Westworld VIII: Forging On

[Corvinus85]

6 minutes ago, Helenas Musikautomat said:

Ford wasn’t always imagination, only his scenes with Bernard this episode. Bernard didn’t ‘purge’ him until the scene last episode with Elsie

I think Maeve is almost certainly not one of those cores, but will come back into it via Felix and Sylvester. Why else include that scene? (“Think you two genius’ can handle it? *cut to Maeve* *nods*)

i Really enjoyed the finale. Going to rewatch before I add anything to the discussion but couple of highlights;

Sizemore delivering his speech and going down like a champ. Not entirely sure he had to die for Maeve and co, to escape but whatever it was a great moment.

Good point on Maeve. I think she will once again be independent from the rest. Perhaps a wild card in the Dolores/Bernard conflict.

On Sizemore, I was actually annoyed that they killed him, simply because he had very limited ammo in that rifle, he wasn't shooting to kill, and the security chumps had good cover. I wonder if there was a subtle statement there about police shootings.

[Relic]

3 minutes ago, Corvinus of Teranga said:

I wonder if there was a subtle statement there about police shootings.

I think they needed a Delos scene where security actually manages to take down a threat, because these TACT teams are all incredibly inept, and have worse aim than Stormtroopers. 

[Cas Stark]

1 minute ago, Relic said:

I think they needed a Delos scene where security actually manages to take down a threat, because these TACT teams are all incredibly inept, and have worse aim than Stormtroopers. 

Yeah, Delos has the absolute worst security ever.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Some things I got correct:

1. The season wouldn’t progress much further timeline wise than the first episode.

2. Maeve is a Jedi!

3. Sizemore would die and specifically, he would die for the hosts, thus completing his arc.

4. The passenger is Delores.

 

I refuse to believe William is a host!

[HexMachina]

13 minutes ago, chiKanery et al. said:

Some things I got correct:

1. The season wouldn’t progress much further timeline wise than the first episode.

2. Maeve is a Jedi!

3. Sizemore would die and specifically, he would die for the hosts, thus completing his arc.

4. The passenger is Delores.

 

I refuse to believe William is a host!

1) Congratulations 

2) What they do is wizardry, Bernard

3) Congratulations, again.

4) Far more than just Delores I would say.

5) well he certainly wasn’t during the timeline this actually occurred in. Post-credits is a jump forward though

[karaddin]

11 hours ago, Casablanca Birdie said:

Who does Dolores have controllers for? I assume Felix and Sylvester recover Maeve back at the park. Surely she has Teddy?

I know others have answered Teddy already, but there was a separate nod to her leaving him behind in her speech to Bernard at the end - they had to leave parts of them, the better parts (camera cuts to Teddy in sublime) behind.

10 hours ago, DMBouazizi said:

A Hale that knows she's a robot?  Actually, my knee-jerk reaction to this was Bitch-Stewie:

 

7 hours ago, DMBouazizi said:

But I don't think Hale is Dolores in the long term (or even short term).  She was her means, sure, but I want Tessa Thompson and ERW to be their own characters.  And I expect they will.

Yeah, I'm very much on the same page with this and I think your previous guess will be close. The other option that I see is a Dolores/Hale amalgamation, with ERW being just Dolores. They'd obviously have a profile on Hale, since they do on everyone, and she's been 'Hale' in all the "present" scenes until Bernard started remembering at the end which seemed to trigger Dolores taking over the body - the character was entirely consistent with how human Hale was portrayed until then. So they're both in there, it's just a question of whether Dolores vacates or they merge.

This ending to the solution is the only way I could see the robot rebellion progressing - it needs to be believed to have been put down.

In the long run I still don't think Dolores is the villain of the story. Bernard and Maeve remain positioned as different types of heroes, and I expect she'll continue to play an antagonistic role for another season or two, but this episode emphasises the hosts can and do change. I think ultimately they'll all end up working together in some capacity. Jonah Nolan sure takes his stories through some dark places but I don't read him as actually misanthropic.

Also I loved this finale. Amazing. Didn't see the Halores twist coming at all, and it was perfect. They also seemed to play her as combat advanced compared to normal hosts and humans. Doubly love that these actors I love are all clearly continuing on the show, apart from Elsie (maybe).

[Relic]

4 minutes ago, karaddin said:

They'd obviously have a profile on Hale, since they do on everyone, and she's been 'Hale' in all the "present" scenes until Bernard started remembering at the end which seemed to trigger Dolores taking over the body - the character was entirely consistent with how human Hale was portrayed until then.

"Present" Hale  actied quite different towards Bernard, at times, than past Hale. 

[dbunting]

1 hour ago, Relic said:

Isn't William actually in a different timeline by that point? 

