Westworld

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Re: Westworld

Postby KleinerKiller » Mon Nov 28, 2016 8:14 am

... A-HOKAY. That was a good episode.

Spoiler: show
So many confirmations, so much progress, all so little time.

The biggest one, of course, being that Bernard was modeled after Arnold, and it was Arnold speaking to Dolores all those times shown previously. Except -- and here's the knife twist -- at least some of those conversations were in Dolores's fractured mind, because it turns out Ford didn't kill Arnold. Dolores did! Assuming her little Arnold hallucination was telling the truth, and not "the truth from a certain point of view" or something.

And the multiple timelines theory, while maddeningly still not confirmed outright, is so obvious that it seems like we're probably not meant to be fooled. For starters, that crumpled old photo Dolores's father dug up in the pilot was a brand new one of Logan's sister that he passed on to William as motivation to let go of Dolores. And then William edges toward full blackhat by massacring that entire camp and holding Logan at knifepoint until he agrees to help him find Dolores -- much as he would forcibly enlist Lawrence on his crusade thirty years later.

Regarding Dolores, she finally enters that church, and we find out it's the entrance to the old facilities -- and that she's been down there multiple times before, confirming in and of itself that we have been seeing multiple timelines at least for her. We see that lab in three different states: thriving and staffed by Ford and Arnold, empty and dusty, and a decrepit, rotten mess of abandoned dreams. AND THEN, when she comes out in what we presume to be the present, she comes face-to-face with the Man In Black, whom she at first assumes is William. Given that we see her seemingly heal from Logan's disembowelment but she's still in the same clothes, this is a solid sign that she's an unreliable narrator whose memories are running together.

Watching Internet peoples raging the hell out at the very thought of multiple timelines and trying to insist that it doesn't make sense, particularly regarding William being MIB, is endlessly entertaining.

And regarding the Man In Black, we learn via a walk-in interruption from Charlotte (aka Tessa Thompson's irritating cartoon corporate stooge) that he's a higher-up on the Delos board, and that he single-handedly kept the park running for years before Delos bought it out. Not as game-changing a reveal as we've previously had -- I guessed some of it beforehand -- but it's a nice bit of development and clarification.


And the reveals aside, the actual content of the episode:

Spoiler: show
For however many logical leaps we need to justify how it began, Thandie Newton is continuously making Maeve one of the best parts of the show. Her opening discussion with Bernard, defiance of his examination attempt, and initiation of his later conflict with Ford was just delightful and engaging as all get-out. By now, she's more of a direct antagonist than MIB has been, and this is how you properly develop a sympathetic antagonist. I really hope her uprising doesn't see her killed or otherwise written out of the show. I need her around for subsequent seasons.

For once, William and Dolores's storyline didn't drag out and waste time on teases and vagueness. I already talked about the juiciest material on Dolores's side, but her performance from the disembowelment all the way through to the end has won her back a lot of my admiration that's been gradually ebbing away. And as for William's side, the show managed to do the impossible: it made Logan... human. Sympathetic, even. Even after he viciously gutted Dolores in front of William to make him see her as a robot, his subsequent comforting and interaction with William (prior to the latter going postal in the middle of the night) puts it all in perspective, and we can briefly see that for how terribly he treats the hosts, he's not a recklessly terrible Ramsay Bolton wannabe who deserves a slow death; in his shoes, it would be really ridiculous and off-putting to see William get attached to one of the hosts when he's about to be married to Logan's sister. So seeing him freak out over William's slaughter and manic hostage-taking, while satisfying, also makes one kind of feel for him.

MIB's storyline didn't make much progress, other than him finally meeting Dolores again at the end, but it was still pretty fun to see him unnerved by Wyatt's cult and subsequently struggling with the horse-hanging "game" (which... higher stakes at the edges of the park and everything, I know, but that would absolutely kill anyone who failed at it, no question). And Charlotte's interruption gave him an interesting new shade, as we see his almost childish insistence on getting immersed again and not being interrupted. As a gamer, I can empathize.

But the unquestionable centerpiece was Bernard's confrontation with Ford, and his trip through his memories leading up to the Arnold revelation. Here, we see the depths of the lie his life was: his conversations with his wife were just an altered perception of Ford, and it's implied that some of his romantic escapades with Theresa were also fake (though that could just be a visual metaphor). I almost teared up when he changed his memory of his son's death and denounced him as a lie mid-embrace, and his reaction to the suspense tightening up to the storm of revelations had me at the edge of my seat. Given that I've already predicted Ford's death, I genuinely thought for a second that Bernard's order to Clementine would result in some bloody splatters on the wall. But alas, it was not to be -- after all of that, Ford still came out on top, revealing that they'd already had this confrontation over and over again for years, and he only bothered with it this last time in the hopes that giving him full memory access would drive him to be his partner again. It seems he's written that off for good, though, and established himself as the ultimate villain in the process.

