Westworld Speculations, Theories, Etc. (no spoilers, but anything else is fair game)

Travis

Hi everybody. 
I wasn't sure it the forums were partitioned like the cast, so I figured I would start a thread for that sort of thing.
I don't tend to generate a ton of these sorts of ideas, but I like soaking them in. I figured I would just set up a home base to fire away, if it's your inclination.

I love the one idea about Dolores having implanted herself into Bernard's body. It totally blew my mind and I think it makes a ton of sense. I'm a total believer.

Michelle

Sorry if this has been previously discussed, but do we know yet what drove William to the dark side?   I don't recall that being explored/explained in the show, unless I just missed it.  If I *were* to speculate, maybe it's either an innate dark side in him that came out in WW once he had the freedom to explore it (given that there are basically zero repurcussions since it's all simulation), or maybe he actually brought his wife to WW and she was killed somehow, either by another human or by an evil sentient bot?   I'm kind of leaning toward the first option.

JaimieT

Michelle said:

Sorry if this has been previously discussed, but do we know yet what drove William to the dark side?   I don't recall that being explored/explained in the show, unless I just missed it.  If I *were* to speculate, maybe it's either an innate dark side in him that came out in WW once he had the freedom to explore it (given that there are basically zero repurcussions since it's all simulation), or maybe he actually brought his wife to WW and she was killed somehow, either by another human or by an evil sentient bot?   I'm kind of leaning toward the first option.

IIRC in season 1 he turned to the dark side during his first visit to the park. 

Honestly, this is my biggest gripe with the show and why I haven't run out to rewatch it. I'm sure my conservative Christian mother would totally buy someone going evil when given free reign. I just don't have such a black and white (heh) view of things.

Travis

He kind of did a monologue about it at the end of season 1 (fresh in my head because we rewatched the finale as a refresher before watching the premier). It was part "I started killing to get what I needed to do done, and I realized that I really liked it" and partly started seeing the park for what it was and seeing Dolores set back on her loop after what they had been through together to have her just restart with no memory changed him. Kind of putting those pieces together seemed to create him. That said, he seemed to have turning on Logan in regards to edging him out of their company was more than an improvisation so I'm not completely sure who he was outside of the scope of what we've seen.

All the Chickens

My very plain reading: Humans crave conflict and struggle. If we don't get it naturally through fighting for survival, we look to playing sports, convincing ourselves that political movements are a struggle for life or death, playing cops n' robbers with fleshy murderbots, etc.

So if you're William in a sterilized future world where there is no longer death by disease, and you're young in a very structured corporate environment and engaged to the bosses daughter, I could see finally getting a taste of conflict and freedom getting in your head a bit. And the thing that really jaded him was seeing behind that curtain and realizing that it really was all artificial, despite Logan warning him of that the entire time. Since then, William has been obsessed with making it real and regaining that feeling he had on his first trip.

Logan said as much about the affect this place can have on someone, except Logan and many others never had any doubt of it's artificiality. 

cdrive

Have you guys dug into the reddit stuff?  About picking clues from the Westworld website and trailers?  

Is that in bounds / fair game in here @Travis ?  Cause man I wanna talk about it! 

Travis

@cdrive I was figuring that, barring any true spoilers (if there are any), this is sort of a 'all's fair' zone. Have at it, my friend. Speculate at will.

ken hale

I apologize that it may be a bit off-topic or derailing, but I'd like to discuss the concept of speculation itself, regarding Westworld.  Is anyone else kind of immediately fatigued with the unanswered questions in the premier?  Just listening to the podcast now, I'm like, yeah, why can't they just tell us how the Chinese government found out something happened in the park?  Why do we have to wonder about the nature of the island's (if it is an island) connection to the outside world?  Like, people spent all season legitimately theorizing that the park might be on another fucking planet.  And the creators just kind of laughed and patted themselves on the back.  I don't think it's cute, anymore.  Just exposit some basic fucking world-building information, right? Anyway, I didn't compare the show to Lost last season, but I'm ready to, now.  I expect a LOT of these questions will go unanswered, or will be contradicted when they are, or won't amount to much at all.

pridejoker

Don't know how relevant this is but I've been dying to test this theory.