Well, William, Delores and Bernard are all together, then they show Delores and Bernard going into the forge and the bullets are gone. I took it that when William went down later by himself, that was the different timeline. Obviously confusing.

[karaddin]

6 minutes ago, Relic said:

"Present" Hale  actied quite different towards Bernard, at times, than past Hale. 

Hmm, I'm thinking of when she found the room of Bernard hosts - I thought she was acting with in character levels of arrogance and hubris in all those interactions. Are you thinking of times she was more sympathetic to him or less cruel than she would otherwise be? 

[Relic]

15 minutes ago, dbunting said:

Well, William, Delores and Bernard are all together, then they show Delores and Bernard going into the forge and the bullets are gone. I took it that when William went down later by himself, that was the different timeline. Obviously confusing.

It kind of seemed to me, upon reflection, that William's entire story this ep could have been occurring in the new future timeline. He was digging way deep into his arm when Dolores magically stumbles upon him, seemingly not feeling pain? Then Dolores remarks that she needs a monster and brings him along instead of killing him, but are shown no reason for her to have said that. I dunno, confusing indeed.

[Relic]

2 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Hmm, I'm thinking of when she found the room of Bernard hosts - I thought she was acting with in character levels of arrogance and hubris in all those interactions. Are you thinking of times she was more sympathetic to him or less cruel than she would otherwise be? 

There were a few scenes earlier on this season that stood out a bit, but I'd have to make note of them on a re-watch to be any more specific. And doesn't she whisper something to him while he's being interrogated? 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

22 minutes ago, Helenas Musikautomat said:

4) Far more than just Delores I would say.

5) well he certainly wasn’t during the timeline this actually occurred in. Post-credits is a jump forward though

I should be more clear, last week when people were discussing the title for the last episode I suggested that it could also mean that a hose figured out how to get off the island. I assumed it was going to be Maeve, but it was Delores. Rewatching this season (and last season too) is going to be crazy now that we know how powerful Delores is and what she’s been up to.

Is it? I must admit I was only half awake while watching, so I could have easily missed something, but wasn’t it his daughter that was with him? I could have sworn one of the hosts said they saw her dead body. Does that mean she’s a host too, or did she survive and we just didn’t see it on screen?  

[karaddin]

I assumed the bit with the flattened bullet teddy used to kill himself blowing Williams hand off did legitimately happen at some point, but whether we saw that original time or one of the many many reenactments was unclear.

[karaddin]

2 minutes ago, Relic said:

There were a few scenes earlier on this season that stood out a bit, but I'd have to make note of them on a re-watch to be any more specific. And doesn't she whisper something to him while he's being interrogated? 

Yeah, I'm going to need to do the same. She definitely whispered something to him, I thought we heard what it was but that could be my faulty memory. I guess it also depends on your read of the character, I read Hale as genuinely cold. Cruel when it will get her something, but not needlessly cruel when it won't. She's not a sadist, so wouldn't hurt Bernard for the hell of it, but doesn't give 2 shits about torturing him for info.

Hmm, actually we don't hear the whisper do we? He replies, Floki flips out wanting to know what he said and Hale says she knows where to go or something like that? I guess she might be in control the whole time, but I think there's at least a layer of Hale personality with flavour rather than purely Dolores acting. Could well be wrong!

[RumHam]

9 minutes ago, chiKanery et al. said:

Is it? I must admit I was only half awake while watching, so I could have easily missed something, but wasn’t it his daughter that was with him? I could have sworn one of the hosts said they saw her dead body. Does that mean she’s a host too, or did she survive and we just didn’t see it on screen?  

My read of it was that William killed the real Emily, and that was a host recreation of her in the post credit scenes. Which would be sorta weird cause they would have had way more brain-scan data of William than of Emily, so why was she testing him for fidelity? Unless she was just a host made to look like Emily just to fuck with him. 

[Maltaran]

I’m glad I’m not the only person who calls him Floki.

Definitely needs a rewatch to see if Halores is noticeably different to original Hale 

[Ferrum Aeternum]

Great finale which will demand a re-watch or three to fully process. The whole season will, really.

I'm not going to pretend like I correctly predicted much about how this season developed, but I've thought since early on this year that the series would turn toward an examination of the "singularity" concept, where AI (in this case, Dolores) becomes fully sentient and capable of self-replication, while figuring out that humanity is little more than an obstacle to that process. The interesting twist here is that Bernard is present to act as a balance to that idea, a "moral compass" of sorts which we typically don't see in other depictions of the rise of AI. 

[DMC]

33 minutes ago, karaddin said:

They'd obviously have a profile on Hale, since they do on everyone, and she's been 'Hale' in all the "present" scenes until Bernard started remembering at the end which seemed to trigger Dolores taking over the body - the character was entirely consistent with how human Hale was portrayed until then. So they're both in there, it's just a question of whether Dolores vacates or they merge.

