Bernard Is Ford’s Construct and Foil

Published June 6, 2018 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hey guys and gal!

With regards to the cradle and the multiple Bernards, I’d like to share a few thoughts.

Bullet to the head Bernard is Ford’s construct and foil. His humanizing soul, built to therapize hosts and make them more human.
Scarless Bernard is Bernard’s body carrying some other hosts pearl. Perhaps Teddy, perhaps Dolores. To what End is unclear to me at this point. But I think the fact you have a bunch of hosts with virgin pearls means that about 30% have been inserted into host bodies that can pass for human. Dolores’ mission is to destroy the race that created and enslaved hosts. How better to do that then to create hosts who pass for human.

Bernard in the cradle, Bullet in the head Bernard’s pearl, is not resident in the cradle. He is visiting to find out who is the “ghost in the machine” that is out hacking the QA team and making taming of the island and the hosts impossible.

The entire inifinite realities, string theory universe, conversation is very interesting, but I suspect a bit of a red herring. While I’m assuming that the cradle is a quantum computing environment fully realized at massive scale, I think this part of season 2 is about Bernard realizing that Ford has continued to influence events after his death. Perhaps that confrontation turns violent, perhaps they have a series of platonic arguments while life continues in a linear manner outside of the cradle. I suspect this is not the introduction of a series of “possible” outcomes, infinite parallel universes, etc. That would be a bit too much like “and he woke up and the season was just a Dream”.

And a quick point about Maeve at the end of Phase Space. Maeve is the most human of the hosts, thanks to her optimization by Felix she’s also able to perform Ford like feats of control. Though she is unaware of her full powers. When it came to Ghost Nation she was unable to act for a simple, human reason. PTSD. She hot cluster fucked and couldn’t act. She froze.
That last scene and her insistence on going on her own wasn’t the most elegant, nor the most interesting. But her not acting on the Sioux? Plain ole battle fatigue.

Keep up the great work

Jeff

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