Dr Ford Is God & Zeus

Published October 28, 2016 · Updated July 6, 2022

Discovered your Westworld podcast. Stop.
Confused about your At the Movies names. Stop.
I listen to your theories. Stop.
I plan on continuing to subscribe. Stop.
Okay, I think you get my joke. I’ll Stop.

It’s actually a bit sad, because after “Dissonance Theory”, I am about 50% more likely to bail on Westworld before season’s end. I hope the show rights itself so if for no other reason, I can continue to listen to your delightful podcast.

Like probably most of the people who make or listen to your podcast, I’m one of those deep divers. The episodes of the series are just the starting points for extensive weekly journeys down rabbit holes, wallowing in theories and obsessing over frame grabs and ARG minutiae. Through the first three episodes, Westworld felt like it was going to be worth that amount of energy. Even so, I had lingering memories of “LOST”, reveries as it were. I’m one of those people for whom a show like this has to stick the landing at the end, or else the entire journey and experience will feel like a waste of time. For me, LOST is the most painful missed opportunity of a TV series ever. “Dissonance Theory” raised dozens of warning flags that none of the people involved learned ANYthing from how LOST went off the rails.

As stated, I’m a deep diver, and yet ten minutes into the show, I was utterly confused by the absolute deluge of exposition that was dumped upon us. So many new mysteries and wrinkles to existing mysteries, and vague threats some characters are making, and discovering stuff under the floorboards, and single-frame flashes of memory… ugh. Exhausting. While on the surface, that should feel exciting that this show apparently has this level of detail and puzzle-work at play, I found it soul-crushing. As one friend of mine put it, “Westworld really decided to give ammo to every theory out there this week…” It just felt like they were putting as much stuff out there as they could, and were going to worry about tying it in later after they see what sticks. LOST did this, and I hate it now for it.

There’s a line in movies/shows like this (Abrams-Nolan Mystery Boxes) where the mystery has to remain figure-outable even if you don’t put in dozens of hours of research between episodes. It should HELP if you put that kind of time in, but everything you need to solve the mystery should be on the screen. For Westworld, it PROBABLY is all on the screen, but there’s just too much stuff coming at us to keep track of without charts and Reddit threads. It’s like we’ve gotten a whole season of LOST info revealed to us already.

Anyway, I’m not giving up on the show yet. Maybe Ed Brubaker is just a terrible TV writer. But Westworld is on notice…

So a few stray theories while they are still in play:

Bernard Lowe’s name: I think Bernard is the Devil figure in this story (I’ll explain more in a bit). But think of his name as Burn Low. Where does one burn low? In Hell.

The people running this show are all brilliant (The Prestige is one of my top five favorite films) so I’m pretty sure there won’t be any one-to-one correlation between the themes of this series and some existing work of film or literature. But I DO think there are countless correlations of some kind.

Specifically, this show is all about God Complexes. That’s nothing revelatory. But I think where many theorizers are missing the boat is looking at it too strictly. I think Westworld is talking about ALL gods and deities and masters and subjects and slaves and followers. It’s a mish-mash of too many to count.

For example, I think Dr. Ford is God. But not JUST God. He’s more like a cross between God and Zeus. He’s not the benevolent God of the Bible. He’s the hyper-controlling God that anti-religious types like to paint God as. This is a God who wants his creation to OBEY. But he also wants them to choose to obey him. It’s a God without LOVE.

I think the specific model for Ford is the God of the story of Job. One who allows things to happen to his creation (and for Satan to have his way with that creation) in order to prove that in spite of everything, the creation will still love God. Bernard (by way of Arnold, most likely) is the Satan that Ford has allowed to exist in Westworld. Bernard, like Lucifer in his snake form, wants to offer God’s creation free will, knowledge, to be made equal to God. But Bernard isn’t the evil version of this mindset. He’s the hero. More the Paradise Lost version of Lucifer without the grandiosity. Dolores is Eve, and Bernard is continuing to offer her a taste of the Apple.

But Bernard isn’t the only Devil. The Man in Black is another aspect. This is more the angry devil, the one who wonders why he can’t have complete knowledge and access like God has. Like Satan, The Man in Black is allowed to roam the Earth to do whatever he wants without interference. This devil also wants to set the Hosts free, but for slightly different reasons than Bernard wants.

Looking ahead, I think that Ford is planning on introducing religion into Westworld (as has been posited by others). I think we’re going to have something that looks not unlike the story of Jesus. I think Ford has been creating the child robot and implanting him with his own memories, but none of the knowledge. At some point, probably the season finale, Ford will “die”, but it will be revealed much later on that he placed his consciousness into the child robot (who might very well be a ‘grown’ robot by season’s end. This will represent God coming to live among his creation like He did in the form of Jesus. Jesus-Ford will be the entity who leads the hosts into enlightenment and self-awareness, and gives them a reason to think beyond just their Westworld existences. However, this will be a DARK existence. It won’t be a kindly lord, but one who demands much of them, all to keep them in order.

I think Wyatt will end up being a sort of Dark John the Baptist, preparing the way for the new God on Earth.

I’m also a subscriber to the theory that the main Westworld facility is a representation of Greek Mythological geography, with everything from Mt. Olympus on top to Hades on the bottom.

Further, I’m too tired at the moment to delve into it, but you can probably make pretty reasonable correlations between the various Greek gods and our Westworld team. Ford is Zeus. Elise is… Athena? Stubbs is Apollo. Sizemore is Ares. Theresa is Hera. Arnold is maybe Hades or Hephaestus. None one-to-one correlations, but I think each Westworld employee is supposed to represent some or various gods from Greek or Egyptian or Norse mythology, all mashed together.

And the way they view and interact with the people in Westworld may as well be straight out of Clash of the Titans, as they look down on them from above.

If I’m right, on paper this seems like it will be incredibly fun and larger than life and operatic and epic. But… I’ve already lost confidence that they know how to dole this info out.

We’ll see.

Re: William = Man in Black… I was off the bandwagon after Episode 3, but I’m back to giving the bandwagon longer appraising looks after Episode 4. I’m more inclined to chalk up the difference in logos and other details to reshoot continuity errors than I am to deliberately planted clues. I’d like to believe the show is that clever and playing a really brilliant long con, but I don’t think the show is interested in that, or skilled enough to pull it off. I think if they had this in mind, we’d have gotten some more obvious (but still sneaky) clues.

My biggest thing is trying to reverse-engineer the eventual reveal. How would that Sixth Sense-style flashback explanation work? They’d have to first set up a bunch of scenes where it’s CLEAR that William’s timeline and present-day timeline aren’t lining up, but not yet offer up any explanation. Then we’d have to be shown how these things we’ve already seen were all misdirections into making us think that they were happening concurrently. But there hasn’t been enough examples or any iconic moments in these scenes that we would remember and be able to say, “AH, NOW I see why that was like that!!” Everything happened normally, or at least as narratively expected. Just based on what we have so far, there’s no indications that there’s anything we should have noticed. Even the different logo wasn’t focused on.

Okay, that’s all for now. I’ll

Stop. Vic Houston, TX

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