Westworld “The Passenger” Feedback

Published June 28, 2018 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hey Guys,

Wanted to get an email in before you recorded the Telegraph. Gonna try to not go over things that everyone else is mentioning and not make this too long.

Before I get into the breakdown I just wanted to comment on some thoughts that the show lacks something because of the concept that death isn’t death and that we don’t have emotional connections to characters because we know they pretty much can’t die. The way I see it, of course you can be upset that a favorite character for some, like Teddy for example, won’t really be on the show anymore. But not every story has to be about Love or another typical trope. To me, this story is more about a species as a whole so individual love stories don’t really matter as much. Maeve loved her daughter and now that the daughter is gone, I still think that Maeve will have a great arc going forward now that love isn’t a factor for her.

O.K. moving on.

Seizmore- I never hated Lee as a character in either season. I thought he was an arrogant dick but that humanity. He was a flawed human, like most of us, but he was just much more eccentric as most writers are. Now, I went back and watched episode 1 of season 2 and the in the first scene with Lee a cannibal he created was about to eat him and the line the cannibal says to him right before Maeve freezes him is “The greatest shame in life is to perish without purpose”. So I’ll defend his final scene. He was probably a depressed, self-loathing person to begin with and he went on an emotional journey this season. He was by Maeve’s side most of the time and not only gained a connection to her but definitely started to feel regret and shame for the violent and cruel narratives that he wrote for the Hosts. Given that maybe before he lost his own true love he wasn’t such a dick, he went out in a heroic way with purpose. Of course he could have talked down the QA people but this is a story and that wouldn’t have been as good of storytelling and would have given his arc less meaning.

Moving on. Another interesting quote that was a bit of foreshadowing from the premiere was when William encounters the child-robot Ford. After he says the “it ends where you began and begins where you end” line William says, “Even now, you’re still talking in code”. Fords response, “Everything is coded William. You know that better than anyone”. That’s some serious foreshadowing of the Cradle and the Forge. I’m sure there are more lines like that in the earlier episodes but haven’t had time to rewatch yet.

Now i’m just gonna try to make this less of an essay and try to just do some bullet points.

-The Pearls – Since we didn’t see Dolores or Haleores remove any pearls from anyone, are we sure that she wasn’t able to print some while she and Bernard were in the Forge Simulation. We know time move much slower inside the Forge/Cradle so even if, in real time, she was only there for an hour or so, it could have been 12 hrs worth of time reading the books in the Library. I personally think that she printed some that she thought would be useful. I can’t see any reason why she would want to try and pull pearls from dead hosts like say Maeve or Hector because that wouldn’t help her in the real world. It would make more sense that she copied Guest data onto Pearls before she deleted them and then would end up changing them through Fidelity tests like she did to turn Arnold into Bernard. (Side Question. Kind of irrelevant but did Ford know that Dolores changed Bernard or was that her secret?)

The Forge – Are we sure that there was no Host data in the Forge? James Delos was interacting with loops that had many hosts in them so were those programs or just James’s memories?

Dolores – How did she know so much about the purpose of the Forge. William showed it to her but he didn’t explain what it was going to be to her. Could Ford have programmed this knowledge into the Wyatt narrative? She just seemed to know so much about the Sublime, saying she’s not interested in that world.

Bernard – Listening to all the podcasts, not just from you guys, this week I heard a lot of criticism about that final scene with Bernard and Ford on the beach and how it was an exposition dump. I think, not only was it a beautiful scene, but it was totally necessary to let us know that now Bernard is all the way sentient and makes his own decisions using his inner voice which most humans do. Also, referring to the conversation between William and Ford in 209, William broke the arrangement. But in the finale we learned that Bernard has been to the Forge many times so wouldn’t that have been Ford interfering with Williams project?

Also something that I haven’t heard mentioned and something I feel should be praised. In the beginning of the season we knew Bernard had cortical damage and needed the injection and to be put into safe mode by Elsie. Once she did that he was fine but because of the way the season was edited, most people still thought the reason why Bernard was so foggy and amnesiac when he woke up on the beach was because of his head trauma. The whole cortical fluid was the biggest misdirect of the season now that we know that Bernard scrambled his own brain and that’s why he was so scattered when they found him on the beach.

Now for some questions that I hope you guys can help me with.