Since the chance of Arnold being alive is slim to none, I hope that isn't the last we see of Jeffrey Wright. I'm normally a big proponent of killing off major characters, and the forced "suicide" scene was extremely well done and would be a perfectly fitting send-off for the character. However, if he hadn't already established himself, this episode confirmed that it would not be the same show without Wright involved in some way. He's turned in such a stellar performance that he'd be just as missed as Thandie Newton. I have to imagine someone will find him, or Ford will make another Arnold replica, but the way that scene was done leaves me unsure of anything.


Again, that was a damn good episode. It almost felt like a finale in a lot of places, so I can't wait to see what's in store for us next week.
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Re: Westworld

Postby DjiboutiDan » Mon Nov 28, 2016 4:34 pm

So many questions after that episode - some new, some old.
Spoiler: show
Why does Logan walk around with a picture of his sister in his pocket?
If Bernard is Arnold (which again, glad they did that because I like it) how does nobody recognize him? Especially when Ford keeps a picture of them together on his desk. I can understand the everyday employees, after all I don't know who founded the company I work for let all what he looked liked. But the board members don't know who Arnold was?
How does past timeline Dolores know what future MIB looks like? Which timeline Dolores are we seeing in any given scene? Have we ever actually seen future Dolores in the park? Have all scenes of her been in the past? The only present time I can think of was when Ford was talking with her, but he might just keep her in storage and bring her out every so often to talk to like the other old hosts in his office.
Where was Sizemore during the Ford-Bernard confrontation? Wasn't he down there working on a host?
Not related to this episode, but when Arnold was fired by Charlotte why was he still able to just wander around the offices with all of his normal access in tact? And how does Sizemore still have a job?

Wild speculation...
Spoiler: show
William will escape with Dolores and return to town where he will decide he wants to stay forever and not return to the real world. Logan will kill him (thus leaving the gun and picture in the yard) because of it. Logan ends up being the MIB - he is the real titan of industry who fancies himself a god.

Wilder speculation...
Spoiler: show
All employees of the park are hosts. The only humans are Ford and the board members. A lot of things aren't adding up right now and this would close a lot of loops. But I really hope they don't do this.

Wildest speculation...
Spoiler: show
In reality, the park got shut down after Arnold's death, but Ford stayed behind and continued to build his own personal playground. Everything we've seen so far is just hosts acting out Ford's greatest storyline.
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Re: Westworld

Postby KleinerKiller » Mon Nov 28, 2016 5:39 pm

DjiboutiDan wrote:So many questions after that episode - some new, some old.
Spoiler: show
If Bernard is Arnold (which again, glad they did that because I like it) how does nobody recognize him? Especially when Ford keeps a picture of them together on his desk. I can understand the everyday employees, after all I don't know who founded the company I work for let all what he looked liked. But the board members don't know who Arnold was?
How does past timeline Dolores know what future MIB looks like? Which timeline Dolores are we seeing in any given scene? Have we ever actually seen future Dolores in the park? Have all scenes of her been in the past? The only present time I can think of was when Ford was talking with her, but he might just keep her in storage and bring her out every so often to talk to like the other old hosts in his office.
Where was Sizemore during the Ford-Bernard confrontation? Wasn't he down there working on a host?
Not related to this episode, but when Arnold was fired by Charlotte why was he still able to just wander around the offices with all of his normal access in tact? And how does Sizemore still have a job?


Spoiler: show
I have to imagine Ford did something to further cover up Arnold's appearance or pay off the right people to "forget". As for the picture, anyone who happened to see it would likely just assume it was what we initially assumed: a picture of Ford, Arnold on the left, and Bernard on the right. The time frame wouldn't quite match up, but who would actually bother to give it that much thought?

Through Dolores's eyes, we're seeing at least three timelines running together, skipping around, and becoming hopelessly entangled. The Dolores who enters the rotting lab is not William's Dolores, even if we see her wearing the same clothes; it's the Dolores we met back in the pilot, in the actual present day, having either visualized herself in the wrong clothes or retrieved those clothes again. We already see that she was there a few times before, and one of the show's recurring themes is that everything repeats itself, so it's not that hard to believe.
(Someone pointed out in another discussion that when everyone is riding the train with the exploding corpse on it, there's a moment when William and Lawrence are standing behind Dolores, and in the next shot at that angle, they and the casket are completely absent before returning in another cut. It could be an editing mistake, but it's another possible indicator of what I'm saying -- quick-cut flashes of herself walking the same path over and over again.)