I don't think Dolores is actually 'awake', hear me out. The program 'Wyatt' was loaded into Dolores before she went on her hunting spree. I agree that she now has two characters in her and she is in deep conflict. Which would explain why she would want to dump her sweetwater ranchers daughter character into Bernard, which would also explain that flashback Bernard had of being in the control room and watching people being attacked around him. Which means Dolores probably realizes she's still being programmed and following a narrative since 'dolores' is still inside her, so she dumped that personality into Bernard to become full 'wyatt' in order to actually make her choices freely. I think this may also be the reason why Bernard felt shocked as he saw Teddy's body in the water. 

Here's why I think Dolores is not awake when compared to Maeve. Maeve doesn't have a second personality. Her cornerstone had always been her daughter and it is still her drive. She refused the narrative given to her about infiltrating the mainland and chose to stay which defined her consciousness. She changed her core code and the way she was built. She understands that some hosts are just robots but she is compassionate for them as she chooses to save the host that started shooting the guards when they found her and Lee. Also, note that Maeve can still control the hosts, but Dolores can't actually do that.

As for the part with Maeve and all the weird behaviour, I really think she's just being human. Like when she asked Lee to undress I felt like it was sweet revenge. Lee the writer always treated hosts as objects, now you get a taste of your own medicine.

And where the hosts no longer listen to commands, I think this is Dr. Ford's doing, he may have disabled the security protocol code in the hosts where they no longer respond to park borders and human commands, in order to give the hosts true freedom. This must be why Dolores killed Ford first because he's the only one who can control all of them. However, I don't think he imagined that Maeve would alter her authority level, thereby effectively creating another 'Ford', someone who can still control the hosts.

Anyway I hope this is the place to put this thread I don't have a clue this is my first comment.

cdrive

@Travis ;  So somebody on reddit took a weird image file from the official westworld site and figured out it was an animated .gif file that was broken out and stretched out.  So this person put it back together and it revealed a word.  But the show totally presented it like a clue.  

Then the person took that word and correlated it with stuff being shown in the official trailers.  I think it's pretty interesting.  It pretty much reveals what one of the 6 parks are.  We have Westworld, now revealed ShogunWorld...and then this 3rd world that the animated gif revealed.  

majjam0770

Philosophical speculation here -  In season 1, Arnold tried to create consciousness in his creations by modeling them with a bicameral mind.  So they would think thoughts in their own head were from a god or something, and that didn't work the way Arnold planned. 

Now we have Maeve and Dolores, possibly the two most awake robots, and they are both dealing with opposing programming directives.  Maeve's cornerstone memories make her want to reconnect with her daughter, but she was programmed to leave the park.   Dolores has the sweet-natured rancher's daughter and Wyatt in her personality.  They both "chose" to go down one of the two paths.  Maeve to get her daughter, Dolores has opted to be like Wyatt.  Is this test possibly a proof of consciousness?  If a robot is given two opposing paths of equal priority to follow in its programming, they should have an error and shut down and go into a loop or something.   But Maeve and Dolores are picking paths.  Is this a more definitive way to create consciousness than the bicameral mind?

 Anyways, it is interesting which paths the two have chosen.  Maeve had it bad in West World, but arguably not as bad as Dolores.  Maeve had the good memories of the homesteader past and at least as a madam she sort of knew what the guests were after.  Her "choices" have shown that though she is angry, she is also capable of compassion and can put things in perspective with a bigger picture of the world.  Dolores was a beloved daughter with a sunny disposition who had to see her parents and lover be murdered nearly every day, then often get raped and likely murdered herself.  So her past may lead her to think the vindictive path makes more sense.  

Just random thoughts here since this is the speculation thread.  

