HBO's Westworld(v4)- What door? [spoilers]

[Ramsay B.]

Continue.

[Fragile Bird]

Here's the Episode 8 trailer if you want to get in the mood...

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/news/a814374/westworld-episode-8-trailer-first-look-images/

[RumHam]

Rewatching the last episode ahead of tonight's, the thing that stuck out that most was this exchange between Theresa and Ford:

Quote

 

Theresa: "Your time running this place and your insane little kingdom is over."

Ford: "I Simply wanted to tell my stories. It was you people [who] wanted to play god; With your little undertakings."

 

I think this is the only actual evidence so far that they will probably go the Futureworld route down the line. 

[Jaxom 1974]

Quick observation as I watch tonight's episode: William's white cowboy hat sure does seem to have gotten grayer as they've gone along...

[Trebla]

2 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Quick observation as I watch tonight's episode: William's white cowboy hat sure does seem to have gotten grayer as they've gone along...

Well, William's hostess from ep 2 (Angela, actress Talulah Riley) is in the park and the MiB recognized her as being an old bot...and I had given up on William being MiB last episode.

[Fragile Bird]

Well.  That took me by surprise.

[Fez]

No idea what happened in that episode. The Maeve going rogue stuff is still really, really bad (though the way she acted in the shootout was neat), the Bernard/Ford stuff was solid, and everything else was just confusing.

Did William and Dolores jump through time together? Because that's what it seemed like; that they came up to the intact town, Dolores had a flashback, and then afterwards they're standing next to the burned out town with the church buried.

ETA: Real glad that Abernathy is going to be back in some capacity though; that actor was great.

[Trebla]

17 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Well.  That took me by surprise.

I am so utterly confused...but I LIKE IT! 

We did get some answers. Bernard was never human and that surprised me. He appeared to kill Elsie though I'm gonna have to go back and re-watch the scene where she was trying to call him and she got attacked. Also, Theresa being confirmed dead was a shock. So who is Ford building under his secret house?

What is REALLY bothering me, though, is how no one seems to see in real life or in the park what Maeve is doing. Earlier episodes seemed to indicate that security was aware of everything the Hosts were doing and pulled them accordingly. 

eta: It was bothering me all episode where had I seen the actress who is playing the new Clementine: Lili Simmons. She came out in season 1 of True Detective, playing Hart's (Woody Harrelson) second mistress. I do hope the old Clementine gets to come back. 

[HokieStone]

Yeah...all kinds of timelines at this point.  I think MiB recognizing "Angela" sort of nails the two major timelines taking place.  But it would seem that Delores is having flashbacks to an even earlier timeline.  And the MiB killing Maeve threw me...but I think that was only a year or so previous to "current" events.  I thought Maeve had been the madame longer. 

Things that don't really make sense - the park workers call the hosts by name even when they're in the "shop".  Ford calls Maeve by that name when she's hysterical after her daughter getting killed - so the name seems to follow them around.  So calling the new call girl by "Clementine" doesn't really fit.

And yeah...Maeve's storyline is simultaneously interesting...and incredibly stupid.  No one else would notice what the two technicians were doing?  And they wouldn't notice her abnormal behavior even more so than they already have?

[Mark Antony]

13 minutes ago, HokieStone said:

Yeah...all kinds of timelines at this point.  I think MiB recognizing "Angela" sort of nails the two major timelines taking place.  But it would seem that Delores is having flashbacks to an even earlier timeline.  And the MiB killing Maeve threw me...but I think that was only a year or so previous to "current" events.  

Yeah this is what I thought but it was all pretty confusing.

Maeve being able to control all the hosts was a little much. The flashbacks with MIB killing Maeve and her daugher were interesting though. 