It's Sizemore we're talking about. He probably worked on it for five minutes, left, got blackout drunk, and spent this whole episode bitching to a random secretary about how Ford was a big stupid meanie for not liking that shitty storyline he drafted up.


DjiboutiDan wrote:Wild speculation...
Spoiler: show
William will escape with Dolores and return to town where he will decide he wants to stay forever and not return to the real world. Logan will kill him (thus leaving the gun and picture in the yard) because of it. Logan ends up being the MIB - he is the real titan of industry who fancies himself a god.


Spoiler: show
I do not buy Logan as MIB for a millisecond, and I never have. It doesn't line up, even leaving aside that "cynical, ruthless asshole in the past is molded to become cynical, ruthless asshole in the future" isn't a satisfying narrative arc. Logan hasn't had memorable encounters with Lawrence or the sexy British greeting host, he has no reason to take the maze concept seriously because he wouldn't have been noticing it before the Maeve encounter, he wouldn't hesitate or be changed at all by murdering Maeve and her daughter, and MIB was explicitly married for 30 years -- the same amount of time he's been coming to the park, and a time frame that perfectly syncs up with the big deal made out of William's marriage.

If Logan really does turn out to be MIB after all that, I'll be royally pissed.
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Re: Westworld

Postby Masonator » Mon Nov 28, 2016 6:09 pm

Fantastic episode this time around. Nagging questions/thoughts that may not matter very much but nevertheless I can't get out of my head:

Spoiler: show
How the hell did William massacre all of those Conferados? Surely they would have subdued him, and it's not like all of them could have been black out drunk like Logan. Also, different timeline confirmed. Remember a few episodes back, MiB talks about the innards of the hosts being changed to something more lifelike, not for the sake of realism, but because it was cheaper. Well, we see Dolores' innards after Logan cuts her stomach open, and there's nothing lifelike about it. So this is an earlier timeline. I'm calling it confirmed right now. So far, we have Arnold's Turing tests with Dolores being the earliest moments in the show, chronologically (though some of these memories might be fabrications by Dolores). Then there is William and Logan a few years after that. Finally, we have the MiB and everything else, some 30 years later.

I'm on shakier ground with the William=MiB theory. MiB said that the first time he saw real emotion in a host was when he killed Maeve's daughter. That clearly contradicts what we've seen with William begging Logan to free Dolores from Westworld. So unless his tracking of Dolores in the next episode leads to a reveal that she was being controlled by Arnold or Ford the whole time, I really don't see how the theory can be true unless we're just going to mistrust everything the MiB says about his past.

This whole 'hosts can't permanently harm guests, but things get rougher on the outer edges' is getting unclear to me. MiB was knocked unconscious by getting the back of his head bashed against a rock (so much so that he didn't come to until the sun had risen). Never mind the obvious risk of hanging that followed (let's assume the horse would have backed up if MiB didn't free himself immediately), how the hell can you have a host cause a serious concussion when that could easily lead to a permanent injury or death?

Okay, so Logan was traveling with the Confederados. How did he catch up to William (who was traveling by train, with a head start, when Logan was on horseback and traveling much slower in a damn convoy? I will not let this one go.

And poor Teddy. I have no question with his part in the episode. His memories seemed to contradict each other, but that's nothing new. I just feel compelled to note that he is the most consistently shit on character in the show. Another death where he gets a glimpse of his role as the perpetual loser, but then is snuffed out before he makes any more progress. As for him having trouble with the details of Wyatt's massacre, I bet that's just setting us up for the reveal that the Wyatt he remembers is not really Wyatt, but someone else we already know.

Risky move by Maeve burning herself and Hector. Don't you want your body intact for what you have planned. If you completely melt in the fire, doesn't this kind of ruin your plans? Still can't wait to see this story play out, I just thought the method of suicide was a bit strange.

And lesser known Hemsworth, head of security. He's obviously been set up, but by who? He's lured into tracking down Elsie, but is immediately captured by hosts who fail to shut down after he orders them to cease all functions. He's about to shoot all three of his attackers, but like the raptors in Jurassic Park, the real attack is from the side. Clever girl. The obvious (and seemingly only answer) of who is behind this attack is Ford, since he is the only one that knows about Elsie's death, presumably. But it doesn't make much sense that he would be onto Hemsworth so quickly. He's got motive, since Hemsworth is suspicious of Bernard, but I don't think Ford knows about that yet. Also, why use Elsie in the park as a lure? He's obviously going with the excuse of her being on vacation, so for her to just reappear in the park like this would be highly suspicious.

