Westworld S02E09 – William Is A Severe Psychopath – Nothing More, Nothing Less!

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Been listening to Shat-WW this season, loving it. I started listening to a few WW podcasts this season, but it only took a few weeks to realise you guys nail down far more of the details than most of the other WW podcasters do. Westworld is the only TV show that I’ve bothered to listen to a podcast about. 2+ hours a week with you guys is so worthwhile in seeing a bigger part, and layers that would otherwise remain obscured to me. IMHO, Westworld is the best TV show that’s probably ever been on TV. Bravo for helping to make it more accessible to more people. [which probably means there may be no more Westworld, if these dwindling ratings continue 🙁 ]

Now, MIB.

I’ve been silently screaming at you guys for weeks now, “HE’S A PSYCHOPATH! NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS!!”.

Remember him describing his killing of Maeve and her daughter, how he “didn’t feel anything” while or after doing it.

MIB, in the opening of s2e9:
“No one else see it, this thing in me. Even I didn’t see it at first. And then one day it was there. A stain. And the more I thought about the more I realised I couldn’t remember a time it wasn’t there. Invisible to everyone. Except you [Juliet]. You saw right through it, didn’t you? When did it creep in? A tiny fleck of darkness. Was it all in my head? Or in a remnant of a dream?”

William is, at the very least, a psychopath. Psychopathy occurs in, staggeringly, up to 1% of the general population. It also doesn’t become fully solidified, and diagnosable, until well into one’s 20s. At its core, psychopathy is a depressed ability to feel many, but not all, emotions, and the ‘degrees of psychopathy’ measure how little one feels those psychopathy-subdued emotions.

Crucially, “psychopaths” learn from a young age to create a ‘mask’ for themselves, to project the appearance of emotions, and of concern for others, because they understand it’s expected of them; and that failing to exhibit these emotional traits will not allow life to go well for them.

Psychopaths are highly keen observers of other people, and of themselves, detached from the majority of the emotional element that so clouds the thoughts and decisions of the lives of us ‘neuro-typicals’. They’re usually highly intelligent, and can also manipulate others to their advantage extremely deftly.

They are often ‘captains of industry’, and occupy the upper tiers of many professions. Relatively few are unable to mask their true selves, and for those who do descend into crime, most of the time they’re smart enough to never be caught.

Juliet mid-way through e9:
“And then I’d looked at you and thought ‘Wow, he’s the real thing. The only one not faking it’. It turns out you’re the only one good at faking it. Good enough to get past me. But not any more… …Don’t touch me you liar! You fucking phony! You’re a fucking virus! You came into this house, into my family, and you consumed it from the inside out. First my brother, then my father. And now it’s me!” [To Emily:] “Honey, your father doesn’t love me. He doesn’t love you either.”

Remember Dexter, with his ‘Dark Traveller’, so tightly controlled, only let out to act on his darkest instincts under the strictest of conditions: murdering the guilty who the justice system couldn’t bring to justice, providing Dexter with the relief he so desperately needed after postponing his deepest darkest urges for so long between kills. To almost everyone else around him, they never saw him for who he really was, except for Joey Quinn – he saw right through Dexter.

Juliet at the end of ep9:
“Tell me the truth. Tell me one true thing”.

MIB: “No one else sees it. This thing in me. Even I didn’t see it at first. And then one day it was there. A stain I never noticed before. A tiny fleck of darkness, invisible to everyone. But I could see nothing else. Until finally I understood that the darkness wasn’t some mark from something I’d done, some regrettable decision I’d made. I was shedding my skin. And the darkness was what was underneath, it was mine all along. And I decided how much of it I let into the world. I tried to do right. I was faithful, generous, kind…. at least in this world. That has to count for something, right? I built a wall, and tried to protect you. And Emily. But you saw right through it, didn’t you? You’re the only one. And for that I am truly sorry. Because everything you feel is true. I don’t belong to you. Or this world. I belong to another world [image cuts to WW where William first sees Dolores]. I always have.”

Juliet, who was pretending to have passed out but had been awake the whole time hearing MIB’s One True Thing monologue and his slipping something into the book, reviews MIB’s Profile, her worst fears confirmed.

After 30+ years of William’s manipulations, his slow rampage through her family and her descent into alcoholism, Juliet felt she could no longer fight any further, now having also lost her daughter Emily who was still siding with William, blind to his true nature, and about to have her committed to drug rehab against her will, the last glimmer of hope gone.