[Baitac]

Does someone remember what Maeve was told about how long she's been acting as Madam? I'm trying to see if it coincides with the MIB's timeline. He said he killed Maeve and daughter "last year." I am stuck with the idea that the MiB is a host. The more he reveals about his life, the less I believe him, after all, all hosts have a backstory. The thankful person could have been a plant. His search for "the truth" is such a lame reason to play the game, in my opinion. I envision a reveal that the last host built by Ford is the MiB, a la Kaiser Soze.

i hope this episode lays to rest the opinion that the MiB is a good person. When saying "I can't," Teddy could have meant that he wouldn't rather than he was technically unable. Aaargh! I can't stop thinking that the climax of the series will be that the MIB's "deep truth" revealed is that he is, indeed, a host.

 

[Castel]

16 minutes ago, Mark Antony said:

Yeah this is what I thought but it was all pretty confusing.

Maeve being able to control all the hosts was a little much. The flashbacks with MIB killing Maeve and her daugher were interesting though. 

I'm actively rooting against Maeve now, and I feel kinda bad about it. 

It might have something to do with her going rogue starting off on the wrong foot with me or just that I'm far more interested in how magnificent bastards Ford and Man-in-Black do, I dunno.

[Ordos]

Logan did not get killed by those confederates. That confirms that if the different timeline theory is correct, at that point the hosts have not yet begun to rebel. If so however, Dolores is still a loyal host for many years even though for many years she has a memory which makes me ask if she knows more than she reveals but does not know yet how to escape the park and is just waiting.

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

26 minutes ago, Baitac said:

Does someone remember what Maeve was told about how long she's been acting as Madam? I'm trying to see if it coincides with the MIB's timeline. He said he killed Maeve and daughter "last year." I am stuck with the idea that the MiB is a host. The more he reveals about his life, the less I believe him, after all, all hosts have a backstory. The thankful person could have been a plant. His search for "the truth" is such a lame reason to play the game, in my opinion. I envision a reveal that the last host built by Ford is the MiB, a la Kaiser Soze.

i hope this episode lays to rest the opinion that the MiB is a good person. When saying "I can't," Teddy could have meant that he wouldn't rather than he was technically unable. Aaargh! I can't stop thinking that the climax of the series will be that the MIB's "deep truth" revealed is that he is, indeed, a host.

 

Maeve thought she was the madam for 12 years when in truth she was only the Madam for a year. 

[Castel]

If MiB is a host it's the mother of all red herrings, given how his dialogue and actions (recognizing the host that introduced William, William having a wife waiting for him, which is the exact same amount of time MiB has both been coming to the park and married) clearly syncs up.

Honestly, the only problem for the two timelines is how Dolores is flashing backwards to an even earlier time. Other than that I'd call it a wrap and say he can't be a host.

[Astromech]

1 hour ago, Trebla said:

 

eta: It was bothering me all episode where had I seen the actress who is playing the new Clementine: Lili Simmons. She came out in season 1 of True Detective, playing Hart's (Woody Harrelson) second mistress. I do hope the old Clementine gets to come back. 

Haha, she'll always be Rebecca Bowman to me.

I was a little disappointed on the MiB reveal unless it is simply misdirection from the writers. However, it worked as a framed reveal for Maeve. Maeve's arc the past two or three episodes has been a bit too convenient at times. I find myself being equally interested in and frustrated by it.

Bernard's struggle with "memories" and "feelings" was quite interesting. Jeffrey Wright was fantastic.Did Bernard go rogue when he apparently killed Elsie or was that Ford's call? Stubbs may not be long for this world if he keeps digging into Bernard and Theresa's relationship. Ford acknowledging Theresa's death was a bit of a shock for me. I was sure we would see a host Theresa. I hope we get an epic confrontation between Ford and corporate by the end of the season.

The Dolores multiple timelines is a bit confusing. So the critical failure was 35 years ago, MiB first visited the park and was married 30 years ago? So if William is the MiB, his story with Dolores is 30 years ago. Damn, I really am hoping William is not the MiB. That is being a bit too cute with numerous time periods. I did enjoy the flashback to that original failure.

Will we ever see Arnold? Whether still alive, or a flashback?

[Fragile Bird]

I actually thought the numbers were 10 years and a bit over 6 months for Maeve. And it seem the sentience is a relatively recent phenomena, then.  It was interesting to see Maeve's feelings could not be supressed, Ford thought he wiped her memory and she grabbed the knife or screwdriver or whatever it was and stabbed herself in the neck. And Bernard's feelings for Theresa! I'm sorry that Elsie seems to be dead.

