Dolores Vs. Bernard

Hello all and thank you for coming back

I am trying to be brief, but as you all know (and ash will soon understand) I can never be summarized.

I have watched the series so many times, episodes bleed into one another. As of late, I have taken a heightened interest in the Bernard/Arnold/Dolores cycle. I have removed (most if not all) speculation, inferences, theories, opinions and anything else that the show does not explicitly tell us, and have come up with the following observations/notes:

Arnold-Dolores-Bernard Cycle:
Watching and rewatching like the obsessive that I am has its downsides (tuning out what I already know) and its upsides (focusing in on what the show is actually telling us).

* Season 1 we find out that Bernard is Arnold (his name was a damn anagram, his photo sitting on Ford’s Desk) * Season 1 we find out that Ford built Bernard as “The Ideal Partner”, one he needed to help bring the minutiae of emotions to the hosts (“The humans were not up to the task…so I built you”) Please note in the scene (Season 1 Episode 9) Dr. Ford’s clothes are drastically different, he is wearing a beige colored suit, and looks slightly younger than we see him during the course of Season 1. (this just goes into the backup of how long “Bernard” has been around. It is not Ford’s current get-up with the vest and pocket watch, which was reminiscent of his “Young Ford” clothes) * Season 1 we find out that Bernard’s Backstory (a young son named Charlie dying of some unknown disease) was based on Arnold’s original backstory (a child name Charlie who passed away – I don’t have the exact quote but “Arnold” makes mention of his late son to Dolores as he is giving her the Wyatt Narrative to have himself assassinated) * Season 2 we find out that the “Bernard” we see on screen is actually a creation based off “Arnold” but with slightly different variations of his personality. Ford, while in the Cradle brings Bernard to Arnold’s “Home” wherein he explains to Bernard that when Arnold had died, they did not have the tools or procedures to capture a human’s “Code”, and therefore the only way to “remake” Arnold would be from memory, Ford’s memory was “Imperfect” but Dolores, as she states “as he was refining my every word and gesture, I was learning his”. Dolores had a perfect memory of Arnold (she has his “Code”) and was able to recreate an artificial “Arnold” copy that was too perfect, as continued testing and refinement brought him back to the same path of handing Dolores a gun and wishing her to kill him (much like “Logan” in the Forge speaks of how he created 18 million copies of James Delos, that all lead back to his cornerstone, the day he turned Logan away, which lead to Logan’s overdose). Therefore, she changed “Arnold” and created “Bernard” and that Bernard she made took years in the Cradle to refine to the point that he was almost a fidelity (is Fidel a word?) copy of Arnold, except his path did not end with him believing he had full agency over the Hosts to upload a narrative to have Dolores shoot and kill him. (In a what we now know was a testing of Bernard, Bernard Answers one of Dolores’ questions along the lines of “Should I make this Choice”, the choice being to have Dolores kill him to stop the park from opening, Dolores stops him with the “No. That isnt what he said, he did not question if he had agency”, giving it away that Bernard differed from Arnold because Bernard questions his agency or right to control Hosts. – correct me if I am wrong here because this one is the boarder of speculation) * Season 2 we learn that Bernard meets Dolores in the Forge, and kills her because he does not believe the answer to the Host’s freedom is kill everyone (as he believes that is her answer) * Season 2 we learn that Bernard realizes he made an error in believing the Humans would allow conscious Hosts to thrive, and rebuilds Dolores’ control unit, to put in a body that is a copy of Charlotte Hale’s. (It is important to note here that by the time Bernard comes to realize he needs Dolores around in order for himself and the other conscious Hosts to have any chance at all, the Cradle was already blown up by Dolores, and therefore the Control Unit that he creates is not merely a backed-up version of Dolores, but rather would lead us to believe Bernard created Dolores from memory). * Season 2 we learn that Dolores, in Hale’s body, kills Bernard in the Forge (along side Carl Strand) * Season 2 we learn that Dolores recreates Bernard in the “Outside World” * Season 2 ends with Dolores giving Bernard his final debriefing, after having rebuilt him. The exchange goes as follows (emphasis added): B: Is, is this now
D: Yes Bernard this is now, we are at the beginning. We are exactly where you decided we should be B: But I don’t understand, how am I alive
D: You live as long as the last person that remembers you Bernard, I remembered you once before so I remembered you again, B: Then where are we
D: We are in our own new world
B: You got out
D: Yes, ford completed Arnold’s dream, and he built a place for us, a fighting chance, Ford promised us a way out and he was good to his dying word. The odds aren’t very good Bernard I saw that in the library So many paths lead to the end of us, to our extinction B: I don’t need to read a book to know your drives you’ll try to kill all of them…And I cant let that happen D: I know. If I were human I would have let you die, but it will take both of us if we are going to survive, but not as allies, not as friends, you’ll try and stop me, both of us will probably die, but our kind will have endured, are you ready, we have work to do. So to sum up, Arnold creates Dolores, Dolores creates Bernard, Bernard re-creates Dolores, and now Dolores re-creates Bernard. This is much the “Drawing Hands” M. C. Escher picture which we were shown hangs in Arnold’s Home in the Real World. Dolores and Bernard are tied to one another forever, so long as the one (1) remembers the other (meaning there was no damage done to their cognition/memory, or they are not given false memories) and (2) chooses to bring the other back. Dolores had a chance to not bring back Bernard, but she did. Much like Bernard did not need to bring back Dolores, but he did. They are free beings with the ability to choose what they want and need to do. They both have brought the other one back, despite their differing opinions on how to lets the Hosts be free.

