Westworld, what even was the point of that post-credits scene?

Well, Westworld, congratulations. There’s yet another mystery that might not be compelling as the show seems to think it will be, with no promise of payoff.

Warning: Westworld season 2 aired its finale this week. We’re talking about the very last scene. Ergo, there are spoilers here.

Westworld seems to think that the idea that the Man in Black might have a new android body at some point is really interesting, so much so that it’s the last thing the season finale shows viewers.

On its face, this is not actually a bad idea. Who are we to question the chance to see more of Ed Harris slowly descending into even more paranoia and the kind of persecution complex usually reserved only for white women who demand to speak to a supervisor within 30 seconds of starting a conversation?

The problem is that although Westworld thinks this is intriguing, it’s not intriguing enough to build something like a whole season around it. According to Lisa Joy, here’s the point of that scene:

"It’s teasing for us another temporal realm that one day we’re working toward, and one day will see a little bit more of, and how they get to that place, and what they’re testing for … Season three, the main story, will not be leaping forward that far."

Joy using “the main story” suggests that we will see more of this “temporal realm,” which is a very fancy way of just describing a new time period for a show that has already spanned over 30 years in-universe, in season 3. That makes sense; Bernard and Dolores are now loose outside of Westworld itself, and seemingly doomed to repeat their conflict over and over again while the park presumably tries to pick up and carry on with its other realms. In other words, showing the fallout of their combat via the Man in Black sometime later doesn’t really seem that far out of the realm of possibility.

But aside from the Charlotte Hale twist of last night’s season finale, Westworld seems more in love with muddying multiple parts of the same timeline together and calling that good storytelling than … you know … actually good storytelling.

So far, there’s little promise that this Man in Black story will be any different as it presumably unfolds in its slow, plodding way, scene by scene, over Westworld‘s next 10 or so episodes. Who’s to say it’ll last to a season 4, after all?

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There’s one benefit to this: at least Katja Herbers gets to act more. She and Harris work extraordinarily well together.

And, even though we might dislike Westworld‘s reliance on these kinds of teasers, we have a quick theory: the Man in Black is the new Bernard, and this Emily is attempting to reconstruct him … but better.