Could it be possible that Logan is the MiB?  That, or William gets tortured and turns into the MiB? William and the MiB seem to match-up in everything but character. He does seem to be one psychotic sick fucker though. A sociopath, someone with no feelings, and William has lots of feelings. Psychopaths are born, not made in adulthood.

As for Dolores, there would have been several years of teaching the hosts how to behave like humans, before the park opened.  The town must have been the original location, later moved to, what is it called? Sweetwater? But the original town would be 'home' to her. Three ideas about the massacre she remembers:

1.  It was a test run to see how the crew deals with repairs

2.  What happened when the first guests came, or

3.  A code failure and a rogue host committing a slaughter, although hosts kill hosts all the time...

But maybe there's a 4th, the massacre was a result of the clash between Ford and Arnold.

And it seems to me that I called it in the last thread, Felix and Sylvester are hosts.  Felix seals Sylvester's neck wound with the torch.

I liked how Maeve acquired the nuanced voice commands Ford uses. She spoke like it was narrative, and the hosts she spoke to obeyed.  No mystery power, in-built coding.

 

[Castel]

11 minutes ago, Astromech said:

Will we ever see Arnold? Whether still alive, or a flashback?

I don't know that we will and...I don't know that we need to? He casts a shadow as-is.

Just now, Fragile Bird said:

 Could it be possible that Logan is the MiB?  That, or William gets tortured and turns into the MiB? William and the MiB seem to match-up in everything but character. He does seem to be one psychotic sick fucker though. A sociopath, someone with no feelings, and William has lots of feelings. Psychopaths are born, not made in adulthood.

 

He clearly seemed to want to kill that wounded host. Dolores dying to Logan and a few years of coming and going eroding his sense of their humanity...and there you go.

This is why, if he's the MiB, I don't necessarily like the reveal they had of his big moment of murder0revelation being so late with Maeve.

[DMC]

While I did not recognize that being Elsie that Bernard killed in the flashblack, that makes sense in my brother is sure of it.  So, in that case and based on Bernard's conversation with Stubbs, do we think we're getting a host Elsie soon?  

The Dolores timelines match for me because if she is currently in the "30 years ago" timeline with the MIB/William, they already established quite a few episodes back that Arnold has died in a conversation between Logan and William (and by the context of the conversation, it seems rather recently).  So, whatever is going on with Dolores may be related to Arnold's death and/or his "bicameral" legacy activating.

Relatedly, I found it interesting one of Dolores' flashbacks was her (presumably) killing herself - just how it appears Maeve attempted to when she was despondent after her daughter was killed (in the exam room with Bernard).  It entertains me to think when the hosts experience their first extreme cognitive dissonance/self-realization, their initial response is to kill themselves - as in a lot of the early Beta testing was figuring how to prevent all the self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

Final thought:  I found it the "show not tell" quote...telling.  Between Ford, the MIB, and even "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Felix and Sylvester) Unwittingly Catalyze the Robot Apocalypse," there's been a LOT of telling the past few episodes.  Outside of the Bernard reveal (which was perfectly done), they really need to get to the showing part in the last two episodes.

Oh, and on Intersteller, Jonah's ending was FAR different (and made much more sense).  One can argue why Chris changed it - throughout all his films he seems to have a thing for at least giving the "children" (in this case Murph) a happy ending - but I think the difference is important if you're going to use it as an argument for Westworld.

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

That, or William gets tortured and turns into the MiB? William and the MiB seem to match-up in everything but character. He does seem to be one psychotic sick fucker though. A sociopath, someone with no feelings, and William has lots of feelings. Psychopaths are born, not made in adulthood.

Well, I'm not sure I would characterize the MIB as a sociopath - sociopaths would not care about their wife dying and change their whole life due to the notion they may have caused her suicide.  Anyway, I do think it's noteworthy William presumably killed the suffering guy at the beginning of the episode while Dolores was not looking...