Kristina

Long range speculation here because I don’t think this will be addressed this season BUT...how do we know for sure that Arnold, not Bernard but actually Arnold was a human? If after he died, his entire identity was completely wiped from anyone outside of Westworld, might he have been a host all along? I can’t imagine even in 2018 being able erase an identify so much so that no one would even know his name. Logan mentions in season 1 to William that they’ve had a ”team of lawyers” looking all over for who Ford’s partner was and they couldn’t even find a name. Did Arnold not have a wife, documentation of a deceased child. Did Arnold not have any family outside of the wife? No father, no mother, no aunt or uncles, no cousins, no social security number, tax records? I’m thinking we may eventually find out that Bernard is not the first reincarnation of Ford’s BFF! 

lengmo

majjam0770 said:

If a robot is given two opposing paths of equal priority to follow in its programming, they should have an error and shut down and go into a loop or something.

Writing as a programmer, if you had a case where some code evaluated two paths as equally important, most programs would just pick one as they are equivalent based on the evaluation criteria.

Michelle

Kristina said:

Long range speculation here because I don’t think this will be addressed this season BUT...how do we know for sure that Arnold, not Bernard but actually Arnold was a human? If after he died, his entire identity was completely wiped from anyone outside of Westworld, might he have been a host all along? I can’t imagine even in 2018 being able erase an identify so much so that no one would even know his name. Logan mentions in season 1 to William that they’ve had a ”team of lawyers” looking all over for who Ford’s partner was and they couldn’t even find a name. Did Arnold not have a wife, documentation of a deceased child. Did Arnold not have any family outside of the wife? No father, no mother, no aunt or uncles, no cousins, no social security number, tax records? I’m thinking we may eventually find out that Bernard is not the first reincarnation of Ford’s BFF! 

I like your speculation and I'm on your same line of thinking, but with Ford.  What if Ford actually was a bot but had gone sentient at some point and had realizations about Delos but did nothing about them, yet secretly being angry at them all these years...  What if his plan after all these years was to write a (or *the* perfect) narrative/update that would allow the bots (in this case it ended up being Dolores, Maeve, and Abernathy - possibly others in the near future) to do the same, thus sending them on their story arcs?  If his plan all along is to take down Delos and shut WW down, that's a long time to enact a plan of revenge.  It would also mean that the bots’ ‘awakening’ isn’t the first in the park’s history.  It is possible... is is probable?  He could be using Arnold/Bernard to help him enact his plan.

I will say that the scene in S1 where current Ford is talking to his younger self was the first time I really started thinking that he might actually be one and is accessing reveries, rather than just an older man having a memory of when he was a boy.

Travis

cdrive said:

@Travis ;  So somebody on reddit took a weird image file from the official westworld site and figured out it was an animated .gif file that was broken out and stretched out.  So this person put it back together and it revealed a word.  But the show totally presented it like a clue.  

Then the person took that word and correlated it with stuff being shown in the official trailers.  I think it's pretty interesting.  It pretty much reveals what one of the 6 parks are.  We have Westworld, now revealed ShogunWorld...and then this 3rd world that the animated gif revealed.  

That's a trip, man. I haven't seen this, but do you know what the word is, or maybe a link to the thread?
Also, I wonder if anyone has made any headway on logging into the Delos page for further access. I guess the button to enter the credentials isn't even doing anything these days (probably because of the site "being on lockdown" but I figured there must be something there. I tried entering in Admin and various names of corporate types on the show with some random attempts at passwords from various buzzwords from the show or relating to the characters and never got anywhere. I figure there has to be something to that, but I'm no good at figuring that kind of stuff out.

That reddit thing sounds really interesting. I'll look into that. Thanks, man.

cdrive

@Travis - Here it goes man:  

https://amp.reddit.com/r/westworld/comments/7vw8ia/spoiler_park_2_discovered_glitches_unlock_secrets/

Travis

@cdrive Thanks, man. I'm about to clock out, but I'm going to dig in on this tomorrow for sure. Thanks again!