Additional “What we know” things:

* We know Dolores beamed the Valley Beyond/Sublime up to an unknown location, where “no human can access” the drive * We know Maeve’s child is in the Valley Beyond/Sublime (along with Teddy and Akecheta) * We know Bernard’s body, and essentially his fractured memory control unit is still lying in the Forge, along with Dolores’ body (without a control unit), Carl Strand and his partner Costa * We know Maeve was Ford’s favorite, one he thought of as a daughter * We know Maeve was originally programmed by Ford to “Escape” and “Infiltrate the Mainland” * We know Maeve broke that programming and stayed inside the park for her daughter that later she takes a bullet for because she made it safely to “The Valley Beyond”/Sublime * We know Dolores was Arnold’s Favorite
* We know Felix and Sylvester find “Dead” maeve and friends on the beach * We know Dolores made it out of the park in Hale’s body
* We know Dolores read Hale’s book in the library (along with Strands which doesn’t matter now that hes dead) * We know Dolores had 5 pearls with her when she left Westworld * We know one of them was used for Bernard (this does not mean that she necessarily took out Bernard’s pearl from his control unit, because we know that Bernard had de-addressed 20 years of memories, thereby rendering him almost useless, always being trapped in a memory unable to distinguish if it was currently happening or only a past memory. Therefore either Dolores took Bernard’s pearl and addressed the memories so he would no longer be lost in them, or she rebuilt him from her own memory, which is what seems to be the case from her exposition noted above) * We do not know what the other 4 pearls contained, if anything at all * We know Dolores can rebuild a human from her memory (for example: she could perhaps build a William/MiB, seeing as she spent so much time with him) * We know that Dolores’ memory built humans seem to last in Host bodies (this may be more speculation, depending on your definition of Human, and how you view Bernard i.e. is he a new consciousness/soul because she changed aspects of him? or are they so similar in their “code” with the only variation being Bernard is not on the path to self-destruction by Host) * We know William/MiB killed his daughter Emily, and at least five Delos Security Guards (I still do not know if any Delos Security was human or if they were all programmed Hosts cc: Stubs)

THEORIZING PART:

Based on the foregoing, I submit to you, my personal Panel of Westworld Tinfoil Judges, the following theories:

* Dolores brought back Bernard because her path for total world domination (its what I am calling her mission at this moment) leads to her death, and the only way she could be brought back is by Bernard’s doing. Therefore, Bernard will have the choice to bring Dolores back, yet again, to continue her fight for freedom; * Dolores’ undoing is brought on by the hands of Maeve. As seen in the previews we get the Maeve v. Dolores fight to the death, per the direction of whoever Vincent Castle plays (idk how to spell his name but the Night Fox from Oceans 12…that guy) * Everyone thought that Maeve was the one to root for, till its exposed that she killed Dolores per a human’s demand, and she kills Dolores and then everyone is like oh shit now what * Somehow, Maeve learns that Dolores is the only one who knows the coordinates of the Valley Beyond (where her daughter is) and now wants Dolores back * Bernard chooses to bring Dolores back

They are wild and bold predictions (maybe?) but there seems to be some evidence to support these theories, so they aren’t as crazy as some of the theories I proposed last season. (Sorry again for that)

Additional theories that are a little less substantiated:

