I Think Arnold Was a Robot.

Published November 22, 2016 · Updated July 6, 2022

I have no idea how this theory will be received, but I gotta put it out there: I think Arnold was a robot.

I feel this is all a bit incoherent, hopefully, some of it makes sense.

(And happy thanksgiving to everyone Stateside!)

Things n stuff in random order:

So one popular theory is that Bernard is a simulacrum of Arnold. What if he is, in fact, a newer, updated _version_ of Arnold? (anagramswill we ever learn if Arnold’s last name is or is not Weber?)

It’s now confirmed that Bernard was built by Ford, and in Ep8 we learn that one of his main purposes is to develop new features in the Hosts that Ford was unable to design himself.
These features are not only the reveries but also the ability to feel and display a deep range of emotions. Many seem to agree that we can no longer make any assumptions as to who is and who is not a Host. So: along that same line, should we assume that Bernard is the first or only programming partner built by Ford?

AI creating AI would mean exponential leaps in technical abilities and possibilities”(just look what Maeve was able to rig up on her own).
The impression we get from the little information we get about him leads us to believe that Arnold is a kind of programming genius.

In Ep7, Bernard states that Arnold is the person behind half of the park’s coding/programming”maybe he embedded himself in the code.

Maeve: She is now running narrative! She has been able to get into the code (the defrag image of which looks rather maze-y).
She narrates directly (externally) to Hosts and they go do what she says. This a parallel to Arnold: on another level of code, Arnold speaks directly (internally) to certain Hosts who have tapped into the requisite code and they attempt to follow his directions.

All traces of Arnold were scrubbed from the Park by Ford’s business partners.
We see a lot of erasing that doesn’t necessarily work, memories that Ford erases but linger nonetheless, and erasing that leaves trace decay. We already understand that the attempts to wipe Arnold from the drive were unsuccessful; it might well be another (intentional?) form of trace decay.

On multiple occasions, Ford points out the similarity of Bernard’s thinking or behavior to those of Arnold
His philosophical questions, their disagreement, his seeing the humanity in the Hosts, etc., and he warns him against making the same mistakes that Arnold did. He also tells Bernard that he is the product of a trillion mistakes. Arnold’s death was likely a mistake, and perhaps Ford then outlined his lessons learned and went back to the programming partner drawing board.

Arnold’s Death
In Ep8 we witnessed the inability of both Dolores and Maeve to control or fully reconcile their memories with the present, or keep them on an organized timeline within their own minds”and we can see, especially with Dolores, how that experience might drive a person to madness. (Some might argue that Abernathy, the Milkman, and possibly even the Woodcutter all had the same experience.) We have seen both Maeve and Dolores in suicidal memories. Ford told Theresa that Arnold went mad; could Arnold have experienced the same madness that we see Maeve and Dolores combatting now?

The song Ford plays to calm Maeve down in the year-ago-flashback is called Reverie (ep8) (Claude Debussy”reverie).
This song is also played by Bartender Host 1.0 in the cold storage at the piano (ep3), and at the start of Ep7 when Bernard is dreaming. It then follows that the concept of reveries is not a new concept to Ford; it affects Maeve, and Ford refers to it as a little trick from an old friend (Arnold). So perhaps Arnold was the first to tinker with the reveries code in the Hosts, and perhaps he was the first to experience the suffering they caused, as well. Perhaps reveries were initially Arnold’s programming concept, to begin with.

That’s all I can think of for now. Hopefully, it’s not too batshit. Thanks for indulging me!

-Megan

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