlotte while Bernard scrambles his own memories to keep Delos from find out the truth.
In the present, Dolores kills Strand, Costa and Bernard while transferring the Sublime and the Hosts within to a safer location. With Stubbs' aid, she leaves the park for the mainland where she rebuilds Bernard, knowing that he will oppose her plan to destroy humanity and hoping their resulting conflict will ensure the survival of the hosts.
In a flash-forward, William enters the Forge to find it abandoned save for Emily, who tests him for "fidelity", revealing that his consciousness has been implanted in a host body.
Tropes:
- Acting for Two:
- Ben Barnes portrays both Logan (more accurately, Logan in one of James Delos's memories) and the "System" of the Forge using Logan's appearance.
- Tessa Thompson also portrays Charlotte Hale and a host built to look like Hale but containing Dolores' mind and, later, that of another host.
- Anyone Can Die: Roland, Sizemore, Clementine (again), Armistice, Hanaryo, Hector, Maeve, Elsie, Charlotte, Strand and Costa are all killed in this episode, though those who are hosts may return.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Many hosts, including Wanathon, Akecheta and Maeve's daughter leave their bodies behind while their minds are uploaded into the "Valley Beyond" (or "The Sublime" according to Word of God), a virtual world Ford created for them and in which they are free from any narrative. Teddy was also uploaded there, giving him the peace he desired away from the violence Dolores wants to exact on humanity.
- Aspect Ratio Switch: Scenes within the "Valley Beyond" are shot in 2.35:1.
- Asshole Victim:
- Roland, who reactivated Maeve's ability to feel pain just for kicks when he's about to kill her, is in turn killed by hosts under Maeve's control.
- Strand, who cared nothing for the lives of the guests still trapped in the park, is killed by Dolores.
- Charlotte herself, who prioritized Delos’ goals rather than the lives of the guests, as well as murdering Elsie in cold blood, is also killed by Dolores who inhabits her host copy.
- Backwards-Firing Gun: Dolores sabotages William's gun before recruiting him, anticipating that he would turn on her eventually.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Said verbatim by Dolores in Charlotte's duplicate who sardonically notes how Charlotte "wanted to live forever" before shooting her.
- Big Brother Is Watching: Hale reveals to Elsie that Delos not only scanned the minds of guests but also of their own employees. This is confirmed by a few Freeze-Frame Bonus within the Forge, in which you can notice scenes from season 1 set in the Mesa being played out. Also doubles as a Continuity Nod to the moment Elsie extracted Dolores from Sweetwater in Season 1, wearing a guest costume, complete with a hat.
- Big Damn Reunion: Akecheta finding Kohana in the Valley Beyond is followed by an emotional hugging scene.
- Book Ends: William's first scene was him laughing off Teddy's shots and placing Teddy's hand with a gun against his temple, only for him to be unable to fire. In this episode, Dolores is thoroughly unimpressed when William shoots her and finally steps so close to her that he can shoot her point-blank to the head with the shotgun cartridge in his revolver. Unfortunately for him, she previously jammed it with the remains of the bullet Teddy used to shoot himself and the backfire maims his hand. So in the end, Teddy manages to protect Dolores when he at first couldn't.
- Boom, Headshot!: Dolores kills Strand this way.
- Brick Joke: We finally get to hear the contents of Hector's speech, although it is actually Lee who performs it during his Last Stand.
- Brutish Bulls: Maeve activates a group of host bulls to charge the QA guards in the Mesa.
- Call-Back: Bernard realizing that he had in fact fully purged Ford's influence from his system and had imagined him as a guiding voice is a subtle allusion back to the "bicameral mind" theory, with Ford in the place of God.
- Censor Shadow: Dolores!Hale's nudity in the scene where she confronts the real Hale is covered up by shadows.
- Corner of Woe: Hector finds Sizemore squatted in a corner at Mesa.
- Cruel Mercy: After William blows his own fingers off, Dolores refuses to kill him, instead leaving him to suffer.
- Damsel out of Distress: Hector and the rest of the group show up to save Maeve, but she's already used her new admin privileges to set herself free and unleash a stampede upon the QA guards.
- Dead All Along: Charlotte was actually killed before Strand's recovery team arrived. The Charlotte that greeted them was actually Dolores, her control unit installed in a duplicate made in Charlotte's image, who killed her and assumed her identity.
- Deader than Dead: Because Logan never returned to Westworld, his mind was never copied and uploaded to The Forge. The closest is an imperfect facade (based on James Delos' memories) used by the A.I. in charge of the system. The same is true of everyone who had their mind copied once Bernard erased the data to replace it with the hosts'.
