Westworld ended its penultimate episode with another shocking death….once again caused by the machinations of Dr. Robert Ford. However, this time it was a host who met his untimely end, seemingly by his own hand.
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After Bernard rediscovered that he was a host thanks to a chance encounter with Maeve, he forced Ford to unlock his memories. In order to “coerce” Ford into helping him, Bernard brought along a reprogrammed Clementine 1.0. When Clementine 1.0 was deactivated, Theresa forgot to reinstall her prime directive not to hurt humans, which meant that Bernard could program Clementine to kill Ford on his command.
However, Bernard discovered a number of uncomfortable truths about his existence. Not only was Bernard a host, he was actually created in Arnold’s image and given Arnold’s mannerisms. He also discovered that Ford knew the hosts were becoming sentient and had forced Bernard to somehow keep them oppressed.
After vowing to find the sentient hosts and free them, Bernard refused to listen to Ford’s warning that the outside world (and the other hosts) would only view him as a threat. Bernard then ordered Clementine to shoot Ford…but Clementine refused to pull the trigger. While Bernard thought he had the upper hand on Ford, Ford had programmed a back end into Clementine (and all the host’s programming), giving him ultimate control of the hosts.
Ford had allowed Bernard to go through his memories and use Clementine because he thought that Bernard would see Ford’s way of thinking and willingly return to helping Ford run the park. But since Bernard had tried to kill Ford, Ford admitted that it was best to “clean the slate” and start anew. Ford then used his backdoor control on Bernard and forced Bernard to kill himself using Clementine’s gun.
Although we’ve seen hosts come back to life before, it’s possible this death is permanent as Bernard shot himself in the head. As we’ve seen with other hosts, even Westworld employees have trouble restoring memories from hosts with head trauma, and it looks like Ford is ready to move on from using Bernard as he’s no longer reliable.
So what does this mean for Westworld and the park? Well, Bernard was clearly set up to be one of Westworld‘s main protagonists and his death shows that Ford is willing to go to any length to keep the hosts and the park under his control. After all, Bernard was Ford’s right hand man and designed in the image of his former partner and he was still unafraid to pull the trigger. Still, Bernard is another “body” in Ford’s current campaign to keep control of the park and it’s hard to see how he’ll keep another death under wraps.
With one more episode left this season, we’ll see how Bernard’s death impacts the other characters next week.