I give myself a headache trying to separate out Dolores timelines. I've all but given up on figuring out which timeline I'm seeing when she's on screen. The way the memories just run together is a great device to make the viewer as confused as Dolores repeating the same events over and over again. I can imagine this will be really annoying for those looking for a more conventional story, but those type viewers probably already gave up on the show by now.

Finally, I appreciate meaningful deaths on a show, and in Westworld, the two big deaths this season (as in, permanent deaths) have been very effective. It's just a shame that the two that died were two of the better actors and interesting characters in the show (Bernard and Theresa). I don't want Ford squaring off against D-list villains like Charlotte from corporate and Sizemore, the hack writer. He's playing chess and they're playing checkers. I hate to be all 'bring back Bernard/Arnold' about it, but just don't leave me with a corporate douche bag and a spurned writer against a megalomaniac. It's just not an interesting match up.
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Re: Westworld

Postby FaceTheCitizen » Tue Nov 29, 2016 2:52 am

...
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Re: Westworld

Postby DjiboutiDan » Tue Nov 29, 2016 5:43 am

KleinerKiller wrote:
Spoiler: show
I have to imagine Ford did something to further cover up Arnold's appearance or pay off the right people to "forget". As for the picture, anyone who happened to see it would likely just assume it was what we initially assumed: a picture of Ford, Arnold on the left, and Bernard on the right. The time frame wouldn't quite match up, but who would actually bother to give it that much thought?

Spoiler: show
I forgot to put this in, but actually the first time we saw the picture it was just Ford and the middle guy. Presumably because we were seeing the photo through Bernard's eyes and he would be incapable of seeing anything that would cause him pain. So now I'm wondering, who's the guy in the middle? Maybe that's the MIB and the whole William thing has been a fakeout used to tell Dolores' story
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Re: Westworld

Postby KleinerKiller » Tue Nov 29, 2016 7:28 am

DjiboutiDan wrote:
KleinerKiller wrote:
Spoiler: show
I have to imagine Ford did something to further cover up Arnold's appearance or pay off the right people to "forget". As for the picture, anyone who happened to see it would likely just assume it was what we initially assumed: a picture of Ford, Arnold on the left, and Bernard on the right. The time frame wouldn't quite match up, but who would actually bother to give it that much thought?

Spoiler: show
I forgot to put this in, but actually the first time we saw the picture it was just Ford and the middle guy. Presumably because we were seeing the photo through Bernard's eyes and he would be incapable of seeing anything that would cause him pain. So now I'm wondering, who's the guy in the middle? Maybe that's the MIB and the whole William thing has been a fakeout used to tell Dolores' story


Spoiler: show
I could be misremembering, but I could've sworn that other guy turned out to be his father. Pretty sure Ford had the picture with him when they were in the cabin with his host family, and when he pointed it out, that's where the "Bernard is modeled after Arnold" speculation started.
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Re: Westworld

Postby reallifegirl » Tue Nov 29, 2016 5:37 pm

Spoiler: show
Anybody else notice that the picture of Logan's sister is the same picture that made Dolores' dad go haywire in the pilot?

Image

This also makes me curious as to WHEN this is all supposed to be taking place, because I'm 95% certain that she's supposed to be in Times Square, which either hasn't changed much in the distant future, or this future isn't all that distant.

Also, agreed that Logan actually comes across as somewhat more human. Hell, I even kind of liked him even mid-stabbing. Because for real, if my sister was engaged to a guy and the guy started falling in love with a Real Doll/body pillow/Roomba or whatever, I would be pissed and probably try to give him a major wake-up call. Because, seriously, William, it only took you like a week to basically forget about your fiancee, who, as far as I can tell, did nothing wrong?

Can you imagine being the fiancee and finding out later your husband-to-be almost left you for Cleverbot?

And this is all gonna be SUPER sad if he is the MIB and she kills herself later.
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Re: Westworld

Postby Masonator » Tue Nov 29, 2016 9:01 pm

KleinerKiller wrote:
Spoiler: show
I could be misremembering, but I could've sworn that other guy turned out to be his father. Pretty sure Ford had the picture with him when they were in the cabin with his host family, and when he pointed it out, that's where the "Bernard is modeled after Arnold" speculation started.


That's how I remember it too.

reallifegirl wrote:
Spoiler: show
Anybody else notice that the picture of Logan's sister is the same picture that made Dolores' dad go haywire in the pilot?


"Doesn't look like anything to me."
Spoiler: show
Seriously though, good catch. I had kind of thought they might have been the same picture but hadn't bothered to verify yet.


reallifegirl wrote:
Spoiler: show
Because for real, if my sister was engaged to a guy and the guy started falling in love with a Real Doll/body pillow/Roomba or whatever, I would be pissed and probably try to give him a major wake-up call. Because, seriously, William, it only took you like a week to basically forget about your fiancee, who, as far as I can tell, did nothing wrong?