- Destruction Equals Off-Switch: Subverted. Merely killing Clementine does not stop her from transmitting the Hate Plague program, it just stops her from approaching any closer.
- Double-Meaning Title:
- "The Passenger" refers to both Dolores, who is using Charlotte's host body to escape the park; and to humanity itself. The System of the Forge, taking the form of Logan, explains that humans are simply following their own loops, and that they are actually passengers to causality rather than agents of free will. The title could also reference the host pearls, including Bernard's, that Dolores took with her in her purse out of the park.
- The overall arc title for the season, "The Door," could mean the door to The Valley Beyond or the door to the real world through which Bernard leaves in the last scene.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Akecheta is finally reunited with Kohana after going through the Door.
- Fingore: William loses several fingers thanks to Dolores jamming his gun using the bullet that Teddy shot himself with.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: The Logan that Bernard and Dolores meet inside the Forge is actually an A.I. guide taking the form of Logan. Logan himself never came back to the park after the incident inflicted by William and thus his mind was never scanned for the Delos project of duplicating human minds.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Reenactments of several scenes of Season 1 play out within the Forge when Bernard and Dolores are guided by the System. And later, two of the books Dolores reads in the Forge's "library" are titled "Karl Strand" and "Charlotte Hale".
- Friendly Enemy: This is Bernard and Dolores' relationship in the end. They both want what's best for their species but they have conflicting goals and methods on how to achieve it. Dolores is aware of this which explains her reason of bringing Bernard to the real world so that he would be the one to stop her.
- Gainax Ending: It's unclear what is up with William's scene in The Stinger. Prior to it he was last seen going into the elevator to the Forge and then among the survivors being evacuated from the park. Word of God states this scene takes place in a Flash Forward to the far future, indicating that this is a host duplicate of the real William reliving the original's experiences in the park, much like Dolores in Season 1 re-enacted her journey to Escalante alongside William, but alone.
- He Knows Too Much: Charlotte murders Elsie because she knows Elsie is too good a person to just let what has happened go, even if it would personally benefit her.
- Here We Go Again!: Felix and Sylvester share a knowing glance when they are tasked with restoring whatever host they can, including Maeve.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Lee sacrifices himself to slow down the QA team pursuing Maeve.
- Hector, Armistice and Hanaryo are killed fighting the mob of hosts so that Maeve can find and save her daughter.
- Maeve uses her mesh abilities to stop the mob so that Akecheta, her daughter, the Ghost Nation and other hosts can make it through the Door, and is shot by the QA security team after they go through.
- Hope Spot: When Armistice kills Clementine, for a few seconds it looks like she's halted the aggression virus—until the hosts near Clem's body start killing each other.
- Invisible to Normals: Felix and Sylvester can't see the portal to the Valley Beyond.
- Ironic Echo: "What door?", spoken by Sylvester, echoes the time Bernard asked Theresa the same question when the two explored the Sector 17 cottage and Theresa spotted the door to the Remote Diagnostic Facility below it.
- Kick the Dog: Roland dials up Maeve's pain sensitivity as he's about to kill her, just to make her suffer more.
- Kill and Replace: Bernard secretly created a host duplicate of Charlotte (without the spinal explosive so that it could fool host detectors), then went back to the Forge and installed Dolores' CPU inside the host. Upon waking up, Dolores kills the real Charlotte, assumes her role, and is there to greet the recovery operation when they arrive two weeks after the host uprising.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Roland turns up Maeve's pain sensitivity before he's about to kill her, just because he can. Maeve's pain causes her to send a command through the mesh, and all the host bodies in the room rise up to attack Roland. He gets his throat slashed open by a host wielding the saw he was going to use to cut up Maeve with.
- Make Sure He's Dead: The QA guards do this to the host bodies in the aftermath of the fight in front of the portal.
- Memory Gambit: Bernard scrambled his own memories in order to keep his own actions, the fate of the hosts, and the fate of Hale and Dolores a secret from Strand.
- The Mole: Stubbs lets Dolores (inside Charlotte's body) through to the transport to the mainland, despite knowing that she's a host, as Stubbs hints to her that he's also a host built by Ford (confirmed by Word of God).
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Charlotte Hale murdering Elsie in front of Bernard is what finally drives him towards consciousness and brings Dolores back, which in turn leads to Hale's death.
- No Ontological Inertia: Subverted with Clementine. Even though Armistice kills her with a head-shot, the virus continues to spread through the remaining hosts.
