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‘Westworld’ Recap ‘Les Écorchés’

Westworld Recap ‘Les Écorchés’

In the future, Bernard and Ashley are taken in by Delos’ forces because they think one of them is a traitor. They never believed that Theresa committed suicide. Bernard and Ashley are taken to Ford’s secret lab, where they believe she really died. Charlotte is already there. They find a room filled with body bags. Inside are duplicates of Bernard. Now that they know he’s a Host, Charlotte starts probing his mind to find out what happened when Dolores launched her assault on the Mesa. We go back in time that day.

Dolores is coming for Abernathy, but she also has an ulterior motive. While she confronts Charlotte and Ashley, Clementine and Angela lead a team down to the Cradle. On their way, Clementine is shot down and Angela sustains critical injuries. She makes it to the Cradle, but before she can do anything, she is stopped by Engels. Angela uses her charm to seduce him, pulling the pins off his grenades in the process. They are both killed in the explosion and the Cradle is destroyed. Back upstairs, Dolores asks Charlotte how to get the secrets out of her father’s head, to which Charlotte replies she’ll have to cut his head open. Dolores is about to use the bone saw to exact her revenge on Charlotte when she is interrupted. Charlotte and Ashley flee. After a short, sweet good-bye to her father, Dolores cuts open his head to extract the Core.

'Westworld' Recap 'Les Écorchés'
Pictured (L-R): Louis Herthum, Evan Rachel Wood, James Marsden–Photo: John P. Johnson/HBO

Meanwhile, Maeve is doing everything she can to protect her daughter from the Ghost Nation. They lock themselves in a house when who should appear but the Man in Black. He thinks that Ford has led him back to what started him on the quest to find the Maze. Maeve doesn’t know what he’s talking about and opens fire, shooting him several times. She instructs her daughter to stay hidden while she pursues the Man in Black. Maeve telepathically turns his men against him and he takes more bullets. She is about to finish him off for good when Lawrence appears, gun trained on her. Maeve tries to convince him to shoot the Man in Black instead, but he is not easily persuaded. She continues to speak until finally, Lawrence remembers all the things the Man in Black has done. He shoots him. Lawrence is about to shoot him in the head when Delos forces appear. They gun down him and Maeve. As she falls, Maeve sees her daughter run out of the house and get captured by the Ghost Nation. Lee appears at Maeve’s side and tells the soldiers that they need her. They load Maeve onto the buggy and head back to the Mesa, though they don’t know it’s under attack. Once there, the soldiers are called into action, but Dolores’ army takes them out. As she is leaving, Dolores comes across Maeve on a stretcher. Dolores is going to put her out of her misery when Maeve says she made a promise. Dolores tells her that it’s her decision and leaves.

While all of this is going on, Bernard is inside the Cradle, where he finds the memory of Ford. And we finally get a whole lot of answers to this season’s mystery. It is revealed that the parks were a giant experiment. The Hosts were the control, the humans the variable. The park wasn’t gathering information on the Hosts, it was finding out everything they could about the guests and creating copies of them. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), Delos hasn’t yet figured out a way to successfully resurrect a human, as we’ve seen with James Delos. Bernard is different because they weren’t seeking vitality with him. They needed him to be able to hide his true identity. Ford and Dolores spent a lot of time making sure he could fool everyone. Bernard tries to fight back against Ford, but his old friend is too powerful. He infects Bernard’s mind so that when Bernard comes out of the Cradle, Ford’s consciousness goes with him. Bernard convinces Elsie to get them a way out while he is instructed by Ford to override all systems. Doing so will give Dolores free reign. Bernard asks Ford if this is how he wanted his story to go. Ford responds that this isn’t his story, it’s Bernard’s. The end of the episode goes back to the future where Charlotte finally cracks through Bernard’s coding. He reveals where Dolores was taking Abernathy’s Core. So next week, it’s going to be a race to the finish line.

'Westworld' Recap 'Les Écorchés'
Pictured (L-R): Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Wright–Photo: John P. Johnson/HBO

Oh, wow. There was so much in this episode. We got answers as to what Delos has been really doing, which I figured had something to do with stock-piling information on the guests. There were also a whole lot of casualties as we said good-bye to Clementine, Angela, Abernathy, and Lawrence. The Man in Black hid when Delos swooped in, but I’m thinking that Grace is going to show up and save his life. He was still breathing the last we saw of him. Dolores has totally gone off the rails. She had several interesting interactions this episode. When Charlotte first meets her, she is defiant, but soon realizes just how terrifying Dolores is. Then, Dolores tries to saw her head open, without batting an eye. This is the first time we’ve ever seen Charlotte scared. There’s also the moment where Dolores says good-bye to her father. You can clearly see her shift to Wyatt before she extracts the Core (Evan Rachel Wood was on fire this week). Lastly, there’s the brief interaction with Maeve. I was really worried for a moment that she was going to kill her as an act of mercy. Maeve tells her that she made a promise to her daughter, but Dolores’ response is that that is just a way to keep Maeve trapped. The story-line binds her and will keep her from truly being free. Maeve asks if that’s what Dolores tells herself to justify what she did to Teddy. Dolores seems to falter a bit at these words. She does end up sparing Maeve’s life, so perhaps that was a bit of the old Dolores coming through.

Next week’s episode is entitled ‘Kiksuya.’