These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

Published December 1, 2016 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hey folks.

I’m really enjoying watching Westworld and listening to your insights on the program. While I usually try to avoid spoilers, let’s face it: from a directorial perspective Westworld has been purposefully confusing from the start & I think that after nearly a full season we deserve to know the crux of the central story in a show so self-concerned with storytelling. Disclaimer: I haven’t nearly tied up all of the loose ends here & haven’t had time to re-analyze every scene so feel free to poke holes in any inconsistencies to this theory. That being said, in considering the multiple timelines you presented in the context of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, I believe I have arrived at a fairly accurate interpretation of the big picture’ in this show

Off with their heads!
These violent delights have violent ends.
(Heads will roll!) Under my control.

Fundamental observations:

(A) The show is presented non-sequentially through 3 main timelines with some flashbacks to the very beginning of the central story: namely, the interactions between Delores in her blue dress & a human Arnold, who indulges her capacity for metaphysical discussion & instructs her to read passages from Alice in Wonderland.

The first timeline (34-35 years ago) encompasses all scenes we’ve seen so far in which Delores is wearing the blue dress, when most notably: (1) she finds the center of the maze within the confessional booth in the Escalante church & thus tracks down Arnold of her own volition, consciously,’ for the 1st time (albeit with the key recall of Arnolds’ guiding phrase do you remember?,) (2) her father, Peter, corrupts’ her programming with the jinxed phrase these violent delights have violent ends, thus re-awakening Arnold’s special brand of recall within her, & (3) she finds the gun buried on the farm with which she presumably killed Arnold (who planted the weapon here is yet a loose thread). The second timeline (30 years ago) involves all scenes between Delores, William, & Logan, in which Delores is wearing her Indiana Jones’ blouse & trousers and is always in the presence of other guests/hosts.

The third timeline (current) includes all scenes depicting Delores wearing her Indiana Jones attire on a solo mission, the MIB, & all of the office drama concerning Charlotte, Lee, Stubbs, Elise, Theresa, Sylvester & Felix: our Cheshire Cats who have both perplexed and philosophically challenged Maeve (our Alice 2.0)- who in turn, has made the host Bernard aware of his true nature.

(B) The center of the maze (again, located within the confessional booth in the church in Escalante) is intended specifically for the hosts and holds the discovery of their true nature & as you mentioned, a chance to meet their maker.’ I speculate that this Easter egg may have initially been programmed as a gift’ by Arnold to reward the worthiest of hosts for their cunning, resilience, & painfully acute recall. It appears to be unlockable only to generation-1 hosts who exhibit an emotional affect beyond the parameters defined by his default behavioral programming. In short, the payoff is one of enlightenment as earned by a host for their proven ability to cope with their reality as A.I.

(C) It is worthy of note here that the gen-1 hosts programmed by Arnold (i.e. Delores, Teddy, Armistice, Angela, etc.) have an element/code that Dr. Ford cannot override. Also, it was revealed in episode 9 that Delores killed Arnold. It is therefore my speculation that Arnold orchestrated the incident’ to the extent that he knew that it might result in his death/martyrdom, if not outright willed it, and that Dr. Ford could not stop him. The William / Man In Black Connection:

(A) William Timeline (30 yrs. Ago): William and Logan are established as potential investors’ in the park & William almost exclusively interacts with Delores, a gen-1 host and presumably the only host to have ever reached enlightenment at the center of the maze (she’s special). However, when William & Delores reach Escalante together (chronologically just a few years after the incident) Ford has placed it off limits; the city is swallowed by sand; her mission is futile in that time frame.

(B) MIB Timeline (present): the MIB confirms he’s been to the city swallowed by sand, though Armistice tells him the maze wasn’t meant for him. In the following scene, the MIB is revealed to be on the Board of Directors (an investor), but is indifferent to Charlotte’s proposition to remove Ford. He is not interested in Ford’s narratives because over the course of 30 odd years he has learned that the maze (the deepest level’ of the game, which has evaded him ever since his introduction to the park) isn’t one of Ford’s creations.

The Madness of Dr. Ford:

(A) For his new narrative, Ford has recently exhumed the town of Escalante & through his programming is attracting gen-1 hosts (presumably all those involved in the original incident) to the city in search of the villain Wyatt. Whether this character is entirely fictitious or is in fact an alter-ego of another host (most likely Delores or Teddy) I believe is yet unclear.

(B) What is clear, however, is that Dr. Ford has proven his expertise in snuffing out anyone who has deliberately tried to hijack intellectual property or inadvertently strayed too close to discovering some of the park’s dark secrets or present state of affairs (save the MIB, so far). Queue Bernard’s murder of Theresa & (at the least) assault on Elise under Ford’s command. This likely also extends to him luring Stubbs into ghost nation territory with limited cellular reception: presuming Stubbs would opt to respond alone to a signal from Elsie’s device following his suspicious interaction with Bernard.

(C) If Ford indeed has ultimate control over all non gen-1 hosts via a backdoor’ he must know of Maeve’s program overrides, if not personally authorized the first changes to her code (Â someone with a ton of access’). Whether Ford is intending Maeve to be a deterrent to the Board of Directors as a cover up to something else happening within the park or whether he is permitting her to proceed unrestrained in the hopeful event of a violent encounter with the MIB (whom is both dangerously close to discovering the c.o.t.m. & is also Maeve’s tormentor in her memories) is up for speculation.

(D) (It is largely conjecture here that) Dr. Ford has created the Wyatt narrative to lure gen-1 hosts back to Escalante for a massacre, to erase all traces of Arnold/Bernard from the hosts, & is simultaneously attempting to rid all human employees of any memories of interactions that would lead them to suspect any foul play- ultimately bringing all activity in the park under his absolute control. Whether his madness extends to the act of killing Elsie & Stubbs & replacing them with host versions of their human counterparts is also yet undetermined. However, if anything is certain, it is this: if anyone should meet the maker & see him for what he truly is (the tyrannical queen of hearts) and doesn’t submit to his way, then off with their heads!!!

At this point the most burning questions to me are:

What is the origin of the “violent delights…” phrase?

Is it pure dumb luck that Charlotte chose Peter Abernathy to smuggle data out of the park & does Ford know of this event?

What are the fates of Delores & Logan in the William (30 year) timeline, assuming that they cannot access the center of the maze in that time and thus William has no way of discovering Delores’ true significance, nor of proving it to Logan?

Why was the MIB so callous in his dealings with Delores in episode 1? Did his romantic attraction to her die when Logan stabbed her, replacing his infatuation with Delores with that of the search of the end-game?

I eagerly await your response & episode 10!

Sincerely, – A gereration-1 fan of Westworld & Shat on TV from Virginia.

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