Travis

@cdrive That is super intriguing. I'm not sure how to talk about it, just in case because it's totally unconfirmed and just the pure will of this dude's determination using stuff that they provided through the site. I don't feel like it's a spoiler, but I also don't want to piss anybody off. Either way, I love the possibilities there and I'm super impressed with that poster's sleuthing. That is very cool. I think he's onto something.

tpelzy

Speaking of the other parks, I think we know what the six Delos parks are. I'm assuming that there are only six, and I'm sure the writers wanna keep things open for future story lines. Just based on the show there's Westworld, Shogun World, and park six (Raj World?). If I remember right from the movie there's also Medieval World and Roman World. Then there's the eponymous Futureworld from the sequel. 

Michelle

Michelle said:
I like your speculation and I'm on your same line of thinking, but with Ford.  What if Ford actually was a bot but had gone sentient at some point and had realizations about Delos but did nothing about them, yet secretly being angry at them all these years...  What if his plan after all these years was to write a (or *the* perfect) narrative/update that would allow the bots (in this case it ended up being Dolores, Maeve, and Abernathy - possibly others in the near future) to do the same, thus sending them on their story arcs?  If his plan all along is to take down Delos and shut WW down, that's a long time to enact a plan of revenge.  It would also mean that the bots’ ‘awakening’ isn’t the first in the park’s history.  It is possible... is is probable?  He could be using Arnold/Bernard to help him enact his plan.

I will say that the scene in S1 where current Ford is talking to his younger self was the first time I really started thinking that he might actually be one and is accessing reveries, rather than just an older man having a memory of when he was a boy.

I just re-watched "The Adversary" episode from season 1, and I realized that I'd totally forgotten about the scene where Ford is visiting the bots that Arnold created for him, to replicate himself as a young boy, his brother, and his father.  I'm rethinking what I'd speculated on about Ford being a bot.  I do still think maybe there's something going on with Ford that we're not aware of.  I think that maybe Ford re-created Arnold as a bot after Arnold's death, maybe feeling like he owed it to him after what Arnold had done for him with creating his bot family, but then Arnold's script went wayyyyyyy left and he's been an evil force that we're now seeing consequences of with the bots and their becoming sentient.  And maybe Ford is either helping him *or* fighting against him without anyone else knowing, since he wouldn't want anyone to know that he re-created Arnold as a bot...   who knows.

Michelle

Bumping this to avoid the deluge of singular speculation threads.

MattyWeaves

I don't know if anyone has brought this up, but I'm guessing whatever William built, this Valley or whatever, is also the flooded place we saw at the end of episode one.

MrX

Kim Renfro published a nice timeline of all the events to date, which they'll be updating. Will be cool to see where it ends up as season 2 progresses. Only thing I see missing is when William shows Dolores his "greatest mistake" ... I'm assuming that's around 20 years ago?

http://www.thisisinsider.com/westworld-timeline-spoilers-2018-4

Hatorian

I’m sure this will be explained but I don’t get why the man in black and Ford have that discussion in season 1 where MIB basically says he doesn’t know the purpose of the park and wants to figure it out. But then season 2 it seems like he’s an architect to the whole thing? 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3qD_La2F6bk

He also clearly knows Arnold is dead so I’m assuming if he sees or knows of Bernard the cover is blown. 

Doctor_Nick

Interesting points you raise.

Two interesting things that come to mind:

1) The Man in Black is a driving force at Delos- seems almost impossible he wouldn't know of Bernard.  He doesn't know who the main creators that he bitches about are?

2)  Watching that clip you linked to, the MiB says "I wonder what I would find if I opened you up" and has his knife out before Teddy grabs it to protect Ford.  He seems quite aware of the possibility of androids replacing people by suggesting Ford is one. 

Hatorian said:

I’m sure this will be explained but I don’t get why the man in black and Ford have that discussion in season 1 where MIB basically says he doesn’t know the purpose of the park and wants to figure it out. But then season 2 it seems like he’s an architect to the whole thing? 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3qD_La2F6bk

He also clearly knows Arnold is dead so I’m assuming if he sees or knows of Bernard the cover is blown. 

Hatorian

Doctor_Nick said:

Interesting points you raise.