Spoiler: show
I felt like Logan was the voice of my inner skeptic this episode. Seriously, William, I get that she's lifelike, but you want to free her out into the real world? Forgetting the feasibility of doing that, but then what? She still has no basic human rights, no knowledge of the outside world, she couldn't ever defend herself if attacked by a human (which would be likely given that she's a damn robot living as a human). So what, are you going to be her caretaker? How the hell are you prepared to help her deal with the shock that not only is her world fake, but all of her memories are fake and she's not even a person? It's like Truman Show world building mindfuckery combined with Total Recall memory implants combined with a robotic reveal as icing on the cake. Are you a psychologist with a specialization in AI, because I don't get the impression you'd have any idea on how to help her cope with that. And what about your damn fiancee? Either you're leaving her or you expect her to just go along with the idea of living with a robot you had sex with and think of as a real person. If the former, why the hell would you expect Logan to help you, and if the latter, you're a moron.

It was kind of funny that I completely sympathized with Logan's plan to dehumanize Dolores by cutting her open. Never thought I'd have been rooting for Logan, but it's not like I ever had much of a fondness for William. Honestly, what I kind of want to see happen is for William to try and kill Logan, Dolores' safety programming kicks in and she beats the ever loving shit out of William in defense of Logan. That'd be a nice wake up call for William.
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Re: Westworld

Postby DjiboutiDan » Mon Dec 05, 2016 5:05 am

I missed the beginning of the episode, and I have many questions but want to watch it again to process things. For now, just one comment:
Spoiler: show
WORST SECURITY GUARDS EVER. Like stormtrooper-level terribleness. I mean, come on, seriously guys? Your enemy is in a world they don't know or understand and you had all the guns. How did you fail so miserably? Why did you not just start shooting every host? Why even give them the chance to fight back? And why are you yelling "drop the weapon" instead of firing!? JUST SHOOT THEM!!!!!



Morons
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Re: Westworld

Postby KleinerKiller » Tue Dec 06, 2016 6:01 am

HOOOOLY FUUUUUUUCK.

Spoiler: show
So MIB is William, and his path makes complete sense.

And Dolores has been seeing multiple time periods at once blended together.

And the maze is a pointless little thing that wasn't even meant for William, and its relation to Ford and Arnold makes complete sense, and it won't drag into the future seasons, and the show isn't Lost.

And Wyatt is Dolores's buried personality uploaded by Arnold, and the massacre was started by him, during which she killed him at his request.

And Bernard came back, with all of his memories, and Ford said goodbye to him for real, and all of the suffering he went through along with all of the other hosts has been Ford's way of accomplishing Arnold's dream because he was on the hosts' side all along.

And Maeve has just been following a storyline in her escape plan, but she breaks off her escape right at the end to go back for her daughter.

And there's ANOTHER park. Samurai World. And likely a lot more.

And Ford unveiled his new storyline -- host sentience.

All of that happened, and that was pretty fucking great.

But I was not expecting the first season to end with a Red Wedding. Or, I suppose, a Red Gala. With Dolores assuming her Wyatt personality, offing Ford execution-style just as he planned, and gunning down the Delos executives while all of the hosts in cold storage are coming to mop up and form her army. And William is probably getting killed, too, although for now he's just been shot in the shoulder I think. I really hope he's not dead yet, because Ed Harris has been one of the best parts of the show, but dying the way he wanted at the hands of hosts would be a fitting end.

Goddamn. What a fucking great sequence. Some of us predicted a cliffhanger, but none of us predicted THAT cliffhanger. One that brings the complete story of the season to a satisfying close, but signals extremely exciting things to come. I mean, I totally called Ford getting killed at the end, but I didn't think it would happen on a fucking stage. My jaw was agape from the moment I realized where it was headed, and I didn't even mind the pain that it brought to my recovering-from-surgery jaw. Wow.


My faith in the series has been completely restored. I'm almost speechless.

EDIT: And it won't fucking be back until 2018!
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Re: Westworld

Postby Masonator » Tue Dec 06, 2016 3:40 pm

And now it's back to tolerating Walking Dead on Sunday nights. How sad for me. Still, so many great moments this episode and not a single moment wasted in a 1.5 hour finale.

Spoiler: show
I won't give another recap. Just some thoughts. It seems like Maeve's storyline was one big decoy that served the sole purpose of getting the hosts out of cold storage. But, she goes off script at the end, deciding to go back for her daughter rather than escape. Maybe she can still become the spoiler she thought she was rather than the puppet she turned out to be.

