Debating Westworld season 2: Good or bad robots? 

After a long break following the brain-blasting season 1 finale, 

returned this spring with new episodes (and new timelines). With the finale looming this Sunday, EW’s TV critics Kristen Baldwin and Darren Franich discussed their reaction to the second season. One of them still likes 

. Both of them are ready for someone to open the damn Door.

 is selling, Kristen. I love Westerns, videogames, symbolic narratives about how Silicon Valley is destroying the world, and Thandie Newton.

I was all the way in with season 1; I’m almost all the way out now. As we prepare for the season 2 finale, it strikes me how many characters have gotten stuck in endless loops, going nowhere fast. Maeve (Newton) wasted eons trying to find her daughter, and now she’s been lying half-conscious with an open shoulder wound for two episodes. Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) started this season giving a speech about the Valley Beyond and her big plan to use what’s in the valley; she’s continued to giving that same speech, slooooowly making her way to her stated goal. I’m worried poor Teddy (James Marsden) shot himself out of boredom. And Jeffrey Wright, one of our great actors, has been reduced to desperately finger-swiping his futurePad. Sometimes brain juice seeps out of his ear, which sums up my reaction to every subplot about the Man in Black (Ed Harris). Meanwhile, Tessa Thompson — a zeitgeist if there ever was a zeitgeist — has spent nine episodes chasing a magic brain. Or, I guess it’s an encryption key. But basically it’s a magic brain.

I hold out hope that the finale will contain some show-altering revelations. But this season’s been a real disappointment — so much so that when Harris’ grouchy MIB held a gun to his head last week, I almost started chanting, “DO IT! DO IT!”

That seems unhealthy, Kristen, so I’m coming to you seeking clarity. How have you felt about this season? Are there good points I’m overlooking? Should I just be happy that HBO is paying a kamillion dollars for a show where characters argue about interpretive translations of Plutarch?

KRISTEN: Now this is a twist worthy of an intensely cryptic robot Western: Somehow I — a sci-fi dilettante who never really knew what was happening on

season 2 more than EW’s resident geek-culture king? I wonder if our difference of opinion is down to

we watch this show — not, like, which screen we use, but what we’re searching for as viewers when we enter the park.

As I noted in my earlier review, I’m more of a passive

fan — letting the story carry me through the episodes like I’m drifting down the lazy river at a hotel water park. Questions flit in and out of my mind —

Hmmmm… what’s this “door” everyone keeps talking about?

them to be answered right away. It might have something to do with growing up watching daytime soaps, a storytelling format that routinely spreads one day of action across two weeks of episodes. And it helps that this season of

is, in my opinion, a lot easier to follow given the slower pace. After the intense novelty of season 1, I’m invested enough in these characters to watch them march — or, in some cases, shuffle casually — toward their destinies.

Yes, Maeve spent most of the last nine episodes searching for her daughter, only to lose her again — likely for good — but I think that goes to the point of this season: The future always wins. Free will, destiny, luck, religion — all these are terms created to impart a sense of order on our existence, and it doesn’t matter if the “our” is human or host. Maeve thought breaking free from her Delos captors would allow her to change the end of her story. It didn’t. Dolores believes the same thing, though her plan of riding into the Valley Beyond with Teddy by her side has already failed. Bernard desperately wants to understand — himself, his world, his purpose — but that’s a luxury even those of us not in the midst of a horrific robot rebellion rarely achieve. Charlotte will do whatever it takes to get “the package” out of Westworld, but it seems increasingly unlikely that her control over the hosts at HQ will last.

get what he wants is the Man in Black. In season 1, he was all about finding “the maze” (a storyline that is, in retrospect, totally irrelevant), and now he wants to find “the door” — presumably to the Forge, where the guest data/souls/reincarnation insurance is held. But what he really wants is for Westworld and everything it stands for to burn — and if I were exec producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, I’d use the season finale to light the match, and the third season letting the fire rage until it dies.

We know season 3 is coming, Darren, so what do you need to see in the finale to keep you on