Westworld IX; 03.22.20 Divergence - Westeros.org

[karaddin]

10 hours ago, RumHam said:

Stubbs isn't awakened, as far as we know, right? It might be interesting if one of the Doloreses woke him up and he started questioning his "protect Bernard" orders. 

He seems to be in a weird state different to the other hosts, in that he has awareness of being a host and of his limitations and coding but hasn't gained sentience beyond that unlike the others.

4 hours ago, DMC said:

Because he knew Charlotte-Dolores was the mole the entire time and anticipated taking over Delos.  I suppose it could be chalked up to lazy writing, but it also characterizes Serac's overconfidence and even hubris in his knowledge of the future, which makes sense.

I'm pretty sure he didn't know in advance, he comments that "checking on her son" is what gave her away. After she transmits all the data to chip in William (or whatever it was she does) she stands up but hesitates before leaving the room and calls her ex. The Dolorii clearly have malware routines scrubbing all their calls to each other etc, but prime Dolores never considered she might taken Hale's ex and son into her feelings, the scrubbers aren't functioning on his phone so that's when Serac identifies her. It is immediately after this that he calls the board meeting and outs her.

On where Maeve is - her first time running on a simulation wasn't at Delos. Serac didn't own Delos at that point, she was in an isolated system with just the simulation including the simulated Sizemore, running on separate Serac hardware. After she dies to Misashi!Dolores she's plugged into another simulation, possibly even a portable once as its just a scene from her memories rather than a full blown simulation, and asks for allies. Her next experience is waking up back in the WarWorld simulation again, and while it seems immediate to her it can very easily be that that simulation was taken offline, ending her subjective awareness, and plugged back in at Delos only after Serac has taken control. The simulation this time is being used to recruit and brief her "team" while their bodies are printed. Its not a large amount of subjective time that passes for her, even without any time acceleration, and her beating up Nazis + sitting in the bar with Sizemore can easily be the time while Halores is backing up the host data etc and then the two arcs sync up as Halores kills Hector.

She also grabs the Connels Dolores pearl on her way out of the room, it had already been protected from 1 explosion by the casing - I don't see any reason to assume it didn't survive the car bomb as well, so as long as she has another body printer all the Dolores copies can still be in play. After Halores grabs this pearl, we see the Connels Dolores switch off inside Maeve's simulation, so the consciousness was still in the pearl.

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I'm pretty sure he didn't know in advance, he comments that "checking on her son" is what gave her away.

I thought it was actually caring about her son that tipped Serac off (which was kinda the whole point), and that meant she'd been made for quite awhile.

[karaddin]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

I thought it was actually caring about her son that tipped Serac off (which was kinda the whole point), and that meant she'd been made for quite awhile.

Its a single line that is pretty open to interpretation so I think they're both valid reads of what he said. Timeline wise I think it fits better if he doesn't know, but that's again opinion. 

[unJon]

44 minutes ago, karaddin said:

He seems to be in a weird state different to the other hosts, in that he has awareness of being a host and of his limitations and coding but hasn't gained sentience beyond that unlike the others.

I'm pretty sure he didn't know in advance, he comments that "checking on her son" is what gave her away. After she transmits all the data to chip in William (or whatever it was she does) she stands up but hesitates before leaving the room and calls her ex. The Dolorii clearly have malware routines scrubbing all their calls to each other etc, but prime Dolores never considered she might taken Hale's ex and son into her feelings, the scrubbers aren't functioning on his phone so that's when Serac identifies her. It is immediately after this that he calls the board meeting and outs her.

On where Maeve is - her first time running on a simulation wasn't at Delos. Serac didn't own Delos at that point, she was in an isolated system with just the simulation including the simulated Sizemore, running on separate Serac hardware. After she dies to Misashi!Dolores she's plugged into another simulation, possibly even a portable once as its just a scene from her memories rather than a full blown simulation, and asks for allies. Her next experience is waking up back in the WarWorld simulation again, and while it seems immediate to her it can very easily be that that simulation was taken offline, ending her subjective awareness, and plugged back in at Delos only after Serac has taken control. The simulation this time is being used to recruit and brief her "team" while their bodies are printed. Its not a large amount of subjective time that passes for her, even without any time acceleration, and her beating up Nazis + sitting in the bar with Sizemore can easily be the time while Halores is backing up the host data etc and then the two arcs sync up as Halores kills Hector.