Two interesting things that come to mind:

1) The Man in Black is a driving force at Delos- seems almost impossible he wouldn't know of Bernard.  He doesn't know who the main creators that he bitches about are?

2)  Watching that clip you linked to, the MiB says "I wonder what I would find if I opened you up" and has his knife out before Teddy grabs it to protect Ford.  He seems quite aware of the possibility of androids replacing people by suggesting Ford is one. 

Hatorian said:

I’m sure this will be explained but I don’t get why the man in black and Ford have that discussion in season 1 where MIB basically says he doesn’t know the purpose of the park and wants to figure it out. But then season 2 it seems like he’s an architect to the whole thing? 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3qD_La2F6bk

He also clearly knows Arnold is dead so I’m assuming if he sees or knows of Bernard the cover is blown. 

Only explanation I can think of is that Ford and Arnold had a completely different idea of what they were doing when they built the park while William and Delos had a different motive. And they did not let their investors know. Which isn’t impossible. 

This also maybe makes sense sense considering the converging stories of Delores and MIB going to Glory. 

Ford and Arnold either knew it was eventually going to happen or even wanted the hosts to gain consciousness and take over humanity.

MIB wants to do everything he can Ensure humanity survives. As someone from the beginning he has witnessed the progression and now understands it needs to be destroyed. 

it would make sense with what we know of him. For the past 30 years he has built a world with no consequence. But maybe Logan and his experience in the park has convinced him they have created something that will destroy them and now his Mission is to Ensure that doesn’t happen. 

Its a pretty age age old tale of creating something that will ultimately bring your demise.

Doctor_Nick

It's not impossible that they were hiding the real purpose of the park but it's the existence of a Bernard that replicates Arnold that I think the MiB has go to know about.   Bernard looks like Arnold.  He isn't hidden- he has a relationship with Theresa in the first season.  Now, the MiB may not care about Bernard because he knows Bernarnold doesn't have the answers that Arnold had, but he must know that Ford already has hosts that can ape specific humans.  

Only explanation I can think of is that Ford and Arnold had a completely different idea of what they were doing when they built the park while William and Delos had a different motive. And they did not let their investors know. Which isn’t impossible.

Murderbear

This isn't any deep theory or speculation but I love getting into the minutia of worlds like this. What does data storage look like in that future? Like when you go out and buy the iPhone 37, are terabytes or maybe even petabytes just the standard? I'm just thinking that Delores has THIRTY YEARS of memories stored in that little brain pod. That's an insane amount of data that should take up an entire room to store, right?

Brett68

MrX said:

Kim Renfro published a nice timeline of all the events to date, which they'll be updating. Will be cool to see where it ends up as season 2 progresses. Only thing I see missing is when William shows Dolores his "greatest mistake" ... I'm assuming that's around 20 years ago?

http://www.thisisinsider.com/westworld-timeline-spoilers-2018-4

Boy is this ever perfect, I need to sit my fiance in front of this for 20 minutes before we continue watching, because getting asked what just happened while other things are currently happening is not super fun

Davidealejandro

You guys keep asking how someone can blackmail another person for things they have done to a robot. You often compare it to playing a game. The thing you have to ask yourself is, what is allowed in Westworld? You can kill yes but can you torture someone? A woman? A child? Can you rape? A woman? A man? A child? But let's forget those questions for a second and ask another? If someone made a VR game called gay porn simulator, and you not only played that game but jacked off to it with a big smile on your face, and someone filmed you... how much would you pay to keep that footage away from your wives... or your parents... or your children? That's just gay porn, it's perfectly acceptable in our culture. And you are just normal guys. These are far more important people, likely doing far worse. 

Davidealejandro

I have a theory about the plot. William was the one who implemented the idea of collecting personal data for behavioral analysis. Could that data be his greatest mistake? Could the hosts be searching for it? Jim and Aron said that the hosts may be sentient but still have to abide by their programming. Could they gain a greater human understanding if they program themselves with 30 years of behavioral analysis? I think that is what Dolores is looking for and what William is trying to destroy.