In case you’re a host and don’t understand the nature of the reality of this article, spoilers for the season two finale of Westworld are below this GIF:
Okay, so now that we’ve done the obligatory spoiler warning, let’s get to it.
Westworld’s epic second season came to a close with the 90-minute long episode “The Passenger.” The episode — the 10th of the season and 20th in the series — tied up most of the storylines that had taken form over the first two seasons and killed off numerous characters such as … SPOILER WARNING AGAIN … Elsie, Lee, and Maeve.
But after the credits rolled, the HBO smash hit took a page out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe playbook and squeezed in a post-credit scene involving the none other than the Man in Black.
The Man in Black (AKA William) is seen making his way down to the depths of one of the park’s facilities, still nursing his right hand which just had a couple of fingers blown off thanks to Dolores. To his surprise, he finds a finely dressed version of his daughter Emily waiting for him.
William immediately assumes his consciousness has been uploaded to the Cradle (or “the thing” as he calls it): the place where Ford’s consciousness was living after he died. However, Emily, or at least the projection of her, assures him that he is not in a simulation and that he is in what’s left of “his world”.
Emily leads William to a room that is identical to the one that James Delos was being held in and starts asking him questions such as where he is and how long he’s been there. Emily continues to ask William various questions before he asks “how many times” they’ve tested him.
“It’s been a long time, William, longer than we thought,” Emily responds.
Finally, Emily says she must ask a couple more questions to “verify.”
“Verify what?”, the Man in Black wonders, to which Emily responds … “Fidelity.”
So what’s this all mean?
Well, it means that William has been put through the same process we saw him putting James Delos through, i.e., trying to upload their conscious to a host’s “body” and effectively make them immortal.
It means that the Man in Black has been a host for some time, possibly as long as we’ve known him. It means that William died a long time ago and we don’t know how. It means that the Man in Black himself didn’t even know he was dead.
It means that, as usual, Westworld is confusing as ever and we cannot wait for it to return.
