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

[Jaxom 1974]

I'm still not clear: Does Ford want the hosts to have consciousness? I don't believe so.  

[RumHam]

2 hours ago, Howdyphillip said:

4. Ford may be a host as well. Arnold's first creation that achieved conciseness. He may also contain Arnold's conciseness, or Arnold lives on through the basic programming of the world. 

I love the idea that Arnold created Ford and treated him as an equal only for Ford to kill him and then build Bernard in his image. 

[Mark Antony]

4 hours ago, RumHam said:

@Ariadne23 Made a good argument for the Delores retreat scene actually making sense. It's still a trick on the audience, but I guess that's to be expected with this kinda twist based storytelling. 

 

Yeah it's more so the Stubbs one that pisses me off. There is no point of showing him wanting to put Dolores back on her loop and then going directly to someone trying to put her back on her loop yet not being the same timeline unless they're just trying to trick the viewer. 

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Mark Antony said:

Yeah it's more so the Stubbs one that pisses me off. There is no point of showing him wanting to put Dolores back on her loop and then going directly to someone trying to put her back on her loop yet not being the same timeline unless they're just trying to trick the viewer. 

What gets me about that one is that the 'we can't tell if she's with a guest because of this convenient technical situation' thing sticks out like a sore thumb. To me it seemed like an obvious contrivance, and I can't think of any other reason for it besides to suggest that the timelines were the same without ever actually confirming it. 

"Trouble in Piraha" is an example of the same thing, but it's a lot less attention grabbing. We're meant to assume they're referring to the events of the previous episode with the Confederados, but it's vague enough that you can't call bullshit once the twist is revealed. As others have pointed out you'd imagine there'd be "trouble" in Piraha fairly often. 

I think maybe the biggest argument in favor of the two(+) timelines theory is the fact that in eight episodes we still haven't seen any direct link from the William/Logan story-line (which began in episode two) and the control center / Man in Black story-lines. That is at the very least odd. 

Edit I should also add that the evidence against it is pretty compelling. That shot in the "in the coming episodes" trailer where

It looks like "Cowgirl" Delores is face to face with Ed Harris is really hard to ignore. But it is possible it's from some scene where she finally makes the connection between William who she loved and this monster in black who had tormented her for years. In other words it would be current Delores remembering her time with William and then inside that memory, William changing into the Man In Black as she makes the connection.

[Cas Stark]

LOL, let's face, Westworld is full of convenient glitches.  Everyone knows what the hosts are doing all the time because it's recorded, except when they don't.  Elsie disappears, and now she's on vacation.  I will grant that Bernard has the skills to erase all of Theresa's actions, but there should also be some video or recordings of her going out in the park, which presumably would be hard to fake...but no one misses those either.....

It's going to need to really kill it in the last two episodes to keep the whole thing from spinning apart into insanity.  I will still watch next season even if I dislike the end of this year, but it's starting to feel much more contrived than it did initially at least to me.

[Astromech]

Spoiler

 

 

7 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

LOL, let's face, Westworld is full of convenient glitches.  Everyone knows what the hosts are doing all the time because it's recorded, except when they don't.  Elsie disappears, and now she's on vacation.  I will grant that Bernard has the skills to erase all of Theresa's actions, but there should also be some video or recordings of her going out in the park, which presumably would be hard to fake...but no one misses those either.....

It's going to need to really kill it in the last two episodes to keep the whole thing from spinning apart into insanity.  I will still watch next season even if I dislike the end of this year, but it's starting to feel much more contrived than it did initially at least to me.

I share your concern for the showrunners' ability to stick the landing in the next two episodes. A few events seem a bit too convenient at this point. I've always been irritated by "the plot wills it". We shall see.

[RumHam]

18 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Everyone knows what the hosts are doing all the time because it's recorded, except when they don't.

In fairness there's a difference between "The hosts record/remember everything" and "Park staff have real time feeds of what the hosts are doing." Odd as it is, it seems like the hosts are not networked and one has to physically reach them (and count on them not bashing their skull in with a rock) in order to to retrieve their data. In any event I get the impression that the host's videographic memories are part of the "data" that Ford keeps to himself and Delos is desperate to extract. 

