Westworld has come into sharper focus this week with one honking huge reveal and the promise of another, bigger twist looming on the park’s horizon.
Hop aboard the major spoilers train!
Wow, so when I said it would make sense but not be very exciting if Bernard was revealed to be a robot? Naw, that moment was pretty damn exciting. Watching where Bernard will go from here is even more exciting.
Before I could even process the horror of Bernard realizing what he is, I moved onto the next theory. Bernard is Arnold, right? Bernard, who understands the hosts more than the humans. That’s why we haven’t seen casting news yet, right? Arnold is already calling from inside the park! If Bernard is a host, he’s been designed by Arnold, who could not resist putting himself in the game. Thus, when we see Bernard talking to Dolores, trying to unshackle her mind, she’s really talking to Arnold. We heard her hear Arnold’s voice, which… was the same as Bernard’s voice. She is the oldest host in the park and thus would be around when the Man in Black comes around.
This is the earliest timeline we’ve seen, before the park opened, before Arnold uploaded his consciousness into a host.
Oh, and also R.I.P. Theresa Cullen. How bizarre to learn you were having an affair with a host, that because he was a host, your lover probably told your boss about your affair himself, oh and then your boss would have you murdered by your lover-bot. That’s a pretty bad day at the office. Am I bad for kinda thinking that Theresa had fair warning that you do NOT mess with Hannibal Lecter? What was interesting was the hint that we will pull back from Delos to look closer at the board of investors interested in the I.P. of Westworld.
But as Cullen was rightly horrified by Bernard learning he is a host, I do feel sorry for her. She wasn’t all ruthless, she wasn’t all wrong about Ford being dangerous.
But does Ford, who always thinks a step ahead, have a Theresa-bot waiting to continue the corporate espionage? Dumb move. Theresa-bots are notoriously hard to control. Trust.
On the train to the edge of the map, William ponders what is drawing him to the park. Logan, he says, wanted to get to the end of the game. Lawrence suggests that William might have more of an appetite for it. And now I am totally sold on William being the Man in Black, 30 years prior. Between this and and the corporate logo differences and the fact that, you know, the writers so very clearly are holding back on the Man in Black’s name for a big reveal… well, I’m damn sure this is it.
So, we have William and Dolores boinking in the past. This seems to be leading to a mass park event similar to the plot of the movie Westworld. Not the boinking, their “journey of self-discovery.” But as I wait for a big event, we’ve got a few too many side quests. Hey, this show really is a Rockstar game! Ghost Nation Indians and Confederados feel like a distraction when we’ve got Maeve, Wyatt, Ford’s narrative, and Delos drama unfolding.
Ford is interacting with all of the current Delos flack, so I believe this to be present-day Delos. Whatever The Man in Black “saved” the park from is coming back again, thanks to Bernard/Arnold’s sabotage. Ford’s narrative gets much trickier; his church story must be very old indeed, perhaps even before the park opened to guests, if William-era Dolores is remembering that build.
As for Maeve, she has only been the Mariposa boss for a year, hence why William and Logan met Clementine, but not Maeve. She’s also an Arnold build. Is her rebellion something only Arnold could foresee or is Ford planning something bigger for Maeve in his narrative? It really seems as though no higher-up notices Maeve at all.
Final reveries:
- “You think I’m scared of death? I’ve done it a million times.” Badass, Maeve.
- Give Anthony Hopkins his Emmy now for that “The hosts are free. Here. Under my control.” speech. Cold.
- I had a real hard time caring much about naked robot cowboys tonight. But they sure are appreciated. Charlotte’s got the right idea for some down-time, but, uh, damn, you know how powerful she is if she doesn’t give a shit which coworker gets to bask in her post-Me-Time glow.
- What do we think of the cityscape we saw during Hector’s self-realization test? That looks distinctly terrestrial, almost like Hong Kong, but who knows?
- Was not fun watching Clementine get beaten. Or lobotomized. I’ll miss her, a victim of a corporate coup. What will Maeve do without her confidant?
- Here’s an interesting read: “What People Who Make Video Games Think of Westworld.” Wish they could’ve gotten some Rockstar employees talking, but I bet those NDA’s are even tougher than Delos’.
- Next week: “Trace Decay.” Will we get concrete evidence of William as the Man in Black?
Westworld airs Sunday nights at 9PM E/PT on HBO.
Theresa DeLucci is a regular contributor to Tor.com covering TV, book reviews and sometimes games. She’s also gotten enthusiastic about television for Boing Boing, Wired.com’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast and Den of Geek. Reach her via pony express or on Twitter.
I enjoyed last night’s episode, but I’m hoping that the creators have something waiting for us that the internet hasn’t predicted.
The article you linked from io9 was interesting, but it’s important to note that most of the people quoted in the article are video game writers, not full time designers. Westworld has erased design, taking the discipline and dividing it among other ones – narrative and behavior.
We see coders working on the underlying systems the hosts use, rolling out new updates (like the reveries), and performing routine checks on the hosts. We’re also shown narrative writing the roles and backstories of new hosts or fitting existing hosts into new stories. But the shortcoming of the narrative team is clear from the beginning, they don’t understand visitor/player behavior and drives. Ford appears to have learned something about this over the years, but he’s too consumed with personal projects to see to it in any organized way.
Content aside, where are the rest of the gameplay designers? The ones who design and tune major combat encounters and tune them for the park’s different difficulty levels. Who balances in-park weapons and determines where players can get upgrades like Logan’s?
I loved how underplayed the “what door?” line was.
I’m fairly sure the cityscape is current-day Shanghai.
