April 09, 2020
It may have taken half the season — yes, we're already at the midway point — but, for the first time all season, we got some answers in the latest episode of Westworld. And that includes the answer to what had previously been one of the bigger mysteries of the show, especially in the early parts of this season.
That's right, we found out who is in Charlotte Hale's head, none other than Dolores herself. And she's not just in control of Charlotte, but also Martin Connells and yet another host character, Shogun World's Musashi, who we had no idea even existed before this episode. We also got a look at how William, also known as The Man in Black, is adjusting to life since killing his daughter last season, and found out how Serac plans on convincing Maeve to help him. Plus, possibly some confirmation that this is all (or at least mostly) taking place in one timeline.
Of course, you can never be certain with that last point and as we get deeper into our questions heading into the fifth episode of Season 3, entitled "Genre," we'll once again question whether or not the writers are using a different technique to distort our perception of what we're watching each week.
Last week, we spent a lot of time on one question and that didn't leave us with time to try to answer many others, so this week, we'll try to get through as many as we can. Because even though we got some answers last week, this is Westworld after all. Without further ado, here are some questions we have moving forward.
We'll try to keep this as chronological as possible, since a lot happened in last week's episode, "The Mother of Exiles." It started off with William going through some serious issues inside his mansion. And since it doesn't seem likely that a bunch of high school kids trashed it while he was soul searching in a theme park, it's safe to say that William has fully lost it. He can't tell what is real and what is fake, even seeing his dead daughter appear to him and criticize his choices, namely mistaking her for a host and killing her, but also just being a shitty dad in general.
And that begs the question — one that has been being asked since last season — of whether or not William is real, or if he's already been replaced by a host, possibly years earlier. There are plenty of "Is Man in Black a host?" theories out there, and I've been a fan of this theory at various points throughout the show, but based on Charlotte's actions in this episode, I'm starting to change my mind.
For starters, if he was already a host, wouldn't there theoretically be an easier way to control him and take his shares than having him involuntarily committed — like reprogramming him to do whatever you want? Bernard did it to Stubbs, so if MIB was already a host, they wouldn't need to have him committed.
So, if he is human, why didn't they just swap him?
Great question, Matt. It simply wouldn't make sense for Dolores to kill him now just so she could use the last remaining pearl (more on that in a second) now in order to take control of his shares. It wouldn't make a ton of sense thematically because Dolores has been waiting years to find herself in a position of power over him, and she'd rather him rot in his own mental prison for the rest of his life than give him a chance at a quick and easy death. If they're controlling his shares either way, you'd have to imagine Dolores would pick the one that's the worse outcome for MIB.
We see that at the end of the episode, as he is locked in a mental institution and still doesn't know whether he's real or not, while talking to a Dolores that is almost certainly in his head.
Is this the last time we see him this season? Let's hope not...
Throughout the season, we've been seeing scenes that have been set up by what appears to be a readout from Rehoboam, sometimes they've pointed out "Elevated Scrutiny" and other times they've read "Divergence." They have to be important, but how?
That's been one of the questions I haven't been able to get out of my head this season, but on Sunday night, I finally picked up on something. Early in the episode, prior to the scene with Bernard walking back to the motel to meet Stubbs, we get our only divergence of the episode. We first see Bernard walking by a park where it looks like people are enjoying a nice sunny day. There are two rockets landing off in the distance near the Los Angeles skyline. Bernard looks away for a second, and by the time he looks back, there's a rocket taking off from almost the exact same spot. During my live watch, I noticed something up was — and maybe it could be explained away by the fact that rocket travel in 2059 is basically the equivalent of train travel in 2020 — so I made sure to pay special attention to that scene on the rewatch. And when I did, I saw something else strange in that scene that was easy to miss if you weren't paying attention. There is a woman folding a rainbow towel, but after a quick cut, it pans back to her and the towel is no longer brightly colored. So, what's up?
My guess is that when we see these scenes that are labeled "Divergence" we're seeing something like this, whether we realize it or not, where Rehoboam's prediction of what will happen doesn't line up with what actually happens in the real world, and perhaps eventually we'll find out whether what we've been watching is the real world or Rehoboam's simulation.
Later in the episode, Serac took Maeve to Arnold's house and described a divergence that took place there three months prior. We know from the timeline of the show that this is around the time Dolores arrived back on the mainland from Westworld. And given what Serac previously said about his computer not being able to predict beings like Dolores, it would make sense that these divergences happen most around the hosts.
It does, however, seem like a lot of these divergences tend to happen around Bernard — and I'll do more to confirm this for next week's post — which makes me wonder if the hosts are really what have been causing them. I have a theory that Bernard is not entirely Bernard, but is in fact a Bernard/Arnold hybrid.
Yes, I know they're sort of the same person, but Dolores said at the end of the last season that when Ford created Bernard, he didn't make an exact copy of him, but rather one that was easier to control. And when she recreated him in the outside world, she gave him that control back. It's probably why the pearl that Dolores shows Charlotte in Episode 3 looks different than the ones we've previously seen in the show. In the past, grey/black pearls have been for hosts while pearls created from copies of human minds have been red. The one Dolores made for Bernard looks to be both. It could also explain the "corruption" that Dolores supposedly put in Bernard's code, if he indeed has unlocked a new part of his consciousness that he previously couldn't access.
Perhaps that's why so many divergences seem to happen around him. Anyway, after not doing a great job of living up to my promise of keeping this short, time to move on.
I found it completely baffling how easy it was for Caleb and Dolores to steal the identity of Liam Dempsey's money man. For starters, Dempsey is "the richest technocrat in the world," according to Bernard, so you'd have to think he has a little better security.