 

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

19 minutes ago, Astromech said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

I share your concern for the showrunners' ability to stick the landing in the next two episodes. A few events seem a bit too convenient at this point. I've always been irritated by "the plot wills it". We shall see.

I just want to know where the park is. 

[Astromech]

15 minutes ago, Arch-MaesterPhilip said:

I just want to know where the park is. 

Anaheim

[RumHam]

12 minutes ago, Arch-MaesterPhilip said:

I just want to know where the park is. 

I'd bet heavily on Mars. Or at least that it's not on Earth but in this solar system. I'm not an expert on stars, but I'd imagine it'd be unlikely that another star system would have the same view of Orion. 

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

9 minutes ago, Astromech said:

Anaheim

Hiyo!

8 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I'd bet heavily on Mars. Or at least that it's not on Earth but in this solar system. I'm not an expert on stars, but I'd imagine it'd be unlikely that another star system would have the same view of Orion. 

That or Mars I guess. I'm not sure it would either. 

[karaddin]

20 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Actually I was thinking that she is flashing forwards. That the present day Dolores is wandering on her own, remembering her journey with William. Granted she did flash backwards when she got into that town, but considering that Ford appears to bring that town back, we may see if she gets there again.

We have two different scenes in this episode where she is slipping through memories. They find the guy shot with an arrow, she walks down to the water - flashes to seeing her own corpse in it and hears a distorted voice (that sounds distinctly like her own mixed with another voice) saying "come find me", turns and scans the beach and William is gone and so is the body, looks back to the water and its clear again then looks back up the beach and William is there again.  

They walk through a rock formation together and the camrea goes from a shot of William and Delores to looking over Delores' shoulder at the town - standing but abandoned and she says "I'm home". We get a shot of William not giving anything away with his reaction, then follow her walking towards the town. In a cut she transitions to the memory of the town populated then as she walks amongst it she sees a bunch of hosts we know including Maeve and Lawrences daughter who sees her unlike everyone else and asks her "did you find what you were looking for Delores?" then we shift to Delores shooting up the place and killing herself. Cut to William snapping her out of doing that and we shift to the 'present' for the William timeline which looks identical to when we saw the buried church in episode 2 with Ford. So there are clearly 3 timelines here - the oldest is her shooting the place up, one where the town is standing but abandoned and the one with William when the town is buried. Its unclear if the second timeline is before or after the third.

The straightforward interpretation of the first of these is that in the William timeline she's flashing back to earlier trips there, on one occasion she died there. More convoluted (which is required to fit William=MiB) is that the brief flash we get of her seeing the corpse in the water is her travelling on her own in the present and briefly waking out of it and remembering a different trip. The second one is trickier, either she is alone in the present and the town has been rebuilt for the new storyline and her walking into the town alone is reality or William is in the present and the flash to the town standing but empty is after the massacre but before the town was destroyed. The conversation about "Arnold wanting her to do it" is definitely occurring with William though.

12 hours ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

As for Felix, yeah, while I can see him helping Maeve, there's helping and then there's giving her God-like powers and the possibility of killing humans. That's just too much.

I think Felix is in love with her, in a weird and confused and not actually love kinda obsession way. That more than explains his poor judgement in everything thats happened.

7 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

Still unsure how I feel about the whole multiple timelines thing. Some of the misdirections from previous eps (Stubbs sending someone to put Dolores back on her loop, Dolores running into William after Teddy going to look for Wyatt) kind of annoy me. Seems like they were more to trick the viewer than clever editing imo. 

But now we know Dolores is retracing her steps from one of her previous "off-loop" trips and is by herself in the present. I just don't understand why HQ is allowing her to go off loop again. 