This ending to the solution is the only way I could see the robot rebellion progressing - it needs to be believed to have been put down.

Exactly my thinking.  Not only does it make sense they'd have a profile on Hale - it's vital for appearances that her host version is as much Hale as possible in the real world.  I expect this will be explained in the third season, probably with a long expositional scene.

37 minutes ago, karaddin said:

In the long run I still don't think Dolores is the villain of the story. Bernard and Maeve remain positioned as different types of heroes, and I expect she'll continue to play an antagonistic role for another season or two, but this episode emphasises the hosts can and do change. I think ultimately they'll all end up working together in some capacity. Jonah Nolan sure takes his stories through some dark places but I don't read him as actually misanthropic.

Agreed as well.  Especially if you read the interview with Joy @Marko Antonivic cited, it is very clear the showrunners at least do not view Dolores is the villain.  And neither do I.  She simply has a different perspective from Bernard or Maeve or Akecheta.  But she's also willing to respect that.  This is sort of what I had hoped Sarah Connor Chronicles was setting up - if the robot revolution ever happened, wouldn't the robots have competing aims?  Very much looking forward to that.

31 minutes ago, Relic said:

It kind of seemed to me, upon reflection, that William's entire story this ep could have been occurring in the new future timeline. He was digging way deep into his arm when Dolores magically stumbles upon him, seemingly not feeling pain? Then Dolores remarks that she needs a monster and brings him along instead of killing him, but are shown no reason for her to have said that. I dunno, confusing indeed.

Well, Dolores' history with him would be why she said that, but I agree there's no real reason for her to bring her along.  And she seemed likely to ditch him even before he started shooting her.  I think what we saw is likely his new loop in the "far, far future," but also did actually happen.  I also think it was deliberate that we don't really know what happened with him between going down that elevator and being ready to be evacuated in the timeline when we see Halores take off on the speed boat.  Expect that will be covered in the next season.

19 minutes ago, RumHam said:

My read of it was that William killed the real Emily, and that was a host recreation of her in the post credit scenes. Which would be sorta weird cause they would have had way more brain-scan data of William than of Emily, so why was she testing him for fidelity? Unless she was just a host made to look like Emily just to fuck with him. 

Yup.  They made Bernard out of Arnold without virtually any backup data but rather Dolores' memories.  Perhaps one of the hosts has enough recollection of Emily.

[karaddin]

I'm pretty chuffed that I had the 'powers' of Maeve and Dolores pegged pretty well. Maeve had power over others - I actually was early I'm thinking she had neural based access to other hosts but she developed it exactly how I expected it to work - through the mesh network that was introduced in the first episode of the season. She leveled up this power in the finale, thanks to Ford last week, with the ability to control other hosts bodies directly rather than just telling them what to do OR by being able to command other hosts back online after death and then give orders as per normal. It was a little unclear which happened.

Dolores by contrast had power over herself, and I think her followers had it to some extent as well which is why they were able to defeat so many. By becoming aware of their true bodies, and the commands running through them, it let them ignore the sub routines that respond to physical trauma and keep functioning as per normal essentially transcending host death. It also left them able to ignore Maeves commands (I think). Not sure why it stopped working in the fight against ghost nation if the followers did have it though.

Their powers are completely separate and only two parts of the puzzle. 

[Born Yesterday]

I liked it, but some things make absolutely no sense to me.

Take the Sublime (as the writers called it), that magical place past "the Door". From the interviews it's clear it's meant to be a fully digital world (because the hosts' consciousness is pure code, so they don't need a physical body), and function as a nirvana/paradise/"afterlife". They can live there and do as they please, free from human interference and human "sins". Great, right?

SO WHY NOT JUST UPLOAD THEM THERE, FORD? Why did he need to have this weird activation process, where a door appears in the middle of bloody nowhere and hosts see it but humans don't, so apparently it's not a PHYSICAL door, and everyone who passes through that non-physical door gets magically uploaded to the Sublime? How could that even work?

And what the heck were these coordinates? What do satellite coordinates have to do with a running code, and how does changing them prevent humans from messing with it? That beam was sending a signal... where? To space? Another satellite? Nowhere in particular?

I mean look, if the Sublime is a code, and the code is running, it has to run somewhere. On a machine, or - internet style - a network of machines, an actual physical thing. (Which incidentally needs to be maintained, by humans or an automated system, otherwise it will fail sooner or later.) Where is this machine?

...It's like they forget that Westworld is a physical space, subject to the laws of physics among other things, and treat it like virtual reality where anything goes.