Spoiler alert: this blog is published after Westworld airs on HBO in the US on Sunday night. Do not read unless you have watched episode nine, which airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Tuesday at 9pm.
Right, let’s get this straight. Bernard is Arnold. At least when he’s with Dolores. At other times, he just looks like Arnold but is in fact Bernard, a host created by Ford (in Arnold’s image). Sometimes Bernard acts like Arnold; he questions Ford’s behaviour and suspects him of clandestine tactics. And sometimes Bernard is effectively an extension of Ford, killing at his behest. Bernard also had a child, who was also a host, and a wife, who was only a memory. After briefly overriding his programming to remember events he was under instruction to forget, Bernard is now dead. He dies by his own hand, at the instruction of Ford, who had the ability to override Bernard’s ability to override his programming all along. This ability was given to Ford by Arnold.
Get it? Got it? Good. Episode nine and things are becoming both clearer and more opaque at the same time. Now that we know for sure that the theory of Bernard being made in Arnold’s image is correct we can draw some other conclusions. For example, that the person with whom Dolores has her secret discussions about freedom and the maze is also Arnold. This revelation in turn confirms that we are watching a drama conducted in multiple timelines: the earliest 35 years before the latest.
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The list of things we don’t know goes something like this. We don’t know what the maze is or where it leads. We don’t know what Ford’s Wyatt narrative is about, and can’t be sure who Wyatt is. We don’t know why hosts are becoming self-aware and resistant to human control (though it seems part of Arnold’s original plan that it should happen and may have started to spread from host to host). We do not know what information the Delos board is so keen to extract from the park or why. We suspect that the guest William is also the Man in Black, but we don’t know for sure. And if he is the Man in Black it appears that years later he assaults his former love Dolores and we don’t know why that is neither.
I think I’ve probably missed some things.
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With all this flux and uncertainty I am grateful for Maeve’s clarity. The Mariposa madam is pursuing her robot revolution with the steely-eyed determination of a Black Friday bargain-hunter. First on the agenda is using her new administrator privileges to bust (at this point an un-self-aware) Bernard’s investigation into last week’s slaughter in Sweetwater. Having ordered Bernard to declare her fit for work, she teleports herself to Hector Escaton’s loop, where he and his gang are debating what to do with the safe they stole from the saloon. Maeve knows the outcome of this debate; they all shoot each other Mexican standoff-style. But by interrupting Hector mid-micturation – “before you draw that pistol you might want to holster the other one first” – she spares the bandit from mutually-assured destruction. The next thing you know, the two of them are making the beast with two backs and setting fire to a tent. This is on purpose by the way; they are drawing the attention of HQ in order to infiltrate them.
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As for Dolores – you fear for Evan Rachel Wood, so convoluted are the demands on her character. First off she is Dolores in blue, the Alice in Wonderland naif meeting Arnold in the church basement. Finally she is Dolores in civvies (but no evidence of blood stains), standing in the same church but alone until the Man in Black joins her. In between she is the Dolores with whom we have largely spent our time – the Dolores who becomes self aware, bursts out of her loop, runs off with William, and gets slashed in the belly by number one bellend Logan. In this timeline, she follows her evisceration by doing a runner from Logan and the confederados, but still ends up in the church. (I must confess I’m not entirely sure we’re watching three timelines and not two, but because of the absence of blood on Dolores’s shirt at points I’m going to say three.) To add to the confusion, we know that the most contemporary timeline has the same church buried up to its spire in sand. And so the meeting between Dolores and the MiB is not part of the most up-to-date story. I think.
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If William is the MiB, we might have seen his Harvey Dent acid splash moment this week. Upon discovery by Logan, William is immediately tied to a chair and forced to watch as Logan, through the medium of eviscerating Dolores, attempts to prove once and for all that Westworld is just a game. A violent amoral game. William takes the point on board. By the time Logan surfaces from a booze-soaked slumber, William has slaughtered every single host in the confederate camp. I take this as a safe sign that the man who entered the park wanting to be a hero is no longer so interested in the role.
Finally, a quick mention for the man William may well become. After cracking wise with Wyatt’s female acolyte, who had just done her own bit of gutting on the beleaguered Teddy, the MiB is knocked cold. He awakes to find himself in a noose, set to be lynched should the horse at the other end of the rope take fright. That horse, being a horse, duly starts to wander but the MiB keeps his neck intact by grabbing the same knife that slaughtered Teddy and liberating himself from the rope just in time. Even as the old man gasps for breath his ordeal isn’t finished. He is forced to endure the attentions of sharp-tongued Delos representative Charlotte Hale who wants him to use his corporate clout (he bailed out the park 30 years previous, you’ll recall) to stop Ford’s grand Wyatt project. The MiB naturally refuses. He’s more interested in Arnold and his maze.
Notes from the prairie
Ashley is on the hunt for Elsie after her Fitbit (or whatever they call it in the future) was found in a zone it shouldn’t have. Ashley’s signal gets disrupted just as a crack team of ghost nation fighters come into view. Ashley is calm because, you know, they’re hosts. But they fail to respond to his instructions. Another piece of Ford manipulation?
During the scene where he remonstrates with William over Dolores, Logan shows him a photo of William’s wife-to-be. It turns out that photo is the same one that turned up on the Abernathy ranch earlier in the series, causing Papa Abernathy to freak out and be replaced by a younger model. I think this replacement happened in the present loop. Which would mean that photo might have been blowing around the prairie for 30 years. Not going to dwell on it though.
Finally, I think it’s become inarguable that you can only keep up with this show on its own terms by watching each episode, or key scenes at least, more than once. The Dolores timelines alone necessitate this. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, but it makes me think even more that this is a drama constructed with an internet audience in mind. Your thoughts?
Questions for next week
What do you expect to happen in the feature-length finale?
When Dolores flashes back to the Man in Black in the barn, is her memory playing tricks?
How many timelines do you make it?
If Bernard is Arnold, could Wyatt be Teddy?
