Westworld Hazmat Suits

Published January 15, 2017 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi guys!

While listening to this week’s Telegraph podcast, your discussion surrounding the hazmat suits got me thinking a lot; not about what the suits are for, but perhaps what the suits may suggest. You mentioned the fact that Elsie and Hemsworth the Third do not seem to need hazmat suits in order to interact with the hosts, even in scenarios where there is ample opportunity for biological contamination. It could be true that the suits are basically a designation of rank, and that those higher up the Westworld hierarchy (like Bernard, Elsie, Ford, etc.) are not required to wear the suits. However, I think the lore behind the suit may tell us more than we realize.

When Maeve hears the story about the hazmat-suited toy dropped by the Indigenous child, she is told that the hazmat figures are called “shades.” Now, I couldn’t help but think about philosopher David Hume and the problem of the “missing shade of blue.” In brief, the missing shade of blue problem suggests that the mind can, theoretically, generate an idea about something without first being exposed to sensorial experience. In Hume’s own words: “Suppose… a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly acquainted with colours of all kinds, except one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to meet with. Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest; it is plain, that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, and will be sensible, that there is a greater distance in that place between the contiguous colours than in any other. Now I ask, whether it be possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by his senses? I believe… that he can: And this may serve as a proof, that the simple ideas are not always… derived from the correspondent impressions.”

Now, bear with me as I attempt to briefly piece this together. I think that the “shades” are that blank space in the gradation from host to human. The human park guests are not the same as the “shades” because the hosts are programmed to not decipher a difference between themselves and the guests. However, if the hosts were to distinguish the retrieval tech teams as human, it would potentially allow the hosts to generate very dangerous ideas about themselves and the humans without the necessary sensory experience to back it up. I think we see this exact progression happening with Maeve’s relationship to Felix and Sylvester. Hume continues on in his later philosophical writings to say that it is the ability to recognize similarity that enables us to fill in that missing shade without having ever seen it, and this recognition of similarity is propelled by our additional ability to notice the significant difference between the shades in the middle of whom there is one missing. Therefore, when Maeve begins questioning the retrieval techs she begins to conceptualize that missing shade between herself and humanity and that is what starts her quest to become fully cognizant. Maeve only gets the sensorial proof (walking through the body shop, etc.) AFTER conceptualizing the idea, not before.

And this brings me back to my beginning comment of what the hazmat suits may suggest to the viewers. Why do Elsie, Ford, Bernard (he is the real clue here), etc. enter to park without suits and potentially risk an interaction with a host that may activate this dangerous perception? Because they are not human. I’d like to suggest that when we see workers entering the park without hazmat suits on, that, in fact, it is a clue as to who is (or has been replaced by) a host. As Bernard has already been host-confirmed, I don’t think it is too far of a stretch to think that Elsie, Ford, Hemsworth, etc. are hosts as well — or at least are hosts in the timeline that we see them entering the park suit-less.

Thanks for reading, guys! Apologies for being so long-winded.

Stephanie A.

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