Winners and Losers From Westworld's Season 2, Episode 4: 'The Riddle of the Sphinx'
By Henry McKenna
This recap of “The Riddle of the Sphinx” from season two, episode four of Westworld contains spoilers.
Desmond, is that you?
The opening for episode four of Westworld’s second season felt a great deal like the scene in ABC’s Lost when the viewers first meet Desmond, a man whose life is on a monotonous loop. He’s a guinea pig in a lab. In the Westworld version, the man is not a man at all. He’s a host. And this host, who is a reborn version of James Delos, is not performing some great act like Desmond, who is saving humanity by resetting a clock (or so he thinks). Delos is the subject for a self-interested act that defies humanity and mortality — he’s working on a form of immortality.
Delos’ host is putting a new meaning into host — it is playing host to the memories and soul of Delos. William (or MiB) is using his father-in-law to attempt to help people get reborn into hosts by uploading their memories and reforming a consciousness. But it’s not working, hence the loop.
The looping storyline in this episode provided a handful of exciting reveals with action-packed plot development. But the opening images of Delos’ chambers were telling:
- The sands of time spilled in a glass.
- A goldfish swam, trapped in its tank.
- The copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Sirens of Titan” lay on the bed.
The sands of time are an allusion to a feeling that time is standing still for us as viewers, because we, like Delos, are trapped in this time warp. The goldfish serves as a metaphor for Delos, who is trapped in his own tank and has the memory of, well, a goldfish. The viewers can’t help but relate with no sense of time or place, as we are also trapped in this tank with Delos and the goldfish. And finally, the book, “Sirens of Titan” is about free will, omniscience and humanity struggling against forces they cannot overcome (see: death). Just like Delos, we are hardly omniscient in this story, and we’re struggling to come to grips with William’s reality. (Am I the only one who also thought my cognitive function had plateaued, like Delos?)
With that in mind, here are the winners and losers from the episode.
William/the MiB/Death(?): Here’s a conspiracy theory I imagine most people are thinking at this point: the MiB discovered the fountain of youth and he’s already tapped into it. Perhaps this is a too-predictable twist from an episode with a number of shocking twists. But what if William sabotaged his father-in-law’s project, only to use the technology to preserve himself instead? That might explain his closing monologue when he refers to himself as death.
Grace: She escaped Ghost Nation (whose spectral disappearance explained their nation’s title). She also seemed to be seeking out her father, MiB, who she found. Why is she seeking her father, a man we know she doesn’t like? Well, he makes for safe company in the park. Still, Grace doesn’t need protecting, so there’s got to be more to it.
Bernard: Well, he’s finally free — or “free” like the rest of the hosts. The exposition in Bernard’s dialogue explained a great deal: all the hosts are acting freely. What he didn’t say — but I’ll deduce — is that some hosts like Dolores can remember more than others, and those memories inform greater grudges against humans. But back to Bernard. After Elsie tells him not to lie anymore, he commits a lie of omission, and fails to mention the fractured memory of him killing a Delos employee. He does, indeed, seem to be acting freely.
Ford/Arnold: I have a suspicion that Bernard printed and grabbed the brain data for both Ford and Arnold for safe keeping. We saw Bernard printing some data into one of those brain balls right before he killed the unsuspecting Delos employees in the subterranean lab. Do the park’s two inventors have a comeback in them?
Elsie: We all want to trust Bernard. But he’s the one who has gotten us into this messy web of frayed timelines. His unreliable narration is why it’s impossible to know the answer to the question that he asks: “Is this now?” Damnit, Bernard, why don’t you tell us? Like us, Elsie wants to trust Bernard. It’s just that Bernard is fresh off a very significant kill spree (don’t forget that he also concluded the season premiere by admitting he’d murdered hundreds of hosts). Bernard is a dangerous dude — and Elsie is entrusting him with her life.
Delos: Purgatory sounded a lot like hell for Delos. Apparently, he discovered in God’s waiting room that it’s not God’s after all. It’s the devil’s waiting room for everyone — good people and bad. What a sunny thought.
Walt Disney: Disney is sitting in ice while waiting for humanity to discover a way to bring him back to life. Admittedly this show is fiction, but Delos’ bleeding and maniacal face isn’t a pretty picture for Disney’s dream of immortality.
Demigorgons (the faceless/skinless hosts): Now dead, perhaps the stars of The Stranger Things are done with their cameo on HBO. And on a side note, it turns out they were wildly inefficient at killing humans, but quite quick at killing themselves. While they chucked the humans around the lab (making a total mess with that jar of eyeballs), I was thinking to myself: Why not just snap their necks? A dark thought, I know. But then they snapped their own necks. This show has a flare for drama and gore — and occasionally not adding up.