Westworld Season Finale and the Man in Black

Published January 14, 2017 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi gang,

I had a few thoughts in the run-up to the Westworld season finale and thought they might be worth sharing.

First, with regards to the William-is-the-Man-In-Black discussion in the latest deep dive, you talked about how a person doesn’t suddenly flip from good to evil, and I agree. We’ve been watching a slow transformation, and it really began when William and Delores “became intimate” on the train. Before, William didn’t care one wit about the park, and as a result he didn’t draw much distinction between guests and hosts; he speaks politely and helps the hosts, and recoils at violence against them. After, William is on the Westworld bandwagon, accepting how it can provide pure, real journeys of self-discovery — but that also means accepting the unreality of the hosts and that the park is a consequence-free environment. It’s only after this realisation that he absolutely kills that wounded soldier, and works up to slaughtering the Confederado camp. He does care about Delores, but only in that she makes him happy and facilitates his heroic story. It’s sociopathic, and very in line with the Man in Black’s behaviour. The thematic question, therefore, is whether the park changed William into something dark and twisted, or if he always had it in him to be the Man in Black and just needed Westworld to unleash it. Is the park changing the landscape of human behaviour?

My second thought harkens back to the Jurassic Park novel, and the discussions of why that park failed. In the movie, everything’s going fine until Nedry sabotages the fences, but in the novel, the park has already spun out of control in many subtle ways because the creators tried to fit complex components they didn’t understand into simple systems. Dinosaurs are breeding when that shouldn’t be possible. Dinosaurs are getting around the lysine addiction using plants grown on the island. Dinosaurs are on the mainland. The park computers are incapable of looking for unexpected data or predicting problems. Nedry’s sabotage — a case of industrial espionage — is merely the tipping point. All this was very much in the back of my mind watching episode 9, where even as Dr Ford demonstrates his total control, we’re seeing the complex components of the park spin out from him in unexpected ways. Some hosts are immune to park control measures. Others are aware of them, and are getting around them. Hosts are scheming to escape the park. Hosts are uncovering truths about the park that even the humans don’t know. Throw in a case of sabotage for the purposes of industrial espionage, and the question isn’t IF the system will collapse, its merely a matter of when and how and what. What will be the tipping point? That’s what I’m on the edge of my seat to find out next week.

Keep up the great work,

Paul from Australia

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