She also grabs the Connels Dolores pearl on her way out of the room, it had already been protected from 1 explosion by the casing - I don't see any reason to assume it didn't survive the car bomb as well, so as long as she has another body printer all the Dolores copies can still be in play. After Halores grabs this pearl, we see the Connels Dolores switch off inside Maeve's simulation, so the consciousness was still in the pearl.

Ok this hangs together for me. Lot of extrapolation though and the show didn’t acknowledge that there was anything that needed explaining, which makes me suspicious still of a twist. But hope you are right. 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

After she transmits all the data to chip in William (or whatever it was she does) she stands up but hesitates before leaving the room and calls her ex. The Dolorii clearly have malware routines scrubbing all their calls to each other etc, but prime Dolores never considered she might taken Hale's ex and son into her feelings, the scrubbers aren't functioning on his phone so that's when Serac identifies her. It is immediately after this that he calls the board meeting and outs her.

Just rewatched, and this doesn't follow - at least if you take Serac at his word that he's "been watching [Charlotte-Dolores] since I've landed."  This clearly suggests Serac knew in their first meeting when he orders everything destroyed except "3 assets" - presumably the 3 hosts Maeve requested.  It's rather apparent Serac already knows Charlotte is Dolores in the first meeting, before she transmits anything.

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

Her next experience is waking up back in the WarWorld simulation again, and while it seems immediate to her it can very easily be that that simulation was taken offline, ending her subjective awareness, and plugged back in at Delos only after Serac has taken control.

At about the 26 minute mark in the episode Maeve notices they've been moved within the simulation - she says they're home.  That's when Serac placed her pearl/core/what the fuck ever in the Delos headquarters which Charlotte-Hale was able to gain access to.  Presumably so she could extract Hector and whomever else she intended to recruit.

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

She also grabs the Connels Dolores pearl on her way out of the room, it had already been protected from 1 explosion by the casing - I don't see any reason to assume it didn't survive the car bomb as well, so as long as she has another body printer all the Dolores copies can still be in play. After Halores grabs this pearl, we see the Connels Dolores switch off inside Maeve's simulation, so the consciousness was still in the pearl.

Yep.  I don't get this, but you're absolutely right.  Why Connels-Delores' damaged core remains important I don't know.

Another thing - as for the human red shirts being predictably shitty - the guy that was witnessing Hale's family blow up in the SUV ran away in a typical way criminals would run from the scene of the crime.  Interesting, because it suggests a state has more influence than Serac.  That doesn't really jive with how much influence he purportedly has, but I guess appearances?  Ok, yeah, you can also say lazy writing here.

[red snow]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

 

Another thing - as for the human red shirts being predictably shitty - the guy that was witnessing Hale's family blow up in the SUV ran away in a typical way criminals would run from the scene of the crime.  Interesting, because it suggests a state has more influence than Serac.  That doesn't really jive with how much influence he purportedly has, but I guess appearances?  Ok, yeah, you can also say lazy writing here.

The potentially fun (but unlikely thing) here is that they are in a sim and it is genuinely lazy writing/programming. That said, I don't know if I can continue the show if they pull a big "this season was almost entirely a simulation". That said, the temptation for them to do a final episode where it appears all is lost only to pull back the curtain and reveal it was just the exploration of a trial run gone wrong. There is precedent with the writers as "person of interest" did the same thing - thankfully in a really enjoyable single episode.

[karaddin]

Yeah I just can't see them pulling that with a whole season, it's too much commitment to render pointless. Certain scenes being simulation intermingled with real ones does seem possible though.

DMC - the dialogue was just confusing to me then if you're right and he did already know. That phone call is the only "checking on her son" that we've seen unless it's referring to her predator moment. 

It could make sense if the scenes of her actions between the first board meeting and the second are from the simulation which had run before he arrived and identified her as a Dolores. Or I'm just too caught up on a poor choice of words lol.

[DMC]

54 minutes ago, karaddin said:

It could make sense if the scenes of her actions between the first board meeting and the second are from the simulation which had run before he arrived and identified her as a Dolores. Or I'm just too caught up on a poor choice of words lol.

Lol, yeah, this is starting to hurt my brain.  Gonna go read students' essay submissions for a return to simplicity.  America!

[Ran]

HBO just announced it's ordered a fourth season of the show.

[DMC]

44 minutes ago, Ran said:

HBO just announced it's ordered a fourth season of the show.

Wondering how long Joy and Nolan think this should go.  Gotta figure it'll hit diminishing returns after one more season even in the best case scenario in terms of quality.

[sifth]

15 minutes ago, DMC said:

Wondering how long Joy and Nolan think this should go.  Gotta figure it'll hit diminishing returns after one more season even in the best case scenario in terms of quality.