Ahh, Dolores and MiB. The maze turns out to be one big metaphor for Dolores discovering her own inner voice. All MiB gets is a mini maze in a tin can he can take home as a souvenir. "What is this? A maze for ants!"

And does she find her inner voice? I don't know. Sure, she kills Ford, but that seemed heavily orchestrated by Ford rather than a product of Dolores' free will. Some other scenes where she hears herself or faces herself in the room where Arnold would talk to her seem to indicate she has obtained consciousness. But it still could just be Ford's true final narrative: a robot uprising led by Dolores.

I know people are already speculating that Ford isn't really dead, he just created a host version of himself. Well, to those people, stop it. He dead.

Armistice was amazing. Her absolute glee firing off the gun and killing all of the stormtroopers was awesome. Meanwhile, Hector seems turned on by getting double crossed by Maeve. Hey, whatever gets your motor running is good by me, no judgment here. One of the clean up crew apparently liked listening to death metal and angrily masturbating on you, so I get that you might not have the healthiest of fetishes with what you've been exposed to (side note, why have all the windows in place of walls if your workers have no qualms about turkey basting the hosts in full view of everyone). Maybe you need to start hiring people with a sense of shame first. Speaking of questionable hires, I'm guessing Felix might be calling in sick for the next few days. And my God, when he starts thinking he's a robot and Maeve tells him to cut that shit out, I guffawed. Thank you, show creators, for shitting on fan theories of 'everyone's a host.' As an irrelevant side note, please no one read my previous posts. I'll save you the time and assure you that I never theorized Felix was a host. Promise.

But, my favorite little hint at Season 2 has to be the tease of SamuraiWorld. Maybe the uprising takes off and the hosts start expanding past Westworld. Suddenly you have cowboy hosts shooting some Tom Cruise last samurai cosplayers in the face (they had it coming for cultural appropriation anyway). Ahh, the possibilities are endless, so long as I can stomach more than a year waiting. It's okay though, I'm a fan of George R.R. Martin so a year or two is nothing to me.
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Re: Westworld

Postby DjiboutiDan » Wed Dec 07, 2016 3:24 am

KleinerKiller wrote:EDIT: And it won't fucking be back until 2018!

Damnit - by 2018 I'll probably lose interest. I was hoping for next fall
Spoiler: show
Great ending to the season, I was amazed (heh, get it?) how many questions they actually answered. Now that's how you do a mystery/intrigue plot - you actually answer questions and develop a plot that can stand by itself instead of endlessly baiting the audience with more and more questions that never get answered.

Some confusion questions...
Spoiler: show
1. I still don't get why Ford killed Theresa and Elsie. In fact, now that we know what his plan was, it would have made more sense to leave Theresa alive so she could continue her surveillance and give the board an even bigger false sense of security. Plus we never would have had to deal with Charlotte. You can explain that one away as Ford testing Bernard or giving him more of the suffering he needs to become "alive", but Elsie? She died for nothing. And I liked her.
2. What is the general timeline of events? There was heavy implication if not outright admittance that the park only survived because of William's funding. But the William-Logan story has to occur AFTER Arnold's death to make sense of what Dolores was seeing and doing while with him. Then again, I'm not even going to try to work out the order of events in Dolores' life.
2.a. How much time passes during the William-Logan story? Days? Weeks? Months?
3. So...what happens to Logan after William leaves him naked in the middle of nowhere?
4. What's the final fate of Stubbs (lesser Hemsworth)? Last we saw, he was being maybe attacked by indians.
5. How do Hector and Armistice know how to operate P90's? The simple firing I get, but Hector reloaded at least once - no way he should know how to do that with a modern weapon.
6. Seriously, how could those guards be so incompetent?!

Philosophical questions...
Spoiler: show
1. What was Ford's motivation? Did he want to create life from the beginning or did he only realize after Arnold's death what he had done? Does he just want to free the hosts? Does he hate humanity? Seems like he just hates humans by the end of it.
2. Old question, now even more confusing - did Dolores exist as an interactive host in the present timeline? Related question, what was Dolores' loop? Was she always in the same 'drop can, see Teddy, get raped' loop or has she been in a 're-trace path taken with William' loop for the last 35 years?
3. Still related, but a separate question - just how unreliable of a narrator was Dolores? How much of what we saw can we assume actually happened?

Season 2 speculation...
Spoiler: show
Bernard will side with the humans.
William will be the human's leader or commander or general or whatever.
I would say that the mystery host being built earlier was a Ford host and he's not really dead, but apparently Anthony Hopkins hasn't signed on for season 2.