- "Not So Different" Remark: The Man in Black notes to Dolores how alike they both are which Dolores denies.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Dolores goes from being a few paces in front of Bernard and System!Logan while walking down a long hallway to being dozens of meters away in seconds. Possibly explainable (given the nature of Bernard's story line) as being the result of part of this conversation happening without it being shown to the viewer.
- Oh, Crap!: Maeve when she sees Clementine driving the other hosts mad.
- Hale has a subdued one when she sees Dolores in a Hale-modeled Host body.
- Once More, with Clarity:
- Bernard scrambled his own memories in order to keep the truth of what had transpired from Strand and his team.
- Charlotte Hale was killed prior to Strand's arrival and replaced by Dolores installed in a host body duplicate of Charlotte created by Bernard.
- Peaceful in Death: Dead Maeve has a peaceful expression on her face.
- Pillar of Light: The Door manifests to the hosts as a tear in reality that shoots up into the sky. As the tear is merely virtual, to human eyes, the hosts are just falling into a chasm.
- Precision F-Strike: Bernard, for the second episode in a row. He tells Dolores that they are not in a dream, but instead a "fucking nightmare."
- The Promise: Maeve eventually delivers on her promise to keep her daughter safe which drove her actions in Season 2. We even get a flashback to the moment the promise was made.
- Recurring Element: The books containing guest's personality profiles appear to be made from player piano rolls.
- Robot Duplicate: Invoked with Charlotte's duplicate, which actually houses Dolores' pearl and, later, that of another host. Played straight in the Flash Forward with Emily and William.
- Rule of Symbolism:
- The QA guards getting gored by a herd of host bulls bears a strong resemblance to Real Life scenes of unlucky toreros facing the same fate, one of the few accepted instances in society in which it's considered okay to root for the animal.
- Both her Undeathly Pallor and the white horse she rides when sent against the hosts makes Clementine look like the fourth horseman of the apocalypse. Charlotte even makes the connection when bragging about her usefulness.
- Dolores saves a select few from an apocalyptic flood and takes them to safety on a boat, just as Noah did in the Old Testament.
- And while we're in the Old Testament, Maeve has for some time been leading her people to a promised land that she herself dies before she can reach, as did Moses. Bonus points for the doorway visual effect looking a bit like the parting the Red Sea effect from The Ten Commandments.
- Secret-Keeper: Stubbs hints he knows that the Charlotte leaving the park is a host but doesn't do anything to stop her because he's loyal to Ford. There is also a bit of Loophole Abuse; Stubbs is responsible for all the Hosts in the park, so if one gets out...
- Slashed Throat: Roland gets one with the same electric bone saw he was about to use to kill Maeve.
- The Slow Walk: Dolores calmly walks toward William as he shoots her, waiting for him to hit the chamber she jammed.
- Sole Survivor: All of the Hosts in the park except for Dolores are dead at the end of this episode. About a third of them managed to transfer their minds to a virtual world that is truly their own. Dolores sneaks some memory cores off the island and rebuilds Bernard. It's implied that Felix and Sylvester will rebuild Maeve and possibly others as they were instead of resetting them.
- The Stinger: A post-credits scene, set long after the events of the episode, depicts a fidelity test, conducted on none other than William by a host duplicate of Emily.
- Took a Level in Badass: Thanks to Ford, Maeve now has the ability to revive inactive hosts, command non-human hosts, and freeze large numbers of hosts through thought alone.
- The Unreveal:
- After escaping to the real world, it's unclear who is inside the host body of Charlotte since Dolores got her own body rebuilt and remade Bernard. It's also unclear which minds are stored in the other host pearls that Dolores brought to the real world.
- Although Stubbs describes his hiring process and role to Dolores using host terminology, it's not revealed whether he's actually a host or merely a Ford loyalist. Word of God confirms he is a host.
- In a throw-away line in "The Stray," Elsie asked him if he was Galileo; Stubbs joked back, "Maybe it's in my backstory."
- Where Dolores redirected the data uplink to, though that may be more of a Sequel Hook.
- Wham Line: The host version of Emily stating she is going to test William for fidelity; given how the last time we saw a host conduct this test was when Dolores did this with Bernard, and both are hosts...
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The fate of guests and hosts within the other parks is left unresolved and unmentioned. Likewise, the fate of some host characters like New Clementine and Lawrence's daughter and wife go unmentioned.
- You Shall Not Pass!: Sizemore attacks the QA to keep them from going after Maeve, Hector, Armistice, Hanaryo, Felix and Sylvester.
