‘Westworld’: 5 Things You Might Have Missed On Season 2, Episode 4, “The Riddle Of The Sphinx”

You might have heard people say that Westworld has become the new Lost. What’s funny to me about that is that in last night’s episode, Westworld has suddenly become the spiritual prequel to Netflix’s Altered Carbon.

That’s because the big episode reveal is that Westworld’s tech is a front to help bring James Delos’s consciousness back from the dead.

That is: Westworld’s scientists have been trying to put the consciousnesses of real-life dead people into their hosts to ensure that those people can live forever.

It sets a tricky moral concept that gets addressed in this issue by William himself: Maybe we shouldn’t live forever? And maybe — just maybe — the wealthy, philandering, greedy loons who can afford such treatment are the last people who do deserve immortality? Again, this is literally the philosophical debate that drives Altered Carbon, a show that takes us to a future where people’s consciousnesses are already downloaded into removable “stacks,” but it’s a new curve ball for Westworld.

Of course, this revelation also begs the question: Is it possible to successfully bring someone back? James Delos’s bodies kept glitching in one way or another, either rejecting reality or left to fester due to neglect. We know that Bernard is the “reincarnation” of Arnold, but that he, too, has a loose grip on time and reality and needs a steady flow of cortical fluid. So is it possible?? Well…

Hey, you know how much you like Bernard and want to root for him because he’s just a sweet, confused host who can’t control his actions? Maybe don’t?

Bernard figured out a lot about himself last night. One, he finally was able to figure out that his brain processes exist somewhere slightly out of time. That means that those rushes of images are in fact from different timelines. He experiences events out of order sometimes. That’s helpful when he wants to find secrets hidden in plain sight, like the switch that revealed the secret cave lab. It’s also horrifying because his flashback tonight confirmed that he has been murdering people left and right in Westworld — and it’s all to protect not only the secret of the James Delos experiments, but to secure someone’s red egg brain.

Note: we’ve seen two types of “egg brains” — not a technical term, but you know what I’m talking about — white (for programmed hosts) and red (for resurrected people like Delos). In his earlier rampage on the facility, Bernard took one single red egg brain. Where is it? Who is it? Might it be someone we know? Is it with Bernard still? Or is it in James Abernathy’s brain?

These are the questions we’ll keep having to tune in to find the answers for, but yeah, don’t trust Bernard, Elsie!

One question that haunted Westworld fans last season was whatever happened to Elsie? The sassy young programmer — played by Shannon Woodward — was one of the first Westworld employees to figure out that something big was going on. In one of his first desperate “moves” to keep the secret covered up, Bernard attacked Elsie and it was still unclear if she lived or died.

Well, she lived. Apparently after thunking her on the head, Bernard left Elsie chained in a cave with a bucket and some protein bars. Now the two have formed a makeshift alliance to figure out what to do next. The one problem there? Bernard didn’t seem too sincere when he promised not to hurt her and we have no proof yet that she makes it through the next two weeks (which is when Delos picks Bernard up and he reunites with Charlotte).

Doesn’t seem fair for the character who is apparently based on Westworld showrunner Lisa Joy.

At the end of Westworld, “The Riddle of The Sphinx,” we learn that the tiger-fighting guest we met last week, “Grace” (Katja Herbers), is in fact William’s “whip-smart” and “capable” daughter, “Emily.”

So…who is she?

We recently chatted with Katja Herbers — watch out for the interview later this week — about this very thing. “From season one, we know that her name is Emily because the Man in Black is her father, but I go by ‘Grace’ in the park. I think my name is Emily Grace and I just use [Grace] in the park,” she said. Note she said, “I think.” It seems not even the actors in Westworld are entirely sure who their characters are…

Grace is an important character in the Westworld canon. She’s James Delos’s granddaughter, Logan’s niece, and the Man in Black’s daughter. She’s also there with expert knowledge and a map of her own, so she’s probably going to have a big role to play in the game ahead.

Westworld is fond of its cryptic episode titles, and “The Riddle of The Sphinx” might be one of the most revealing ones yet.

On the one hand, it’s an admission that Westworld is a tricksy show, full of brain-bending puzzles and infuriating riddles. The classical Greek Sphinx was a magical monster who had the body of a lion, the head of lady, and would destroy you if you couldn’t answer her very sage riddle: “What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night?”

The person who solved it was Oedipus. (YES, THAT OEDIPUS.) His answer was “Man,” as we crawl on all fours as infants, walk as adults, and need a cane in old age.

The Sphinx’s riddle is a nod to man’s lifetime and our limitations as people. It’s also a play on time itself, using the metaphor of a single day to stand in for a lifetime. It’s a clever sort of Easter Egg for what seems to be the big revelation of the episode: that Westworld is a place for the rich to fight death and the passage of time.

It’s also interesting that Oedipus is the character associated with the Sphinx’s riddle. Oedipus killed his father and married his mother, but the myth is less about Freudian desire and more about how we seal our fates in trying to avoid them, and about the constant tension between fathers and their children. Sound anything like Westworld to you?

Where to Stream Westworld