I had more comments and questions, but I'm trying real hard to not write walls of text.

EDIT: Oh, and does anyone know what the song was on the player piano in the final episode? It sounds so familiar but I can't place it
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Re: Westworld

Postby KleinerKiller » Wed Dec 07, 2016 4:39 am

Because I so love clarifying questions and providing my own speculation...

DjiboutiDan wrote:Some confusion questions...
Spoiler: show
1. I still don't get why Ford killed Theresa and Elsie. In fact, now that we know what his plan was, it would have made more sense to leave Theresa alive so she could continue her surveillance and give the board an even bigger false sense of security. Plus we never would have had to deal with Charlotte. You can explain that one away as Ford testing Bernard or giving him more of the suffering he needs to become "alive", but Elsie? She died for nothing. And I liked her.
2. What is the general timeline of events? There was heavy implication if not outright admittance that the park only survived because of William's funding. But the William-Logan story has to occur AFTER Arnold's death to make sense of what Dolores was seeing and doing while with him. Then again, I'm not even going to try to work out the order of events in Dolores' life.
2.a. How much time passes during the William-Logan story? Days? Weeks? Months?
3. So...what happens to Logan after William leaves him naked in the middle of nowhere?
4. What's the final fate of Stubbs (lesser Hemsworth)? Last we saw, he was being maybe attacked by indians.
5. Seriously, how could those guards be so incompetent?!


Spoiler: show
1. Theresa died so Bernard could grapple with his true nature and suffer, and Elsie was possibly killed because she would have exposed Delos's plot and therefore made Ford's plan to kill all the Delos people at the gala unfeasible. I say possibly because I don't think she's dead -- there's no body, and Bernard just choked her out. I think she has some further significance for the next season.
2. In his conversation with Dolores, Ford identifies William as "an interested investor". I took that to mean that the park was still running after Arnold's death, but it was losing funding as backers wanted nothing to do with a potentially dangerous park. William and Logan coincidentally arrived during a critical period, and William subsequently kept the park running smooth.
2a. I'd imagine from the first steps in the park to William going postal and beginning his search, it's a matter of days, maybe a week tops. The search could be anywhere from weeks to a month, depending on how long it was until William was due to be married.
3. Logan already looked pretty unwell as he was being sent off, cackling madly and all that. The most likely answers are that A) he was rescued by security, but lost his mind and had to be put in a home, or B) the past plot will continue next time and he still has some role to play. If it's the former, there would most likely be lawsuits by his family -- which William's money would help with.
4. If Poor Man's Matt Damon wasn't killed, he's most likely being held in a tribal abduction storyline scripted by Ford to keep him out of the way. If it's the latter, he'll still have something to do next time, just like Elsie.
5. They were a bunch of interns substituting because all of the real guards went home early, being led by a guy who was a day away from retirement. And they happened to take the route that led them through an opium den.


DjiboutiDan wrote:Philosophical questions...
Spoiler: show
1. What was Ford's motivation? Did he want to create life from the beginning or did he only realize after Arnold's death what he had done? Does he just want to free the hosts? Does he hate humanity? Seems like he just hates humans by the end of it.
2. Old question, now even more confusing - did Dolores exist as an interactive host in the present timeline? Related question, what was Dolores' loop? Was she always in the same 'drop can, see Teddy, get raped' loop or has she been in a 're-trace path taken with William' loop for the last 35 years?
3. Still related, but a separate question - just how unreliable of a narrator was Dolores? How much of what we saw can we assume actually happened?


Spoiler: show
1. Other sources say that he came around to Arnold's way of thinking, probably because you can only work with lifelike robots for so many decades and devote so much of your life to them before you start thinking that way anyway. And since it's apparently implied that the decommissioned army is going to slaughter every guest in the park along with the Delos folks, I'd say he does hate humanity to some degree -- having an implicitly abusive father might play into that, if we want to get Freudian.
2. During the whole "William is MIB" monologue, William says that she took the loop "one last time" to come to the church. His cadence and the context made me assume she had only gone down that memory trip a few times before, each time being pulled back into her loop by security, and this last time was one of the few times she was able to get to the lab (I'd speculate that her imaginary conversations with Arnold each corresponded to one successful loop). Remember, MIB William's first appearance was attacking her during her "drop can, meet Teddy" loop, so we know she was on that (and we know it was really him and not Dolores imagining him in place of a regular asshole, because Teddy remembered him dragging her away).
3. Mr. Robot has taught me to assume nothing about an unreliable narrator's perspective, but looking at Dolores's timeline of events, we can assume that her events with Arnold happened, then she started hearing the voice of her "Wyatt" self and met up with William and Logan, and subsequently she went on her loops and imagined them with her. Not that complex when you line it all up.


