Bernarnold, Billy in Black and Militant Maeve

Published January 22, 2017 · Updated July 6, 2022

First things first, you fellas are top notch purveyors of the obsessive nerdery that Westworld demands. Listening to the deep dive and telegraph on Episode 8 during our holiday travels somehow managed to turn my lady from a cynical jerk (“You’re watching this episode AGAIN?! We get it, it’s a good show, take your meds”) to a full on fangirl (“Pause it!” “We have to go back and watch the whole run before Sunday!”) So thank you for that…

I wanted to get an email to you before the finale airs and we’re all busy collectively trying to stuff our brains back up our noses, because shit’s about to get real, dudes. At least from where I’m sitting. But what is real, really? Is this now?

The Bernarnold reveal and subsequent memory dives were both magnificent and gratifying (I was an early adherent to the Bernarnold school; sticker, please.) “But that was before your time, wasn’t it, Bernard?” WINKS TO CAMERA AND ALL OF HUMANITY

Anyway, I’m betting after Dr. Ford pops by the parts department for a braincase rebuild kit, we’ll see a rolled back Bern in time for the premiere of Ford’s new narrative (not a retrospective, as the board fears, more on this later). He needs him, and not just in a practical sense.

Apropos of nothing, Dr. Ford’s emo bull crap about human intellect being a peacock feathered pestilence and all of civilization existing “because boners, bro”, and how “daddy told me the world didn’t owe me anything so I built my own” sounds like the angry MySpace rants of a friend zoned millennial. Will the time frame be revealed? Dr. Ford, class of 2005, anyone? Makes more sense than robo-babies…

What’s at the top of Arnold’s pyramid? Whitman called it the transparent eyeball, that certain something that separates bundles of firing neurons from whatever consciousness is. Dolores glimpsed the eye 30 years prior (after multiple, “Edge of Tomorrow” attempts) when the MiB was just an ambitious (if non-threatening) EVP at Logan’s family’s company with a cheek mole he later has laser sanded off. He puts Logan in his place (the dirt? the mail room? Fiji?), and begins his ascension “out there”.

The maze is both physical (DIG it), and pseudo-spiritual (“it can set you free, maybe”).

“These violent delights have violent ends” seemed at first to be like a verbal Trojan virus, deflecting the pliant hosts off of their loops and careening off in search of themselves. A glitch. A bug.

This is not Dolores’ first rodeo, and upon further review, the phrase seems to be the “Hello, World” line of code that boots the sequence of self-realization/actualization that Arnold would probably deem “The Maze”. Not a bug, but a feature of the creature. The ultimate DLC.

The acknowledgement or even capacity to conceive of the outside seems to be the sign that they’ve set down the twisty path to consciousness. Dolores’ “how come you’re all clamoring to get in here?” and Maeve’s multiple “red smock god” sketches in the floor. While each of these ladies satisfy that prerequisite, each take a different tack.

Dolores has been at this for a while, with periods of blissful loop living in between those existential detours where she realizes she murdered her creator. It’s not guilt, it’s regret that she basically burned the folder with all the answers she’s been confusingly pursuing on and off for the last 3 decades, with varying degrees of success and always rolled back to the beginning of the damn loop.

Did she do it at the behest of Arnold actual who seems to have been, either a.) convinced his martyrdom would bring the hammer down on Ford and somehow free the life he created that was being held in sticky bondage of the depraved upper crust. Or, 2.) Dude uploaded himself, horcrux style, as the voice, the narrative, the cornerstone of all 47 or probably 42 hosts that continue to evolve even in their hobbled state. Or something completely different and HBOier. Maybe he was showing Dolores how to clean a gun and it went off.

Maeve wants out. Period. She doesn’t know what’s out there, but it’s gotta be better than this. And she’s got a game genie(and apparently Charlotte’s dress?). We’ll assume that Ford’s new narrative is less a retrospective and more his memoirs. Hence the digging up of Escalante or Rock River or wherever the fuck that church is…and the past, again. What’s Wyatt’s last name? Is it a case of Wyatteddy? Is it his time to let go and let the board win and go out with a grand massacre of himself and the offending corporate officers care of Maeve and company? Long play seems like a Ford move…

Or is he truly motivated to preserve this AI paradigm shift out of worries about the safety of the sentient hosts from the threat of humans or to protect humans from sentient fuck puppets? Is the whole “guys, they’re objects, I super scalpel serial, I swear!” schtick for real or is it just propaganda? Seems like he’s seen a few uprisings and headed them off at the pass in the past. The look on his face when OG Clementine is revealed, was just the right mix of amusement and contempt.

Is he filled with hubris and oblivious that he’s about to be fuck-puppeted to death or is he just a confident gamesman, moving militant Maeve and her pawns into place just in time to finally end the board’s machinations against him once and for all?

Sunday can’t come fast enough, that is what I do know.

Oh, and Elsie as the smoke monster for some reason saves Stubbs Hemsworth from the ghost injuns. #stillmoreplausiblethanrobobabies

And that was definitely the Pete Abernathy mindfuck photo.

Thanks again!

Cory

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