Taking a cue from the world of superhero movies, the Westworld season 2 finale featured a surprise post-credits scene at the end of Sunday night’s episode, “The Passenger.”
From twist-endings to big character deaths, there were already plenty of shocking moments in this season’s highly-anticipated finale. However, the post-credits scene involving Ed Harris’ William, aka the Man in Black, will definitely have fans talking and coming up with their own theories going into season 3.
The short epilogue features a battered and brusied William walking out of an elevator and through the park’s Forge, which isn’t all shiny and well-kept as it appeared earlier in the episode. The Man in Black encounters his daughter, Emily [Katja Herbers], although he quickly realizes she’s a host since he had shot and killed her in episode 9, “Vanishing Point.”
At first, William thinks he’s “already in the thing,” but Emily informs him that he isn’t because the system’s “long gone” and that he’s still in his world “or what’s left of it.” The pair then sit in room that looks like the one where James Delos was tested. Emily begins to run similar tests on William to check for “fidelity,” meaning that this Man in Black is a host, not a human.
Breaking down the Westworld season 2 finale post-credits scene
So does this mean the Man in Black was a host the whole time? Well, not exactly.
Prior to the Westworld season 2 finale post-credits scene, we see William a few times in the episode. He nearly gets his arm shot off in his confrontation with Dolores, and the Man in Black can be seen recovering in a tent as the team gets everyone ready to leace the park. In both cases he appeared pretty human.
The show’s co-creator Lisa Joy further clarified the scene to The Wrap, saying that, while that version of the Man in Black is a host, the epilogue takes play well into the future and is a tease at what’s to come down the road for Westworld.
“He’s in a very different timeline. The whole place looks destroyed, and then she explains that all of that stuff happened long ago,” Joy told The Wrap. “That was real. But now something has happened and the Man is now the subject — or some iteration of the Man is now the subject — of testing. The roles have become completely reversed.”
“And we get the feeling that, in the far-flung future,” she added. “The Man has been somehow reconjured and brought into this world and he’s being tested the same way the humans used to test the hosts. And that is a storyline that one day we’ll see more of.”
Expect to see this new mystery unravel when Westworld returns for season 3 on HBO.