DjiboutiDan wrote:Season 2 speculation...
Spoiler: show
Bernard will side with the humans.
William will be the human's leader or commander or general or whatever.
I would say that the mystery host being built earlier was a Ford host and he's not really dead, but apparently Anthony Hopkins hasn't signed on for season 2.


Spoiler: show
If it lets Ed Harris live another day, I'm game. And if Maeve returns to the park successfully and takes control of the hosts to at least some degree, it will be pretty poetic. She went back to find her daughter, and now she has to wage war against the man who killed them both.

No no no no no no no absolutely not to that last bit. Ford stays dead. His death was the big shocker the whole season's buildup was predicated upon, and yanking it out to reveal that he was actually a Doombot would completely invalidate his arc and contribute nothing in return. Death needs to have weight and meaning, especially in a show where most of the important characters we've seen die are robots. It'd be like if Game of Thrones just had Melisandre sew Sean Bean's head back on at the start of Season 2. I can't explain the mystery host right now, but I know it wasn't that.
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"Your mind is software. Program it. Your body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it." - Eclipse Phase

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Re: Westworld

Postby Masonator » Wed Dec 07, 2016 4:22 pm

KleinerKiller wrote:
Spoiler: show
2. In his conversation with Dolores, Ford identifies William as "an interested investor". I took that to mean that the park was still running after Arnold's death, but it was losing funding as backers wanted nothing to do with a potentially dangerous park. William and Logan coincidentally arrived during a critical period, and William subsequently kept the park running smooth.

(snip)

3. Logan already looked pretty unwell as he was being sent off, cackling madly and all that. The most likely answers are that A) he was rescued by security, but lost his mind and had to be put in a home, or B) the past plot will continue next time and he still has some role to play. If it's the former, there would most likely be lawsuits by his family -- which William's money would help with.


Spoiler: show
This is still a point of confusion for me, as I thought the only way William could make a power play over Logan would be to either place all the blame on him for going nuts at the park and demonstrating that he is untrustworthy (or for Logan to die in some 'accident'). We know it's Logan's family that owns the business interested in purchasing the park, and it makes sense that the park is desperately trying to court investors after the death of Arnold. William and Logan's visit would be necessary as a demonstration to a potential investor that the hosts are not dangerous and can be controlled. So I'm following the story so far.

Here's my issue with William tying up naked Logan to a horse and sending him on his way. First off, his idea is to make up some convincing lie placing the blame on Logan and his playboy ways for this predicament, I think. This removes Logan from authority, allows William to take his place, and absolves the park of blame, since Logan's immaturity and compulsiveness are the real cause of his downfall. But does William know the extent of the surveillance done at Westworld? It seems to me that the possibility of a lawsuit coupled with the fact that Logan is an interested investor would mean that the Westworld crew would be reviewing every bit of surveillance they could find tracking William and Logan's visit. Hell, Logan even guesses that the park sent Dolores to William because they noticed that she was the only host he had shown any interest in since he got there. It is downright naive for William to think that his psychotic massacres and treatment of Logan have not been recorded. That would pose a bit of a problem for William, I'm sure.

But let's assume there is no surveillance that would expose William. Isn't that just as big of an issue? Westworld is already on the ropes after the death of Arnold, and it needs financial backers to keep it afloat. Now, one of those backers has gone insane from a visit, and no one at Westworld can provide any detail as to how that happened. My immediate conclusion would be that the hosts went haywire and tortured him, since it would be unthinkable William was involved. How is William supposed to convince his in-laws to buy a larger stake in Westworld once that happened? I may not be the CEO of Delos, so maybe I'm too conservative an investor when I say that I would not buy a large stake in a theme park with robots that had recently killed someone and then driven my son insane during a visit designed to showcase that the park was safe. And no, a convincing speech from my soon to be son-in-law would not change my mind. In fact, I think anyone trying to sell me on Westworld after what happened to Logan should be removed from any position with real decision making authority due to incompetence. Rich families tend to be a bit suspicious of the significant others of their children (I'm speaking from some experience here, I don't think my wife's wealthy parents fully trusted me until I had been with her for 6 years without asking them for money or favors). William would lose all credibility if Logan goes crazy at Westworld and William still pushes for a controlling interest in the park.

So in my mind, the only possibility is that Logan did not go crazy. If so, then William has to be more credible than Logan when it comes time to report to the company about the visit. William would have to be some kind of conniving genius to pull it off, and so far his only solutions to problems have involved massacres and torture. These aren't exactly the type of skills that translate to an office setting. I look forward to having my questions answered two years from now.
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