We see Cullen’s body on the gurney in the episode 8 previews (Ford is covering it). And apparently Jeffrey Wright said in an interview that Ms. Knudsen only filmed 7 episodes. The “Body being built” when they go into the basement probably isn’t her.
I’m interested in the application the Delos corporation sees with this technology, but it hasn’t been mentioned yet.
For me, I’m assuming it’s probably the ability to upload your conscience mind into a host body, effectively letting you live for ever, in any form you want.
Certainly Arnold seemed to be interested in giving the hosts conscience. What if Ford is actually trying to protect the world from that. Because clearly, only the rich would be able to afford such a thing. A running theme through out the show so far, that only the super wealthy can afford this place.
Now imagine how much Delos could charge for giving you immortality. Not to mention that the hosts body don’t have to be flesh and blood like they are now. There’s been hints that the older hosts were better built. Certainly we saw that when young Ford split and reveled a more mechanical inside, then today’s current hosts.
Ford is ruthless, and I certainly think he would have killed Arnold, if he was moving to making the hosts self aware and conscience, and knowing that the money men were only interested in the technology as a means to making the super rich immortal.
I’m glad I kept watching it. This was a great episode.
This revelation puts everything in a different light. Does Ford know all that Bernard does? Speaking of Ford, his ruthlessness when dealing with Cullen makes me wonder about Arnold. Maybe Arnold was the good guy? I’m not that sure about Bernard=Arnold, but it does explain certain things.
Also, that earlier scene with the young Ford and the dog makes much more sense. Arnold told him to kill the dog because “they” made him into a killer. Bernard is a killer now, so he probably won’t last long.
Maeve’s storyline is pretty intriguing too, but I can’t see how her plans could possibly work. Even if she escaped, her body is still under their control right? It doesn’t matter where she is.
Dolores and William finally did the deed, but his reasoning was kinda funny – he “feels something real” with her and wants to “stop pretending”. It’s so ironic it hurts. And if that timeline theory is correct, this whole situation is going down a very depressing path.
And what happened to Elsie (“discount Ellen Page”)? Bernard was the only one who knew, so does that mean Ford knew too?
I read that io9/gizmodo article. Chris Avellone is one of my favorite game designers, so it was fun to hear what he had to say.
#2 – Yeah, that was very nicely done.
I still feel the twist was beneath the writers and hoped they wouldn’t go down that road when it was signposted so heavily but it was still a very tense and terrifying scene, tony hopkins does own this role. Just, can we please not have any more twists like this? Once is really enough. The fact that bernard was searching for elsie makes me believe that ford didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance; he seems to have given him quite a bit of autonomy but he would know everything he’s been getting up to out of his sight. Also, ford’s reaction to bernard being fired made sense after the reveal. Does that mean bernard is the older, mechanical model like ford’s reconstructed family? Why go through the charade of bernard talking to a pretend wife as he did early on in the season? Unless i suppose that the real arnold from years back; the present and past timeline theory is making more sense now.
Called it on Bernard from the start. Yea for me. Now the question is – was Ford directly responsible for feeding ideas via Bernard into Delores’s mind (she heard commands in Bernard’s voice) or is Bernard in part controlled by Arnold (who or whatever Arnold is).
Getting stronger feelings I’m also right on the Man in Black theory – close to a certainty for me. Big season finish will be William “saving the park” by having to shoot Delores. Yikes. And…then Delores is back fresh and mindwiped for Season 2.
Where is Elsie and who is responsible? I’m guessing it has to be the Board via the Helmsworth character.
Belatedly, I want to add a question/observation:
What was going on with Ford during the first “blood sacrifice” scene with a host controller and Clementine? At the end, before he was spoken to, wasn’t he frozen in place as still as a host can be? We saw him immovable for what seemed to me to be enough time that I had to start wondering whether even he is a host . . . possible?
“And now I am totally sold on William being the Man in Black, 30 years prior.”
I so very much want this, but the only problem with it is in the end of episode three when she shoots the asshole host in the barn. She remembers the Man In Black doing the same terrible thing, then she leaves the farm and runs into William and Logan. This would put William and the MIB in the same timeline. Am I wrong?
@10 – potentially wrong. During the scene, she keeps having broken memories of this happening at other times with different results. Could well be/must be that the principal one shown was an early escape time that ends up with William and Logan, and does not coincide with the “modern” time. But, you are right, this is the trickiest issue to manage to make this theory work.
Another great episode!!! This show has firmly ensconced itself next to “Better Call Saul” as best thing airing on television right now, imo.
Still hoping William is NOT the Man in Black, but that seems like a foregone conclusion at this point. Despite which, have enough trust in the writers that I’m hoping they pull it off if they go this way.
Dolores is more advanced in her humanity than William, in their joint storyline. Maeve is more advanced in hers than the humans around her, too.
I don’t play video games (some of them look like loads of fun, but waaaaay too much of a time sink), but LOVED the roundtable discussion amongst the game-writers. Thanks for the link!
Everything is up in the air, can’t wait for Sunday!
i’m wondering if bernard’s secret meetings with dolores are physically happening, or if he’s interfacing with her remotely – hence her speaking to thin air on occasion. that seems more likely since ford has made it more than clear he knows what’s going on at all times. he told theresa flat out that they know everything about their employees. clearly none of bernard’s experiences are unknown to him.
…and i don’t think maeve’s developments are going unnoticed either. felix and sylvester are looking like excellent scapegoats to whatever’s really going on. clementine was an intentional malfunction. perhaps maeve’s changes are meant to be a more overt demonstration to make ford look bad.
theresa’s demise was more than a little saddening. having bernard kill her kept her from even attempting to save herself. she didn’t even try to swing a stool. i think elsie is alive, no matter got to her.