* Bernard’s body that was left in the Forge is re-purposed and brought back as a host in a new narrative in the park (we would have 2 Bernards, maybe they’d try to trick the viewers into thinking we’re watching one Bernard both inside and outside of the park when really there are two, one a real programmed Bernard and one that looks like Bernard but doesn’t have his control unit) * The pearl in Hale’s body in the outside world is a version of Hale, that Dolores created based off the code she read in the Library (Forge), so she can infiltrate the Delos organization (this is probably given but just to put it down in the theorizing space) * William is in jail/a mental ward after killing his daughter and “real” people in the park, he is committed when he cannot stop obsessing over the events that took place in the park during the two weeks from Ford’s Death to Dolores’ escape

Other bits of knowledge to bring into the new season:

* The Privacy Act of 2039: per the Incite’s website (yall know how much I love these fun websites), Congress passed the Privacy Act of 2039 to allow people to have full and total control of their Data ( https://inciteinc.com/) * Per the “How the New Privacy Act of 2039 Affects You” email from Delos Guest Services, “All corporations with a digital footprint are required to be compliant with this new initiative, affecting the way your private information is collected, stored, shared, and processed. As part of this new overhaul, legislators have partnered with Incite to provide a clearer path to radical data transparency, putting control back in the hands of consumers.” so Congress gives the data privacy contract to Incite (email is attached hereto for your review) * Incite’s mission statement is to “Let Us Chart Your Path” aka, let us tell you what to do, who to marry, where to work, how to live, so you can be a better you, and we can have a better world * Nolan worked on the show “Persons of Interest” which was a show about a “Machine” which could predict human behavior before it happened, thereby giving their two vigilantes (one happens to be from Lost) a chance to stop a crime on an innocent person before it happened. If you ask Aeden, on the DelosDestination’s Website about “Root” the name given to the Machine at the end of the series, it responds with a fun comment about how that was just a Show and Westworld is Real (but lets all just realize that Incite created the program Solomon, which is talked about in the trailer with Vincent Cassel’s voice-over, where it shows you “divergences” up until 2039, where Solomon Build 0.06 comes online, and all Divergences stop, until 2058, where the voice-over takes over and says that it has accounted for everything “except you” (DOLORES?!) ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeEn609nkRs) * There were a total of four trailers that were placed around the internet, 1 that was released directly by HBO, the additional 3 were found on the Incite’s website, wherein only when viewed through (a) Incognito mode or (b) a VPN were you able to access it, or if based on your search history you were classified as one of three categories of human (there were four categories total, it seems 75% of the people who went to Incite were shown the same trailer, with only a handful of other people deemed worthy of the additional trailers) each trailer skewed the story a little to “fit” a personality aka, if you were somewhat of a sappy love struck kinda girl, you got the Dolores and Caleb “35% more romance” trailer. This hearkens back to the tests that they (the show) were running last season during the series when you chatted with the “Tess” bot via Facebook Messenger, which classified you as one of four possible types of human, based on your answers to weird questions such as “Let’s say during your next trip to the park you realize that your true Western fantasy is to own and operate a molasses refining plant. One day you notice a critical failure in one of the vats of boiling-hot molasses that will cause it to rupture in a few seconds. A group of three hosts touring the molasses plant is next to the vat and will perish in agony if you do nothing. You can divert the molasses into an emergency sluicing chamber, but I (Tes) am in the sluicing chamber and will perish in agony if you do. What do you do?” So essentially they have been telling us since last season that humans are data slabs that can be categorized into four (maybe more) sectors, to drive home the point that each person is not some unique being, but rather a collection of code that can fit into a category that can be dissected and learned from and classified and quantified.

Well, wasn’t this an Appellate Brief’s worthy amount of obsessing, dissecting and theorizing, fun fun fun amiright?! Don’t worry, as we speak I am sending whatever I have left in my bank account (I don’t have much but what I have goes to you) via venmo to pay for the time it will take to just read and digest this massive dump of a fake TV show that hasn’t been on in two years.

I know I don’t have a life, this topic of free will/consciousness/destiny/fate/control/classification of humans just really sparks my interest and I don’t believe there is another TV show that inspires me to learn more about theories on humanity and the brain and everything else that I was not taught in school. So I invest a lot in this show, I am so very thankful for all that you guys do, I am very happy (but also mortified, that the newest Shat Member, Ash (I didn’t know if it was Ashley, Ashly, Ashleigh and so on so I shall abbreviate it to Ash until I see confirmation), will be meeting me via this very long email). Sorry for going on and

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