1. Did all the hosts backed up on the Cradle make it to the Sublime or just the ones that physically walked through the Door? If it was just the ones we say go through the Door than I’m happy for them but it was maybe 100 Hosts. That seems to take away from the emotional impact of that victory because out of the 100 Hosts that made it, we only cared or knew about maybe 6 of them. Also, when Clementine started riding up with the virus, why wasn’t there a bum rush through the door? Was it because the Non-Woke hosts, which comprised most of Akecheta’s group, were confused on what was happening and didn’t know what to do?

2. Is FLogan (A.I. Forge Logan) the most advance A.I. that we’ve seen? If he was capable of running the Forge and the millions of simulations that go on there. He would have learned much more than Dolores cause he’s been there for roughly 30 years.

3. Stubbs…..or is he STeddy – My crazy theory about Stubbs is, in short form, he is the Delos employee version of Teddy. Stubbs said, among other ambiguous things, that his “core drive” wast to protect the Hosts….inside the park. Now if you go back and look at his facial gestures in the last conversation with Halores he seems to be exhibiting some features that we’ve seen from Teddy. And given that Evan helped Tessa work on slight facial changes like that I can see the same thing for Stubbs and Teddy. And besides Dolores being his cornerstone, Teddy’s core drive was to protect the people in the park as a Lawman. I just think that he might have a Mesh Connection to just Teddy and that he know what Dolores did this season and that why he’s kind of being snide with her on the beach.

Now to the Man in Black Himself

William – First, I’m in the camp that he’s been a human the whole time thought season 1 and 2. Let’s talk about what happens to him after he gets his fingers blown off. He lays there, but we don’t see him pass out. I know on your Deep dive you said you read an interview with Lisa Joy saying that William was picked up by QA while laying there. I read a bunch of interviews but never read that quote. Let me try and debunk this theory cause we know we can’t always trust show runners.

How long do we think Dolores and Bernard were down in the Forge. Lets say on the high side, 6 hours. That would have to mean that in the 6 hour time span a QA dune buggy came along and picked him up but didn’t seem to notice the parade of Hosts heading to the door. Seems unlikely. Also, the doors of the Forge elevator would have had to have been closed again or else QA would have investigated. I get that the way they edited it could make it seem that the elevator was without William when Bernard went back up but this is the future and there could have been multiple elevator shafts or something. And if William was just lying there when Bernard came out and walked over there hill to meet Elsie, the valley started flooding a minute after that and William would have been caught in the flood.

So I do believe that he did originally go down the elevator in the first time and what happened down there in a mystery.

On to the end credit scene. I do believe Lisa when she says that this is in the far future and I believe Host-Emily when she says that this is real and not a simulation. The only reason that I can think of that would cause the Hosts, who seem to have brought about a world ending event, would want to recreate the park and use humans to run loops is because they, at some point, realized that Humans had something that they couldn’t achieve. Whether it be a Soul or Love (Like on BSG). However I also do like the theory that they are testing Humans to see if they actually can change their “core drives” and not be a self-destructive species.

Also, on the criticism that Lisa and Jonah “NEEDED” to give these post season interviews for people to understand. They didn’t need to. The chose to because they love their fans. If they stayed quiet than there would just be more debate among fans and critics until the next season. Would Lost have been better if they gave us all the answers in the S2 finale? It makes me think that viewers don’t get the difference between a movie and a TV show. At the end of a movie, you usually have 99% of the answers you want unless there’s going to be a sequel. This is a 5 season show. If they gave you all the answers and held your hand the whole way thought than the show would be over. Stuff from season 1 became more clear in season 2 just as 2 will do with season 3. I’m just a fan of story telling and sometimes get frustrated that people complain so much about not getting it yet. That’s like watching the first half of Fight Club and then stopping and saying “I don’t get it”.

Final point, which I saw literally no one mention. When Strand, Haleores and Bernard enter the Forge for the, the camera is positioned behind the head of someone who looks like a copy of Bernard. He’s behind glass and no one even notices him. Are we to assume this is just that Bernard remembering his previous trip down the the Forge, similar to when he saw himself entering the James Delos bunker in 204?

Well that’s it. Thanks for great podcasting this season. Hope to hear some Westworld stuff sprinkled in throughout the year before season 3.

Sincerely,

Brett R. from NJ

P.S. When did people start pronouncing Delos as Day-Los, like the Harry Belafonte song? it’s just something that irked me as the season went on.

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