What Actually Happened in the Westworld Season One Finale, and What We Want From Season Two

4. So How Does Arnold Factor in To All Of This?

Early in the season, there were whispers of some terrible event that mired the park in scandal two-and-a-half decades prior to the start of the series. As it turns out, this terrible event was put into play by Arnold. The inventor believed that if he could manufacture some kind of tragedy (by programming Dolores to kill all the other hosts and then Arnold himself), then he could put a stop to the park’s opening and the interference into his research. It did not work, in fact, all this shooting spree really did was get all the hosts’ memories buried under a new layer of programming, only to fester there for the next two decades. Meanwhile, this noble sacrifice resonated pretty deeply with Ford. Though he only began to finish his friend’s plan several years later, Ford did create a host in Arnold’s image to help him with his work. That host was Bernard.