That interaction is one of the biggest arguments against William=MiB to me. If she's not travelling with anyone else why doesn't Stubbs guy pull her in at that point? We know Stubbs is in the present, not 30 years ago. We know she is off loop in the present because when Ford interrogates her in that same episode she says its "34 years" since she spoke to Arnold which is when he died. Which is also my big problem with Delores being in the past - it means this entire journey where she's off loop we aren't seeing what happened. I know the camera is now confirmed as unreliable, but even seeing the whole journey from her pov reliving memories leaves an awful lot out, like why she hasn't been pulled in at any point or why they're not even concerned if she's not with someone.

I guess it all being reliving memories through her eyes does mean its technically in the present/one timeline though. Other than the William/Logan stuff before they met up with her.

[RumHam]

41 minutes ago, karaddin said:

That interaction is one of the biggest arguments against William=MiB to me. If she's not travelling with anyone else why doesn't Stubbs guy pull her in at that point? We know Stubbs is in the present, not 30 years ago. We know she is off loop in the present because when Ford interrogates her in that same episode she says its "34 years" since she spoke to Arnold which is when he died.

The idea is that her thing with William was the first time she went "off loop*" and she has occasionally wandered off in the thirty years since. The Stubbs scene has to be intentionally misleading for William==MIB to work. Again the main sticking point for me is why does the show hide the fact that Delores is with two guests from Stubbs at that moment? There's really no reason for that other then deliberate misdirection. 

*You could argue the time she shot everyone in the proto-Westword was the first time she went "off loop", but I dunno that she had a loop back then. Also I think that was her just following Arnold's revenge code. 

Edit: 

We know she is off loop in the present because when Ford interrogates her in that same episode she says its "34 years" since she spoke to Arnold which is when he died.

I think if anything this is actually an argument in favor of William==MIB. Just like Bernard's conversations with Delores while she was camping with William and Logan, Ford's interrogation of Delores makes a lot less sense if everything is effectively linear. Otherwise we have to assume that For had Delores faint in that parade in Piraha, then had her taken to HQ. Then spent time talking to her, and then somehow replaced her without William or Logan noticing...It does not make sense. Especially given how protective William is of her at that point. 

[Baitac]

So if William/MiB became a god, it must have been in a different business, as I don't see Logan forgiving him for all the stuff William put him through. I wonder if we'll ever find out about the torn photo. I think it was the trigger for all of this re-awakening, secondary to the reveries update. Is it possible that Ford created the reverie program to flush out any hosts that may have been "infected" with the Arnold program? Can't we just bring back the yellow king? This show is killing me worse! 

[RumHam]

Just now, Baitac said:

So if William/MiB became a god, it must have been in a different business, as I don't see Logan forgiving him for all the stuff William put him through. I wonder if we'll ever find out about the torn photo. I think it was the trigger for all of this re-awakening, secondary to the reveries update. Is it possible that Ford created the reverie program to flush out any hosts that may have been "infected" with the Arnold program? Can't we just bring back the yellow king? This show is killing me worse! 

Nah man, Logan's dad runs Delos. When Logan dies WIlliam marries Logan's sister and takes a(and eventually the) leadership role in the company. William/MiB surviving the "critical failure" might also explain why "that guest gets what he wants." even if he's not the board member sent to evaluate the park.  

[karaddin]

42 minutes ago, RumHam said:

The idea is that her thing with William was the first time she went "off loop*" and she has occasionally wandered off in the thirty years since. The Stubbs scene has to be intentionally misleading for William==MIB to work. Again the main sticking point for me is why does the show hide the fact that Delores is with two guests from Stubbs at that moment? There's really no reason for that other then deliberate misdirection. 

I think if anything this is actually an argument in favor of William==MIB. Just like Bernard's conversations with Delores while she was camping with William and Logan, Ford's interrogation of Delores makes a lot less sense if everything is effectively linear. Otherwise we have to assume that For had Delores faint in that parade in Piraha, then had her taken to HQ. Then spent time talking to her, and then somehow replaced her without William or Logan noticing...It does not make sense. Especially given how protective William is of her at that point. 

First bold - my point is that we know Stubbs sent someone out, there is the first level misdirection of it being someone else that tries to collect her and William stops, but my point is the guy Stubbs did send would have no reason not to bring her in if she's not with a guest. It isnt necessarily the interaction we see, but it would have happened unless you're positing that wasn't Delores at all and no one has noticed she's gone massively off loop without a guest and they've not noticed even once? I find that much harder to believe.