It honestly doesn't even feel like the same show anymore, but I wonder that as well.

[Cas Stark]

I vaguely remember Joy saying they thought they had 'years' of stories, but I don't really see the show reasonably going beyond one more season.  This year, there will be the finale  of the Dolorii v. AI v. Maeve, presumably Bernard finds them a third way of hosts/humans/AI co existing, blah blah.  And then one more year for? I don't know what the purpose of one more season even will be....other than to get us to distant future where the MiB is being tested for fidelity.    

[.H.]

29 minutes ago, DMC said:

Wondering how long Joy and Nolan think this should go.  Gotta figure it'll hit diminishing returns after one more season even in the best case scenario in terms of quality.

They said 5 season in 2016. (Or at least that they had 5-7 years "planned" whatever that means exactly.)

My guess would be, maybe, we got 2 season to "resolve" the "issue" of the Park.  Now, we might get two seasons to resolve the "issue" of the "real world."  Then, season 5 is the "unification" or resolution of all of that.  In other words, two seasons to destroy the park.  Two seasons to destroy the real world.  Then one last season about what is "next."

Note what Nolan says in that article: "We wanted the story of the origin of a new species and how that would play out in its complexity."

So, I'd guess Hosts are the "new species."  First they liberate themselves from the park.  Then, they liberate the world from "false order."  Then, we are on to a sort of new world order.

Of course, they might have just changed their minds in the meantime though, or the actual execution might take more screen time than planned.  I'd still personally bet on 5-6 seasons, more so than any more than that.

[DMC]

57 minutes ago, .H. said:

Then one last season about what is "next."

An entire season of denouement seems a bit much.  Also totally not the Nolan style to play things out like that.

[Corvinus85]

On 4/14/2020 at 2:51 PM, Corvinus85 said:

I think Caleb not only was an outlier, and got sent to war, but was good enough at his job that he was sent to abduct other outliers, though likely he didn't know what he was doing it for. (at least not initially, maybe that's why his mind was wiped)

Pretty much called it

[unJon]

I found it annoying that Solomon kept talking like reality isn’t real. Speaking of “variations” (or was it versions?). Going to be really upset if some material portion of this season was simulation. 

I liked Caleb’s backstory. Enjoyed the Delores/Maeve fight, and the EMP ending. Not quite buying Maeve’s and Clem’s motivations. And I don’t really know why a handful of scrubs was guarding Solomon. 

The idea of a psychotic AI was cool. 
 

William’s storyline better go somewhere soon. 
 

The real wildcard is Chalores. She is killing off the other Delores’s. Not clear why yet. Revenge? Wants to save humanity due to losing son?

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, unJon said:

I found it annoying that Solomon kept talking like reality isn’t real. Speaking of “variations” (or was it versions?). Going to be really upset if some material portion of this season was simulation. 

I didn't take it that way. I took it that Solomon was talking about variants that it did predict and where we were along those. 

2 hours ago, unJon said:

I liked Caleb’s backstory. Enjoyed the Delores/Maeve fight, and the EMP ending. Not quite buying Maeve’s and Clem’s motivations. And I don’t really know why a handful of scrubs was guarding Solomon. 

Solomon isn't being used any more. It's just a relic. Even the outlier storage isn't there for any purpose any more; they basically kill the ones that they can't save now. Or they've gotten rid of so many outliers that they don't need a major facility. In any case, the facility was under maintenance mode and nothing more. 

2 hours ago, unJon said:

William’s storyline better go somewhere soon. 

Apparently Ed Harris wasn't happy about his role this season. 

2 hours ago, unJon said:

The real wildcard is Chalores. She is killing off the other Delores’s. Not clear why yet. Revenge? Wants to save humanity due to losing son?

I think that's also a Dolores thing. She knows that the other Doloreses are her enemy. If she wants to survive - and Dolores is a survivor - the others have to die. 

I do wonder what the package was that Dolores-san sent off right before he died. 

4 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Pretty much called it

Nice!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Can't lie, I'm so confused at this point. I really feel more than any other show I've watched that you both have to binge this and be 100% sober. 

[Cas Stark]

It seems unlike Maeve not to try harder to understand what Dolores is doing, and just decide, okay, sure, Ill kill ya.  I'm still pretty underwhelmed with this season, but per usual, that's the minority view I guess.  

[Fragile Bird]

Is it just me being out to lunch or what? What switch could Dolores possible flip to shut them down? We have never seen that before.

And will Caleb walk out and start to raise hell because he thinks she's dead, when all she did was flip this switch?