re: Westworld S2E1 - Journey into Night

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Yeah that one, guess I only remember it with Bernard in it.

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Arnold was ALWAYS in that picture. The first time you see it is through Bernard's eyes and he hadn't had the revelation of what he is. His computer brain blocked out his own image from his consciousness, so the first time you see it, it didn't look like anything to Bernard, so it didn't look like anything to you.

The second time you see it is after Bernard knows, so at that point, you also are privy to the entirety of the picture with Arnold in it.

Remember that this show relies HEAVILY (at least through season 1 and S2E1) on the unreliable narrator. In this series, if you're seeing things through someone else's eyes as opposed to an unblinking outsider's viewpoint, you can't automatically trust what you're seeing and hearing and have to remember that your experience is limited to what that character would experience.

The picture is a great example of this, but the door in the secret cottage that Ford kept is the best. The first time Bernard and Theresa pass the door, you only see a wall through Bernard's eyes, but only a second or two later after Theresa mentions the door, do you see the door. It's where the showrunners unambiguously showed you that Bernarnold was a real thing and then pretty much immediately doubled down on it by having Ford direct Bernard to kill Theresa.

EDIT 1: I also think Delos' long con is to collect DNA and behavioral profiles of their guests with the goal of being able to replace the humans with hosts. The idea being that Delos would then be able to directly control politicians, captains of industry, etc., as they see the need to. I don't think it's with the goal of replacing all of them. I think the idea is to just stockpile all the information so that when Delos wants to it can off a powerful human and replace it with a host that they have complete control of with nobody the wiser. Of course, the first time someone does an autopsy on one of them, the gig's up, but it makes some sort of loose sense.

I think the point of William and Young Robert's interplay was to show that Robert was, for lack of a better phrase, still alive in some regard. Young Robert's voice was mangled and jumbled with Hopkins' voice. Go back and watch the actor that played young Robert the Robot and look at his mannerisms and his movements. Those are straight from Hopkins' portrayal of Old Robert (and a brilliant and subtle piece of storytelling). I think the show was subtly letting us in on the fact that some form of Robert might be still around, similar to how some form of Arnold is still around. That ties in with the whole "Delos is trying to figure out how to make host-clones of real people like Ford did with Arnold" theory. Hell, maybe Robert even uploaded himself because he knew what Delos was trying and figured the best way to thwart them would be from inside as a host-mind instead of outside as a frail old human.

Who knows?!


EDIT 2:

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Which would still raise the question of, how does no one know what one of the two genius progenitors of the park/tech looks like?

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In season 1, they established that the original crew was very small and Arnold was reclusive and didn't really interact with anyone other than Ford and the hosts they were building. Arnold offed himself WAY early, before the park even opened and far before Delos and the outside investors came in. By the time the investors came in they knew the park was struggling and Ford needed money and they knew there was some accident where a tech or someone was killed many years earlier, but they didn't know the whole story. There wasn't much to point toward Arnold's existence in the records, either, because he was aggressively erased from the park's records. Ford created Bernard a LONG time after Arnold was killed. Once you pair Arnold's reclusiveness with how long it took Ford to make Bernard and for some of the Delos people (i.e. William) to start popping up, there's a very good chance that by the time Bernard exists Ford's the only living person to have ever seen Arnold. The family's fake, remember? Ford made all that up to be Bernard's cornerstone. Now, there is the question of the picture in Ford's office, but I'm going to chalk that up to it being in Ford's inner sanctum, so nobody really ever sees it unless Ford wants them to.

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This thread is up to 5 pages and I haven't read any of it, but am I the only one who thought last night's episoide was boring? I found myself fast-forwarding through parts of it after awhile. And fwiw I loved season 1.

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Yeah, I didn't think it was bad or anything, just boring. I'll wait and see how the season as a whole plays out before judging it.

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I may have missed it, but have we nailed down all the timelines we saw in the episode? Are there more than these three that I'm pretty sure about?

1) Around the day of the host revolt/before "The Drowning" - Bernard is with Charlotte

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You've also got Maeve and Dolores/Teddy/Black Hat William during the revolt.

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TigerstuckinMS

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You nailed it with the long post above. Saved me a lot of time.



The one thing Delos was not counting-on though is that Arnold built in the maze and Ford helping them to solve it by realizing it is their own voices they are hearing.

Thus Delos has now created a monster that is out of control and evolving and they themselves (Delos) are now in danger of being eliminated.

Now, are we to assume that most of the Delos brass was taken-out in the massacre? Obviously not because Charlotte somehow survived with Bernard and when she attempted to transmit a request for help she was denied because "the package" had not arrived yet?

Now skip forward two weeks and we see Bernard on the beach and help arriving ... meaning the package finally arrived and help was sent. But no Charlotte and a bunch of hosts floating in a previously uncharted inland sea? Remember the reference earlier when the story writer was talking to Mauve about Ford having completely changed the landscape before his death ... and no one having the new maps (she needed to find her daughter). This is a dangling thread in the new narrative but I'm not sure why or how or how an inland sea could have been created on this island in the Orient somewhere.

So we're left believing that there is still someone up at Delos pulling strings, someone in direct conflict with William (man in black) and with as much or more power than he ... and their aim is an AI being capable of passing DNA and retina scans for purposes you've already mentioned ... while William and the Hosts have different aims which are not necessarily contradictory.

It was a solid episode IMHO.

It looks like we are going to get some background eventually with William's rise in the company. That may lead us to who's working with or against him.

I'm also not sold that the new Delos guy is a real person. And I don't know what to make of Bernard having DNA to be able to get into that field site.

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And I don't know what to make of Bernard having DNA to be able to get into that field site.

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I think it's because Bernard is a real boy. Everything about Bernard is a departure from the other hosts. Arnold was obsessed with making a mind and consciousness that was alive; I suspect that Ford took it a step further with Bernard and made him biologically alive as well.

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Everything about Bernard is a departure from the other hosts. Arnold was obsessed with making a mind and consciousness that was alive; I suspect that Ford took it a step further with Bernard and made him biologically alive as well.

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It may have also been out of necessity since Ford built Bernard to coexist in the "real" world.

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She also told Ford that the vote against him was unanimous. That would imply that William voted to replace Ford, correct? Unless William is not a voting member of the board and rather just a majority share holder.

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I forget which episode it was, but Charlotte is told by William that she has his vote and that he just wants to be left alone.

I do like the theory that Logan is behind the scenes back at Delos.

Dont forget, who the hell was able to build a small sea without anyone noticing.



I was expecting to be able to reason out at least an idea about what the whole "big plan" is/was for WW and the hosts but honestly i have no fricking clue.

A form of space-traveling colonists? Mind Control? Slave labor that thinks they're simply living their lives? etc. etc. No idea.