Westworld: Faulty Reasoning By The Man In Black?

Published June 23, 2018 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hey Guys,

I got confused for awhile about why the Man
in Black insisted, after he killed Emily and
was speaking aloud as if Ford could hear him,
that Juliet had no way to know about his
profile unless Ford had told her about it.
That claim didn’t make sense to me because
Emily told him only a minute earlier that
Juliet had had the profile card.

Eventually it occurred to me that when Ford
gave the card to William at the party, he
didn’t use the word ‘profile.’ Ford used
different terms — “self knowledge” and
“self-portrait” — and never explicitly said
the card contained the project’s analysis of
William. Because William wasn’t interested
in playing Ford’s games, he never viewed the
contents of the card, and in the wake of
Juliet’s death he forgot about it entirely.
In other words, the Man in Black might not
have realized the profile card Emily
mentioned was the card Ford gave him, until
he saw it in dead Emily’s hand and puzzled it
out.

However, if that interpretation is correct,
it implies another minor mystery: The Man in
Black said he never told anyone about his
profile, which strongly suggests he knew his
profile, which implies he learned his profile
another way, not by viewing the profile card
Ford gave him. How did he learn his profile?

I’m not entirely satisfied. I don’t see how
the Man in Black could rule out the
possibility that, days or weeks before
Juliet’s suicide, Ford could have told her
William’s profile or given her another copy
of William’s profile card. If he can’t rule
that out, I see no reason for him to rule out
the possibility that Emily learned his
profile from Juliet. So he had no reason to
conclude Emily lied and wasn’t human. He
glitched… as humans do from time to time.
As would Forgeries, since they’re high
fidelity copies of humans.

–Steve

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