‘Westworld’ Season 2 Episode 9 Explained: 5 Huge Moments You May Have Missed

After last week’s unexpected dose of straightforward storytelling, Westworld returned to from last night with another complicated episode (Season 2, Episode 9, “Vanishing Point”) that provided way more questions than answers. However, packed into all the mystery were a few key details that might actually help explain what the heck is going on.

Here are five important moments from Westworld Season 2 Episode 9 that are worth revisiting and explaining, whether you’re confused or you just to looked down at your phone at the exact wrong moment and missed them.

Spoilers for Westworld Season 2 Episode 9.

“The Door” officially explained

This isn’t exactly new information, but until now Westworld only really explained what The Door was through a series of cryptic conversations and Anthony Hopkins monologues. This week, we got two straightforward explanations for exactly what’s happening in that valley.

First, Bernard relays what he learned from Ford to Elsie in plain and simple language. He makes it clear that The Door is similar to The Cradle, but instead of storing Host backups it has copies of every single human who’s ever visited the park.

Later on, we get even more info from William (aka The Man in Black) during a conversation with his daughter, Emily. William reveals that Delos (the company behind Westworld) is scanning everyone’s brains using sensors built into the cowboy hats you get while visiting the park. So that explains how they managed to get all that data.

Emily also reveals that she wants to visit The Door to speak to her mother, who commited suicide in a flashback during that same episode. So it sounds like there’s some sort of way for humans to interact with the people who’s brains have been copied and stored in the park, similar to how Bernard was able to enter The Cradle earlier this season.

The music box

The music box that Emily received as a gift when she was a child might seem insignificant, but there’s a mystery wrapped around it.

During the episode, Emily tells her father a story about how she hated the music box when she first got it and decided to throw it away. Soon afterward, she changed her mind and went to retrieve it, but the trash had already been taken and it was too late.

However, we later learn that Emily’s mother used that same music box to hide a memory card full of data on William so that her adult daughter could find it. So what happened to the music box?

The simple solution is that Emily’s mom found it in the trash and rescued it, but that’s not particularly interesting. What’s more compelling is the idea that Emily could be purposely lying to The Man in Black to evoke an emotional reaction.

Finally, it’s possible that William could be right about his daughter actually being a Host. That would explain why she misremembered what happened to the music box. It also clears up another big moment from last night’s episode…

Is Emily a Host?

William certainly seems to think so, at least until her notices that data card in her cold dead hands. At that point, the show seems to suggest that she really was his daughter, but I’m still not convinced.

Don’t forget that just a few minutes earlier, Delos security showed up with a special device that can check whether anyone is a Host or a human. (Sidenote: why haven’t they been using these the entire time?) A quick scan seems to confirm that William is human, but then he quickly shoots the entire security team before they can check Emily’s status.

So is Westworld trying to tell us that Emily really was a Host. It could be another trick, but I have a feeling that William was actually right in this case.

The books on William’s shelf

Here’s a simple but interesting bit of info. When William hides that card with all the data about the terrible things he’s done in Westworld, he slides it into a book on a shelf in his bedroom. It’s a quick, darkly lit shot that makes it difficult to actually identify any of those books, but thankfully Reddit is already on the case.

According to a post from Reddit user /DonHedger, the books on William’s shelf are Moby Dick, Slaughterhouse Five, Jude the Obscure, Plutarch’s Historical Methods, and Plutarch and Rome. That’s a lot of fodder for fan theories, but the one book that really sticks out is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House five, which tells the story of a WW2 veteran named Billy (short for William) who becomes unstuck in time. Sound familiar?

Is Ford actually gone now?

Near the end of the episode, Ford (currently a program hanging out in Bernard’s robot brain) pressures him to kill Elsie before she can betray them. Instead, Bernard digs into his own code and removes Ford entirely. At least that’s what the episode suggests.

However, the preview for next week’s Westworld Season 2 finale clearly shows Ford back in action. It’s possible that could be a flashback, but it’s also possible that he could have found a way to piggyback in someone else’s brain, just in case Bernard tried to get rid of him.

Either way, it looks like we’ll have to wait until the big Season 2 finale next week to find out.

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