Season 2, Episode 9: ‘Vanishing Point’
Off the top, let’s note that this week’s episode of “Westworld” comes with its own “KICK ME” sign: “Humans will always choose what they understand over what they do not.” This would be your cue to pick up the remote and catch up on old episodes of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”
For those humans who continue to choose “Westworld,” however, “Vanishing Point” is a strange animal, the rare penultimate episode that taps the brakes instead of building momentum for the season finale. There are plenty of important developments in the hour, but a notable paucity of action or forward movement. The Valley Beyond is visible in the horizon, but there’s mostly just discussion here about what it is and who deserves to get there.
Given last week’s episode, which concerned itself almost entirely with the back story of Ake, the leader of the Ghost Nation tribe, “Westworld” seems oddly content with stroking its chin — a sharp contrast with the huge battle between humans and hosts promised at the beginning of the season. The finale stands to be busier, if the gala massacre that wrapped up Season 1 is any indication, but the show has shown a willingness to sacrifice pace for more interior revelations.
Much of this week’s episode, titled “Vanishing Point,” focuses on one of the most persistent — and yet least compelling — mysteries that the show has teased from the beginning: Who is the Man in Black? We know from last season that he is William, the young man who entered Westworld as a timid upstart and grew to be corrupted by his decades in the park. One true thing about Westworld is that it reveals the guests for who they really are, which is a big reason the Delos corporation has so valued the user information it has been harvesting. But for William/the Man in Black, the park has provided a journey into his own heart of darkness: “I was shedding my skin,” he narrates. “The darkness was what was underneath. It was mine all along, and I decided how much of it I left in the world.”
The episode has a tragic arc to it, taking full measure of William’s all-consuming obsession and the destruction it has caused in his life. The show has often flashed back to the image of the overflowing bathtub where his wife committed suicide, but now the full story can be told, with the killing of his own daughter added as a…
