'Westworld' Fans Have A Serious Question About That Intense Emily Scene

This season of Westworld has brought viewers some of the best episodes of the show to date. But like Season 1, every episode is filled with clues about our characters' motivations, tucked away in plain sight, for viewers to gloss right over. One of the biggest has been a new view of William, who has been revealed to have the narcissistic belief that everything that happens in the park is focused on screwing with him. But even so, fans didn't see this week's big twist coming. Is Emily really dead on Westworld? PLEASE BE ADVISED: I'm not kidding when I say "Spoilers for this week's episode of Westworld Season 2 follow."

Last week, the show, without once emphasizing it, revealed a huge piece of the puzzle about William. When Ford told him "The Maze is not for you," he wasn't just saying this wasn't a game for William to play. He meant those exact words. The Maze was for Maeve. William's insistence that it "revealed itself to him" was a huge warning sign of how he views everything that happens in the park.

William believing everything that happens in the park is geared towards him is not totally crazy. After all, the park is for the guests, not for the hosts. Everything is (or was) designed so the guests in the park would win, no matter what game they played. It's perhaps not surprising William assumes every host he meets and every person he meets is by Ford's own design, since as viewers have seen, Ford used them to speak to William many times.

But the rules have changed. William claims he knows this, and yet he keeps assuming it's all about him. He couldn't just run into Maeve, Ford must have designed it so they would come face to face. His daughter couldn't just come to the park and find him. She has to be a host or some sort of manipulation. She can't have knowledge of the card Ford gave him with his personality profile. He didn't give her that information himself, so clearly it's a trap. She's not real.

William believes this so deeply, he murders her, with a hail of bullets from a machine gun, at point-blank range. He kills his own daughter because he literally cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not. Before she dies, Emily tries to argue he's undergone a psychotic break, and she's not altogether wrong. He doesn't see anyone in front of him as human anymore, not even her. It's all just obstacles to be played though.

It's not until she's dead William he sees she has the card in her hand Ford gave him. He realizes she's not a ploy. She's not a host, not a trick. She came to find him after seeing his personality profile the park created. She is his daughter.

Well, she was anyway.

Watching William kill Emily and his dawning realization of what he's done is a gut punch of the highest order. He rides away from the scene in a blind daze, recalling the night his wife died. Turns out she did kill herself, it wasn't an accident. What William knows now is that she must have heard his confession, when he thought she was asleep, that he was the terrible person she thought he was. She must have looked at his personality profile Ford gave him and left it for Emily. She saw the monster she married clearly for the first time and she couldn't live with it.

He is a monster. He killed his only child. That is, if any of this is real to begin with? The Man In Black is starting to believe it's not. He sits down in the middle of the field and digs into his arm with his Bowie knife, where the quick ports are found on every host. Maybe, just maybe, none of this is real.

If so, Emily is still alive and he won't be the world greatest monster after all. Viewers will find out next week in the season finale.