Westworld!!

Published April 16, 2020 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hey there Shat Crew,

First time writing you, but have been following your podcast since Westworld started airing. I love the community that you have created around television, especially now in these times where a little escapism is what we all need.

Now… Let’s get down to brass tax…

Has anyone stumbled across a fan theory that suggests Caleb could be Serac’s brother? I did not want to subscribe to this idea at first but after watching episode 5 again, I think it’s a pretty credible theory.

We get the explanation of outliers being the root of all chaos in humanity, and Serac’s plan to save humanity is to control the outliers through modifying them. It’s not entirely explained yet how people are being modified, but a possible clue is revealed in Caleb’s flashbacks of him strapped down wearing the glasses. What if Serac is completely changing outliers into hobbled individuals through identity replacement. The identities that they assume are from the incite data base of deceased individuals who’s lived experience was plagued by traumatic events. This would make complete sense with respects to how the writers said that their intentions for season 3 was to parallel the real world from the park’s world. In the park trauma/suffering is what gave the host’s sentience. In the real world trauma is used to derail outliers from having sentience of their true selves hobbling their potential to be an agitator or disrupt the very delicate system Serac has controlling the world. Dempsey also seems to suggest this in discussion with Serac with lines like, “You’re not helping them, you’re changing them.” and “You can’t geld humanity.”

In the closing scene of episode 5 Dolores clearly states to Serac that he changed his brother. Serac’s background story threaded throughout the show takes place 10 years ago. To me this suggests that his brother is still alive without an inclination as to who he was before. In order for the outliers to truly accept this transformation they must also be physically altered to look like the people who’s memories they inherit. In this sci-fi world they are able to manufacture a biological host body. I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that this technology is used as a form of cosmetic surgery in the real world. I think this is the true meaning behind Serac saying he had left his brother behind, they are no longer brothers in the familial sense. Caleb was a real person at one point. Likely a mercenary or part of a military faction responsible for chaos and destruction that is introduced to us in Serac’s background story. This current representation of Caleb is in fact a combination of Serac’s brother and the real Caleb’s lived experience with a trajectory of suicide; thus removing this specific outlier from the equation. As Bernard said to impostor Martin, “living another person’s life changes you; worlds bleed.” Perhaps this is the thing that Serac did not account for with his plan for outliers is that their core drives can never be modified or copied over with another persons data. Dolores having lived this experience in the park knows this and so happens to have her ace in the hole; the very man who built the system she is trying to dismantle. He will happily oblige when he realizes what his brother did to him.

Thanks for reading,

Dan from CT.

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