Sure, they already had Dempsey's bio-signature thanks to Connells belittling him into unknowingly signing over all his money, but that scene at the bank was just a little hard to believe. I understand that bio-security is better and safer than what we have now, but they seemed to be able to steal his identity rather quickly. And the teller didn't even ask for photo ID?
The only explanation is that in the future they have perfected the technology from the movie "Face/Off" (or the "Mission Impossible" franchise) and no one even bothers checking anymore because people can change their looks as easy as changing their outfits, which is apparently pretty easy given Caleb's experience at the tailor.
When we first see Serac and Maeve in this episode, Maeve is asleep in a booth at a restaurant and Serac tells her to bring yourself back online. She immediately asks if their in a simulation, because it looks "too garish." Serac replies and says they're in Singapore, but leaves it open that they could be in a simulation of Singapore.
Why might they be in a simulation? Well, for one, if they're in the real world, how did he drag an unconscious Maeve into the restaurant and sit her in that booth without anyone noticing? It's just a thought for now, but we'll get more into this in a few.
It's probably the only way to get Maeve to go along with his plan, so I certainly wouldn't put it past him.
Even if their methods were questionable, we already know what Dolores plans to do with the money she and Caleb stole from Liam Dempsey. Charlotte tells Man in Black that they have a wealthy outside investor that will help them stave off Serac's takeover attempt, and that investor is Dempsey, whether he knows it or not.
But, as was evident from Bernard's shock over the fact that she turned Connells into a host and not Dempsey, it's worth wondering why she is keeping him alive rather than simply taking over his body. It's clearly about more than the money. As Bernard said, "She's leaving him in play. She must need him for something."
The most likely answer is that Dempsey has some information in his head that they'll need to get out before killing him. Dolores already tried to pump him for information in the premiere episode, and it almost got her killed. Now that they have his money, which seems to be one of the few things he actually cares about, they might have some added leverage to get said information. Of course, they could just torture him.
When Maeve comes upon the Yakuza hideout, but before she meets Musashi (and finds out he's actually Dolores), she breaks open one of the casks in the warehouse, and instead of booze spilling out, it's the white liquid used to make hosts. And that brings a couple of very important questions...
What is Dolores using it for? And how much of it does she have? Obviously, she used it to make the hosts we've already seen, but could she be planning build an army? Does she have the ability to create more control units on the outside? Or is it simply to make other bodies that she can change into like wearing different outfits?
At the end of the episode, it looked like Dolores was actually about to abandon that warehouse as it was about to come under attack (more on that in a minute), so there's a chance that Dolores could be losing her reserve of host juice.
Almost certainly not. For starters, she might not be in the real world to begin with.
Beyond that, Musashi ran out of the warehouse when one of his henchmen came in to tell him that vehicles were approaching and left Maeve on the floor for whoever was coming, presumably Serac, to find her. But he did one of the dumbest things I've ever seen a character do in the show — he just left her, with her pearl, there on the floor. And if we know anything about hosts, it's that they can "die" over and over again but as long as their pearl is still in tact, all the need is a quick trip to the body shop.
WHY DIDN'T HE CUT OUT HER PEARL?
And don't tell me he didn't have time. Have you seen what that guy can do with a katana? one swing of his blade and he could've taken off her heard and escaped with the pearl — he (she, I guess) could've simply cut it out once he got to safety.
This wasn't a human unknowingly leaving her alive. This was a fellow host. He knew what leaving her pearl there, in a room full of host juice, meant. If Maeve was such a threat, she would've been entirely eliminated. Something is going on here, I just don't know what it is yet.
Every time I rewatch an episode of #Westworld, I feel like I’m Lee Sizemore and the show is Theresa. pic.twitter.com/syqsa9JoTK
— Matt Mullin (@matt_mullin) March 31, 2020
In this episode, we got confirmation that Dolores, Caleb, Bernard and Stubbs are all in the same timeline, because they all see each other at that Eyes Wide Shut themed sex auction. But because this is Westworld, that doesn't mean that everything we've seen from these characters have taken place in chronological order or in the same timeline. Not. One. Bit.
We've seen Dolores and Charlotte together as recently as last episode, but that doesn't mean those events — which ended with Charlotte meeting Serac and discovering she's the mole — took place right before Charlotte's meeting with Man in Black, or that Dolores' actions in the most recent episode took place right after.
For starters, this episode does a lot of work to try to convince you that what we're seeing is all happening at the same time, especially with how that structure the multiple Dolores reveal at the end of the episode, with all three happening at the same time. That obviously works as a plot device, so that the audience can get the shock of all three at the same time, but there's almost no way all three of these happened simultaneously within the timeline of the show. It would just be too convenient.
But by having them all happen at once, the writers are doing a really good job of making us think they all are. And when Westworld does something so obvious like this, it usually means something bigger is at play and we're all paying attention to the wrong thing.
It's likely that Charlotte is in the same or a similar timeline to Dolores, even if those reveals didn't happen at the same exact moment, but I have some questions about Maeve and whether or not she's in the future — perhaps because she's inside a simulation that's allowing her to see future events. Serac could be running her through this simulation over and over until she figures out how to beat it — kind of like what she was doing on her own inside Warworld — not unlike the very underrated movie Edge of Tomorrow.
*Extreme Rust Cohle voice* And, finally, we arrive at the end of the maze.
We now know where four of the five pearls that Dolores stole are. There's one in Bernard, and three are Dolores copies (Charlotte, Connells and Musashi).
So that begs the question: When will that last pearl come into play, or is it already out there? And if so, is it in a character we've seen already, or will it be going into someone we haven't met yet? Could Dolores be saving it for Serac? Or perhaps as a way to insert a copy of herself into Rehoboam and break the system that way?
There are a ton of possibilities, so this one should be interesting.
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