So Many Ideas To Chew On

Published May 16, 2018 · Updated July 6, 2022

Dear Shat Hosts:

Loved your podcast banter. I certainly agree with your Deep Dive thought that the Riddle of the Sphinx is a great episode because it gives us a lot to think about. So please pardon the length of this email.

OMG, the minute I heard Gene say that Louis acted poorly in that fort scene, I inhaled sharply and wondered if there would be a reckoning. I so look forward to the Lous Herthum interview. Please find a way to interview Clifton Collins Jr. who plays Lawrence if you can. I don’t think I have heard from him about Westworld.

– Bill mentioned that the problem with the immortality project is the cognitive plateau that a hybrid reaches when he realizes he is no longer purely human. The hybrid rejects the reality of being a hybrid. So the critical problem with the James Delos project is that the human knew he was dying and that there was a possibility of making him into a hybrid. Well, if you kill a human without them knowing that you can make them into a host, and then you indeed create a hybrid, the hybrid would not reach a cognitive plateau. Problem solved.

– Has anyone considered that Bill intentionally told Jim Delos that all of his family is dead and that he would never leave the lab to make him suffer? Perhaps Bill knew that time and suffering is the key to achieving consciousness for hosts and hoped that this is the key to make the Jim Delos hybrid stable.

– Like you all, I couldn’t reconcile how Elsie looked so fresh and how she survived with no water. Also, how did she miss Bernard going into the lab? There could be multiple Bernards but there is also another possibility: Elsie has been turned into a host and placed there recently with a backstory of having been kidnapped by Bernard.

– It makes sense that Bernard took the IP from Peter at the fort. Maybe that is why there is a wound in Bernard’s arm that Elsie fixes at Lab 12, at 15:50. It looks like Elsie created the wound in her attempt to fix Bernard but perhaps, the wound was already there. Bernard would make his survival paramount to everyone once he took the IP. He obviously needed some repairs so this would encourage everyone to help him stay alive. He installed that cognitive lock so no one can access the information and then kill him. Charlotte captured Peter and sent him out of the park. Then Delos sent in the rescue team. Then they realized Peter was empty. So they captured Bernard but they could not unlock the cognitive lock. So they wiped his memory and sent him on a loop hoping to find the password. There’s an interesting theory out there that they are sending Bernard in loops via the cradle, the virtual reality thing that tests narratives. Holodeck here we come.

– So a lot of people think the control unit that Bernard took is Arnold. If Ford stuck Arnold in Bernard and made him into a hybrid, wouldn’t that make him hit a cognitive plateau? The hybrid would reject the reality that he is no longer Arnold. So other than being shot in the head, wouldn’t the cognitive plateau make Bernard shake just like Jim Delos, the hybrid, did? Maybe the cognitive lock is a way to counteract the cognitive plateau. Maybe rolling Bernard back and messing with his memories will also help counteract the cognitive plateau.

– Big D asks, “Why did Clementine drag Bernard to the cave?” I think Bernard took the IP from Peter Abernathy. So Bernard’s survival becomes very important. He can’t shut down or the data will be lost. Clementine dragged Bernard to the cave so Elsiie can fix him. Still not sure who is controlling Clementine although Bernard thinks it is Ford.

– I agree that the MIB is a host. I thought he was a host from one of the earlier trailers. He twitched a little like some of the older hosts. Remember the guy that Ford drank with at cold storage? MIB was shot in the arm at the Board party and he hardly flinched. In the shootout at Las Mudas, at 23:59, he was shot in the neck and he hardly flinched just like Dolores at the fort. I was wondering why MIB wore that grey tie thing. Now I think that was deliberate; to cover the bullet wound.

– Bernard killed all the techs in Lab 12. He made the drones snap their own necks but he left one drone alive. Why leave that one drone? To make more hybrids?

– I think Riddle of the Sphinx refers to Jim Delos’ dilemma. Like Oedipus, he is trying to answer Bill’s riddle/fidelity test to enter the world. He needed to prove to Bill that he can pass for a man, just as the answer to the Sphinx’s riddle is man.

– As the Ghost Nation members stood over Emily, one of them holds a walkie talkie looking device. It reminds me of the device that Elsie found in Season 1. She took it out of the arm of the camp cook who bashed his own head in. It is a device that was sending information out of the park. I wonder if someone is controlling Ghost Nation.

– I think Akecheta, “The First of Us” (meaning one of the original 47 hosts?) killed Stubbs at 40:19. His neck was slit and then he was turned into a host and that is why all of the Ghost Nation members disappeared from Stubbs’ point of view. Stubbs is not dead per Akecheta because he will be remembered as his host self. Ghost Nation is an apt name given how they ghosted from the scene and how they are creating ghosts of humans in the form of hosts.

– At 25:32, you see an awful lot of blood in the bath tub. In Season 1, MIB said that his wife took the wrong pills and died. If you take the wrong pills, you might vomit a little but you would not fill a bath tub with blood. Looks like somebody slit their wrist. We don’t see Juliet’s face in this scene. (Juliet, the name, is so on the nose. I mean Shakespeare’s Juliet committed suicide.) I wonder if this is a misdirect and that it was someone else who slit her wrist in the bath tub. Maybe Emily slit her wrists and the MIB made her into a host because he couldn’t stand losing her. She can’t know that she is a host or she will hit the cognitive plateau. Emily would not know that she is a host but she suspects something. This is why she is trying to get to the secret labs, per her notebook. This explains how Emily survives the Bengal tiger, the fall and Ghost Nation.

– People are saying that the episode reminds them of Lost. I think the show writers certainly liked Lost and played Fallout too. Remember Camp Forlorn Hope in Fallout? Remember the vaults are all numbered like the secret labs? The underground sections of Westworld looks just like some of the Fallout locales. And then of course everything out of Westworld looks like Red Dead Redemption. (I so want to play Red Dead Redemption 2 and watch Westworld at the same time. )

– Alice

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