Juliet puts the ‘Profile Card’ into the jewellery box, apparently the one that Emily had thrown into the garbage all those years ago, expecting that Emily will find it when doing the usual ‘sorting things out’ when a loved one dies. She then takes a bunch of pills and passes out in the bath, presumably drowning.

Emily, to MIB in WW, after seeing MIB’s profile:
“You are, in your very essence, a lie.”

Of course, modern psychology doesn’t even call it “psychopathy” nowadays. It’s “Antisocial personality disorder” with varying degrees of various traits, sub-types, with varying degrees of commonness in the general population.

Category 47B:
Occurrence: 0.0072% (RARE)
Persecutory Subtype
Delusions
Paranoid Subtype

MIB to Dolores, S1E10:
“Because this place feels more real than the real world. Except it isn’t, because you can’t really fight back, and the guests can’t really lose, which means all this is a lie. But we can make it true. Don’t you want that Dolores? Huh? One true thing?”

Dolores: “I already have that. I found someone true. Someone who loves me. His path will lead him back to me. And when he finds me, he’ll kill you.”

MIB, remembering William’s first WW journey: “So he went further, out to the fringes. William couldn’t find you, Dolores. But out there, among the dead, he found something else: Himself [cut to William’s host massacre scene]

Logan, naked on horse-back: “I told you this place would show you who you really are. You pretend to be this weak, moralising little asshole. But really, you’re a fucking piece of work!” William: “This place is remarkable. And I’m going to make sure our company substantially increases our holdings on the park. ‘Cause this place is the future.”

MIB to Dolores, remembering William’s return to Sweetwater:
“You were as beautiful as the day he met you. Shining with that same light. And you were nothing if not true. I really ought to thank you Dolores, you helped me find myself.” Dolores: “What have you become?”
MIB: “Exactly what you made me. You helped me understand, this world is just like the one outside – a game. One to be fought, taken, won.” Dolores: “I thought you were different. You’re just like all the rest.” MIB: “I’m nothing like the others.”

Until William’s first visit to Westworld where he discovered his true nature as an extreme psychopath, he’d gone through life pretending to be normal and never knowing why, when he was anything but. His first visit to WW transformed him, made him truly see himself for the first time.

* Upon his return to the real world and probably for several years after (until we see a drug-addled Logan when James Delos retires) he took control of Delos, probably by undermining the Delos Board’s confidence in Logan’s fitness to remain hair to the Delos corporation by painting him as “reckless, irresponsible” (words William uses just before sending naked Logon off on his horse), whereas William is the man with the grand plan for immortality, The Future, dwarfing Logan’s view of the park as a meer recreation for the expression of humanity’s worst traits;

* Convinced James Delos of his vision for Westworld as a path to human immortality ensuring Westworld’s financial survival for decades to come;

* Oversaw the many iterative developments of host-body James Delos over 30 years.

* At least yearly visits to Westworld to feed his need for depraved violence, murder and rape, a crucial outlet he’d never have out in the real world.

MIB to James Delos, s2e5:
“I’m beginning to think this whole enterprise is a mistake. People aren’t meant to live forever. Take you for example, a ruthless philanderer with no ethics in your business or family dealings, a veritable shithead. In truth, everyone prefers the memory of you to the man himself… …The world is better off without you, Jim. Possibly without me. Took me a long time to learn this, but some men are better off dead.”

A dying James Delos to Bernard:
They said there were two fathers. One above, one below. They lied. There was only ever the devil. And when you look up from the bottom, it was just his reflection, laughing back down at you.

I think James Delos is a mirror for MIB. He’s seen how flawed James Delos was, what legacy was left behind and the disparity between Delos’ reality and Delos’ legacy. The MIB see this reality and disparity in his own life, too, finally seeing the destruction he’s wrought on his wife, daughter, and the Delos family, and perhaps the realisation that if he, MIB, isn’t fit for immortality, then perhaps no one should be, and sets about to destroy his “biggest mistake”, and thus resigns himself to one last game in the park, as Emily put it ‘going out in a blaze of glory’, with no idea he’s about to step into the best game of his life.

William / MIB is a psychopath, one of the most extreme types – 7 per 100 000 of population – and it’s defined the extraordinary heights and depths of the last 30+ years of his life.

I can’t wait to see what Ford has in store for him on Sunday night!

Anthony May.
San Francisco.

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