Westworld Theories Big And Small

Published May 23, 2018 · Updated July 6, 2022

I meant to get this email in before last weeks telegraph but wasn’t able to. Most of this is based on what we learned in “Riddle of the Sphinx”.

First I’d like to discuss my thoughts and theory on William, James Delos and the Eternal Life project. To me the the first giveaway was when James missed the cup while pouring the cream into his coffee. His initial hand tremor could be attributed to his unknown disease. But what gave away that he was a host was when he kept pouring and then started missing the cup completely. Each time, William came into the room right after this happened. Now I don’t know if this was purposefully done by William because he was waiting outside, ready to come in right away.

I also believe that William purposefully wanted the James Delos project to fail. I think this is semi-proved by the technician that said he was stable before Old William entered the room for the last time. Not sure if the project was actually successful and William just didn’t want James to live forever or if he was being honest when he said they still haven’t figured it out.

That leads me to my next theory about why, if William was being honest on that occasion, the James Host was unable to maintain stability. As far as we know, over the 149 times that they tried to perfect the James Host, he only interacted with the techs and presumably doctors that James himself said “Poked and Prodded” him. So being alone with close to no interaction is the reason for his degradation. In the scene where Bernard and Theresa sleep together in Season 1, Theresa asks Bernard why he has the Hosts talk to each other when guests aren’t around. His answer was basically to practice and learn so that when they do interact with the guests, they are more believable. At that time, most people thought that dialogue there to make us question if Bernard was a host or not but now I think it has deeper meaning.

Which brings me to The Door, The Double Hexagon and the Brain Egg Sphere that Bernard printed before he had the drone hosts kill the techs and themselves. I’m in the camp that the unit that Bernard printed was William. We know that William has been visiting the park for 30+ years and that he presumably has done every narrative multiple times and has interacted with almost every host in every was possible. Kinda like playing your favorite video game over and over to do every last thing in the game. Now he knew that they were recording him (unless they were programmed not to but I doubt Ford would allow that) so we have to think that he just didn’t care. So if the the park, and more importantly Ford (more on that in a second) have 30+ years of data on William and all the intricacies of his personality and character I believe that Ford would be able to make an almost perfect copy of William. And that is who I believe is behind the door. Whether it is Ed Harris or Jimmi Simpson, I don’t know. This lends credence to the “It ends where you began” and the “You have to go backward to go forward” quotes. Before I move on I’ll state reasons why the printed unit was not…….

Arnold – Arnold killed himself in the early days of the park and they probably wouldn’t have the tech or data to mimic Arnold’s personality traits to make a copy of him. Ford – Besides making his arc in Season 1 less impactful, I really think that Ford was and still is 10 steps ahead of everyone and I don’t think, especially after his sentiments that the Hosts deserve this world, that he would want immortality.

Now back to the secret James Delos lab. I doubt it was a secret to Ford because like I said, Ford knows everything. So as far as timelines go, after William left James that last time I think that he got himself together and decided to enter the park at Sweetwater for the final time (Beginning of Season 1). As soon as Ford saw that William wasn’t going back to that lab, he sent Bernard there to execute the techs and print the brain unit. I don’t think that when Bernard was experiencing his Cognitive Dissonance he was flashing to more that one time. He was physically there with Elsie while flashing to the time when he went there 14 days ago. The reason why he said “You’re not here with me, are you?” was because he was in his own head. We don’t even know if he really said that out loud or if he was just thinking it. Also, I think that the Drone host would have killed Elsie because Bernard’s command from 14 days ago, to kill all humans, was probably still in affect.

Now to the big theory about the Double Hexagons. At first I didn’t think much of them in Emily’s notebook but when people started talking more and more about them I started to really think about it. The more I thought about it, I might have figured out what they mean. In season 1 when Maeve first sees her Attributes or Characteristics on the tablet it kind of looked like a hexagon. That could account for one of the two hexagons. Now the other hexagon is more interesting. I believe that the second hexagon is related to the James Delos experiment. If the first hexagon is for host attributes the second hexagon is to map and adjust the attributes that they are trying to copy off a human. The goal of the technicians and behavioral experts is to match the two hexagons. It can be visualized as a Ven Diagram for personalities. But in order to perfectly map the human’s brain you need the two parts of the diagram to overlap exactly. I think that Ford could have used William’s extensive experiences in Westworld to solve this problem.

