Now I’m Just Being Really Obnoxious But

Published June 25, 2018 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hey Guys,

can we talk about the mirroring/reflections that happen throughout the whole episode?

Arnold takes away Dolores’ free will and programs her to shoot him. She spends an entire season wracked with this guilt that she was the one who killed her beloved Creator, only to find out NOPE that was never really your choice so you’re free. Sometime in between shooting Arnold and Bernard Shooting her she makes a new Arnold, she brings him back but since every iteration that is an exact copy of the real Arnold, he leads her to the same outcome (whats that they say about insanity again…?) by giving her a gun and making her shoot him so she tweaks him every so slightly to become Bernard. Bernard then in the current timeline then has to make a choice to give the hosts free will he should let dolores live (opposite of what Arnold was willing to have Dolores do to him to give them consciousness) OR he can realize that unleashing Dolores is probs not good so he kills her instead ONLY to REGRET that decision he FREELY MADE on his own and bring her back.

Its like fucking playing pingpong with consciousness and robots and thats fascinating.

Then William and James Delos. James Delos, while being a big old prick and douche bag, we find out his cornerstone, the memory that holds him back from progressing every time is Logan begging for help, and him abandoning him turning his back on him and not believing him when he says hes clean which leads to his death. Here you had William Judging James Delos in the fishbowl experiment saying basically that he was a shit family man. ironic? Because William clearly did the same thing. He abandoned his daughter (specially after her mothers death by going to the park to kill maeve to see if he really was a bad dude…) and then shoots and kills her when he doesn’t believe that she is a real human. Will this be yet another cornerstone for William to work through during his fidelity tests now in the future?

The finale has me thinking of a lot of different things but most importantly its about choices we make. I know theyre telling us that humans have no free will because basically our genetic code and whatever makes our brain ticks predetermines all the choices that we will make, but look at Lee Sizemore and you can see that sometimes people can make a one-off choice that really matters and yet goes against their programming. Everyone in the finale was making choices left and right, and those choices determined ultimately their fate.

Thats what I enjoy about this show, yes its overly complicated yes they could have made it straightforward and simple yes maybe they gave us a lot of answers to questions we never asked and sure they threw at us more question that may never get answering but from the 10.5 hours of tv i watched in the last 10 weeks I am left again questioning things about my own life, about humanity and human nature and what this whole thing means. Its nice to have a show that can artfully tell me I am stupid for thinking I am a special human and forces me to look deeper at everything and see the craziness that is our species. I just wish everyone would stop looking to be right in guessing what will happen or what the right answer is and just start talking about how the stories theyre giving us makes us feel when reflecting on our own lives.

Ok maybe thats all for now

Gillian

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