Bernarnold And Host Emily?

Published May 29, 2018 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi Folks,

Just listening to your Instacast from the latest episode of Westworld podcast and have a thought about the opening scene with Delores and Bernard…

Like the scene we saw in Season 1 where Ford was telling Bernard about how Arnold would wipe his glasses, this scene with Delores was in the early days of Bernard… I reckon what we’re going to find is the following:

They could transfer human consciousness a LONG time ago.

They knew about the cognitive plateau.

Arnold was transferred many times and failed, THESE failures will be the multiple BernArnolds we see in an upcoming episode. They aren’t the many Bernards of Westworld, but cold-stored failures, Ford didn’t burn them all away like William did with Daddy Delos.

They realised they couldn’t do anything about the cognitive plateau so they gave Arnold a new persona, but with access to data in Arnold’s brain so he could continue his work.

Ford could do this because they tested their capabilities on themselves in the early days and had Arnold stored in the Cradle before Arnold had Delores shoot him 30 years ago. To be thorough Arnold should have destroyed the Cradle back then and not just the hosts.

Delores is the one talking to him and correcting his mannerisms and responses because she was someone familiar with him, same as how William was the one who did the checks with James Delos. This may have been a time when they were trying to get Bernard access to parts of Arnold.

Arnold might sometimes slip through, we’ve seen times where the hosts get changes and hear Arnold, maybe he is slipping through past Bernard’s persona, or maybe he is reaching out from the Cradle, or talking with them when they return to the Cradle during “dead time” before they are loaded into a new body after being killed.

I also think that William is not a host, that would indeed be lame as the show has pretty much focused around his life, his daughter may be… and the bit with the elephant story: William was the one to bring it up first and it was clearly a test to see how she’d respond, his puzzled face and the fact that he left her in the night might imply she was right, that it was her mother that was scared rather than her, but that he’s still not convinced she’s not just been put there as a roadblock for him. After all Ford knows everything that goes on in the park.

She wouldn’t need to know that she’s been made into a host if the switch was made fast as they wouldn’t have to explain to her that time had past as they would have had to with James Delos to get him back into the world. She therefore wouldn’t hit a cognitive plateau. Her ‘programming’ could be tweaked, to get her to go back to her father and try and convince him to abandon his path.

I think the fact that she didn’t get shot by the dude she slept with was telling, as is the fact that William left her in a hostile environment, the daughter that he has missed and who sent him into this spiral in the first place as come back to him for reconciliation and he abandoned her… he’s not convinced she’s not a host.

Anyway, your three shows a week are a superb effort. You’re my only source beyond the show, I work from home, my partner and I watch the show weekly, but he’s not into the whole going into the theories thing. But like you’ve recently mentioned, it’s part of the show and having you guys go through it is an integral part of the viewing process for me. I was pretty excited when you started a GOT podcast and was sad to discover I had watched American Gods without your companionship.

Keep up the awesome work.

JT
Melbourne, Australia.

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