***Spoilers for Westworld season 2’s second episode “Reunion” below***
Unlike season two’s first episode that was full of mysteries and confusion wrapped into an enigma (with questions about consciousness sprinkled on top), Westworld‘s second episode of the season, “Reunion,” brings the story full circle. We went back to the days before the park was a surefire hit, and it was young William, The Man in Black, looking to pump up Delos’ financial backing in the park.
As it seems now, that was where everything went wrong. William invested, became far more involved than anyone could’ve known in the first season, and to the chagrin of Logan, William’s brother-in-law we last saw riding a horse naked into the vast desert, the park becomes something more than just a place for sensual pleasures and senseless violence.
This leads to a seminal moment for Logan and William. At a retirement party for Logan’s father, William ascends to a higher rank in the company, and Westworld will continue to evolve. Logan, once thrilled at the proposition of a place where he could live his lawless dreams, is morose. As he sips a drink on the beach with the party continuing without him, a lonely piano version of Kanye West’s “Runaway” plays in the background. It’s not only thematically in-line with the episode’s flashed-forward scenes of the park’s hosts rising up to create an army and escape, but it speaks directly to Logan.
As Inverse pointed out, Logan toasts the assholes at the party that’s signaling the next phase of Westworld, and the beginning of the end for the human race. That action, and his words, are almost directly lifted from Kanye West’s song from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy:
So I think it’s time for us to have a toast
Let’s have a toast for the douchebags
Let’s have a toast for the assholes
Let’s have a toast for the scumbags
Every one of them that I know
Let’s have a toast for the jerk-offs
That’ll never take work off
Logan’s path looks like it’s about to take a dark turn, while the present-day William sees that the end is near, and so is Dolores. Both are trying to run away, some to oblivion, others to a world full of “splendor.”
(Via Inverse)