Finally I’d like to talk about the dynamic between some characters on the show. First I want to address the duality of Ford and Arnold that we mostly learned about in the first season. Arnold is the engineering and coding genius and Ford was more of the idea man and storyteller ie, Steve Jobs. They were two sides of the same coin. At some point, maybe after Charlie died, Arnold’s opinion changed about the Hosts, he became very depressed and caused the incident at Escalante, hoping that the park wouldn’t open. Obviously the Delos board buried the incident and the park still opened. At that time, Ford didn’t share the same sentiments as Arnold. He didn’t think or believe that the hosts were more than hosts. A couple years after the park did open, William visited with Logan that first time. On that trip, because of his innocence, William saw the “Splendor” of Westworld through Dolores and had similar views to Arnold. Then when he realized that Dolores didn’t recognize him, he slowly started to become jaded and his views started shifting closer to the way that 30 years ago Ford thought.

So we know that by the time Season 1 started Ford had completely shifted his opinions and now thinks the same things that Arnold thought. He proves this by enacting the Reveries and orchestrating Journey in to Night, Now just like William, but maybe not as sudden, it took about 30 years for Ford to change his mind and realize that there are more to the Hosts than he originally thought. So William and Ford has a similar journey as far as viewing the Hosts. There’s still a lot more for us to learn about what went on between William and Ford over the last 30 years.

Other thoughts

First I’m pretty convinced at this point that Charlotte is a host. I’ve been pretty sure since the Season 1 finale. If you go back and watch her gloating conversation with Ford in his office where she’s telling him that this is his last day working there and basically bragging that she’s won there might be a sign that she’s a host. At the end of their conversation, she’s casually leaning on his desk. Once they are finishes trading barbs, Ford says “Is that all?”. Right then, Charlotte stands up in a very robotic way, says yes and walks out. Ever since I saw this it seemed to me that Ford was done bantering with her and he gave her one of his silent commands to leave his office. Now this season one might say that that theory couldn’t be true because they scanned her in the cave to make sure she was Human. I think that she, like Bernard, has more advanced code that makes her a host that is 100% programmed to think she is human. For all we know, she could be Ford’s mole on the outside and that’s why she doesn’t have an explosive planted in her neck. That’s why she registered as Human.

Everyone has been upset that we won’t be seeing an Old Man Logan because William told James that Logan overdoses years ago. First, he could be lying but more importantly years could mean 5 years, which could give us Old Man Logan in flashbacks.

People have also been saying that they are getting bored with the Dolores storyline. I think that since the show is called Westworld, they are giving Dolores and crew more of the western tropes like big battles and gunslinging. I enjoy this but I don’t think we should be ignoring the subtlety that they have been dropping in that part of the story. I do think that either Dolores, or to make it more of a reveal Dolores and Maeve convince or influence Bernard to open some kind of dam that flooded the valley with all the floating hosts. That’s why he said he killed them all. I do not believe that there is someone else in Bernard’s body.

I still think Dolores is going on some part of her code. She admits that she has both the Dolores and Wyatt codes in her and even though they want us to think she is free I think she is still playing the Journey in to Night game.

And I don’t know why people seem confused about why Dolores wants the train. Abernathy kept saying he needs to get to the train. The only train that Dolores knows about is the one at Sweetwater. It makes sense that now that she is smarter, she could assume, correctly in fact, that the trains go to the same place.

As far as the fact that it seems that Ford is still controlling the game posthumously, I just believe that he imprinted his game and his characteristics into the code and the mesh network. As we learned in season 1, the older more woke hosts were hearing Arnold’s voice in their heads and some mistaked this voice as god. I don’t see why Ford couldn’t do the same thing and that is why the hosts like El Lazo and Lawrence’s daughter are speaking to William. Ford is so smart that he can code the hosts to recognize and evaluate what William does in this new game that Ford stated was meant for him. Just like how people asked how it was too coincidental that Clementine just happened to bump into Bernard and take him to the cave. Part of her Journey in to Night narrative is to, if she sees Bernard within a certain period of time, she is programmed to take him there.

Sorry this email is kinda long so I’m not going to talk about this past weeks episode. Hope you find my thoughts interesting and are able to share them with the Shat Podcast community. Thanks guys.

Brett from New Jersey

Reddit Handle – Harpua2814

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