EW Recap ~ Season 2 Finale 

finale recap: \'The Passenger\' just changed everything

Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, Thandie Newton, Anthony Hopkins

Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, J.J. Abrams

season 2 finale “The Passenger” wrapped up so many of the show’s mysteries and delivered a couple few big surprises with a 90-minute episode that feature beautiful direction by Federick E.O.Toye, a gorgeous Ramin Djawadi score, terrific performances and stuck a landing that set the stage for an intriguing season 3. Sure, there was also some exposition overload as the drama strained to explain so many of the season’s ideas.

Below I’ve unscrambled this twisty episode — which jumped around between a few different timelines — into chronological order to help explain everything that happened (and you saw the surprise post-credits scene right? If not, go back and watch that first), starting with…

Before the Flood: Dolores lays with dead Teddy, then takes his brain Brita filter for a purpose that will be revealed later. She comes upon the Man in Black who’s been digging in his arm. “Seems you’ve begun to question the nature of

your reality,” she quips, seemingly solving last week’s riddle — the MiB was digging in his arm because he was paranoid that he might be a host. She lets him tag along to the Valley Beyond.

They pick up Bernard and reach The Forge. The Man in Black tries to gun down Dolores, but she’s so in control of her body at this point that she’s no longer programmed to “die” unless truly essential parts get taken out. Dolores had sneakily placed a used slug in The Man in Black’s gun which results in a spectacular backfire blowing his hand apart.

Meanwhile, table Maeve orders hosts to attack a sadist technician who’s about to dismember her — with her pain receptors turned on. She gets patched up and reunites with Hector, Armistice, and Lee Sizemore. When more QA bad guys attack, we finally get that amazing Super Bowl promo scene we had almost forgotten about — Maeve using her powers to have robot bulls charge and gorge the QA guys in exhilarating slo-mo. There’s one terrific shot, as the bull rams the soldier over the stair railing, that literally had my jaw hanging open.

A little later, Maeve and company run into trouble and have an unlikely savior — Lee Sizemore. Do we buy that this epitome of human selfishness would sacrifice himself to give the hosts a chance? Perhaps not, but then again, he doesn’t seem to have much of a life outside of creating narratives for this park, and now that’s all going away. Maybe he decided that in a life that’s empty, he can at least die for something. It’s rather cool that Lee goes out in a blaze of glory by giving a speech he once penned for the hosts — really playing the game for the first and last time; Lee finally gets to be a hero.

Charlotte and Team Dune Buggy are led by zombie Clementine, who literally rides a pale horse as she readies to spread her annihilation virus (as in, the Pale Horse of Pestilence in the Book of Revelations, which Westworld couldn’t resist making obvious later on by having Charlotte crack a joke about it — yes, we got the biblical symbolism, thanks!).