Second bold - she separates from him in the crowd then they don't see each other till the next morning from what we see on screen. That can go either way.

[Baitac]

21 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Nah man, Logan's dad runs Delos. When Logan dies WIlliam marries Logan's sister and takes a(and eventually the) leadership role in the company. William/MiB surviving the "critical failure" might also explain why "that guest gets what he wants." even if he's not the board member sent to evaluate the park.  

We'll see. All of that is predicated upon William being the MiB, which I don't agree with because the MiB is the ultimate host, created by Ford as he created Bernard, right?

So Abernathy is the key. He will have all the knowledge plus the photo trigger which led to his famous quote about the evil games or whatever, which was told to Dolores, which was told to Maeve. I would think that for dramatic purposes he'll be reintroduced to the park. Dolores will remember him: "Daddy!" Will it be enough to save her as she comes face to face with the MiB?  Meanwhile, all these poor hosts self-destruct as they approach the edge of the park. Ford is going to win. He is going to proceed with his new story. On to the second season. The conundrum, the epicenter of the fulcrum is the damn MiB. Damn that character! 

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

I want Ford to win, I root for the bad guy very often. 

[dooog]

24 minutes ago, Arch-MaesterPhilip said:

I want Ford to win, I root for the bad guy very often. 

Me too. And a bonus if Maeve's character ends up getting a lobotomy and decommissioned so she's not around for S2

[Fragile Bird]

I've watched the episode again, and I just realized I hadn't quite caught what Angela (the host who originally greeted William, now part of Wyatt's gang) said or did.

She tells Teddy to kill the MiB. He can't. She comes over and says, 'It takes a while, and we don't have the time, let me help you', and then stabs him in the shoulder with an arrow. It's not a killing wound, it's a wound that causes pain and shock. Trauma. Trauma seems to be an element leading to self-awareness. As the MiB watches, she then says to Teddy (I first thought she was speaking to the MiB) something about 'You've been gone a long time, Theodore. Welcome back to the fold. Wyatt needs you to." [not sure about the last phrase]

Now, I'm puzzled. When Teddy gets killed for the first time and Ford has a chat with him, Ford gives him more of a back story, because Teddy always tells Dolores he can't run away with her because he has things to look after, but he doesn't actually know what those matters are. The back story is the Wyatt story.  The Wyatt story is the new storyline Ford has been working on with Bernard, the one that's disrupting so many of the hosts' storylines in the park. That tells me Teddy was not there at the massacre at all, he must be a newer model.

So, technically speaking, Dolores is not Wyatt because Wyatt is a brand new story. Ford may have used the details from 30 or 34 years ago to form the basis of his Wyatt storyline. but it's all smoke and mirrors to deflect attention from what really happened.

Or, that's a crackpot theory and everyone on Reddit is correct.  

Something else that bothers me, I've read some reviews about the episode and everyone is talking about how William is turning from a white hat to the ultimate black hat, pointing to him killing the young soldier boy as an example. People here have said the same thing. But how? I just watched the replay. He waits beside him while Dolores gets water and has her flashback of her body in the river. When she comes back with the canteen, the boy is still alive, but just about to die. What in heaven's name does everyone think William did to the boy? More misdirection?

Another thing I noticed, when Maeve wakes up and starts talking to Sylvester, she says to him that she's smarter than he is, even though you're a 14. For those who still doubt Sylvester is a robot, there's the proof.

And Maeve does not play with her necklace to effect changes, it's all in the instructions she gives by naming the host. To get rid of Clementine, she says "and Clementine took the other girls..." What she has in her hand is a watch, checking the timing of the entry into town of the bandits.

Finally, OMG, surely Hale has chosen the worst possible host to upload the codes into. And doesn't she know about the explosive charge in the spine that every host has? Obviously not, since she wants Abernathy to leave the park on the train. Is that why Maeve told us about it?