The fifth episode of Westworld didn't end well for poor old Teddy. WIRED's Matt Reynolds and Andy Vandervell say goodbye to the faithful-but-dim cowboy and get to grips with Maeve's new superpowers in the Shogun world.
You can read their thoughts on episodes one, two, three and four to get you up to speed, but be warned that this article contains significant spoilers for all episodes of Westworld.
Andy Vandervell: Guy loves girl. Guy finally gets girl. Girl turns guy into ultra-loyal, ultra-violent drone to further her evil plans. Doesn't Westworld just give you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, Matt?
Matt Reynolds: Sure, if you strip out the violence, mystery and the robots trying to subjugate the entire human species, it's basically a rom com.
So now we know that sentimentality won't stop Dolores and her plan to create a ruthless host army to take over the park, and beyond. What else did we learn in episode five?
AV: Well, from that little escapade we can see where Dolores' plans are headed.
For those who didn't pick it up, as Dolores' minions held Teddy, the Delos employee was uploading a new profile to him that maxed attributes like aggression, cruelty, tenacity and loyalty. Clearly Dolores is using this access to create the aforementioned 'host army'.
We can link this back to something we learned early on in the episode, which is that hosts that Delos staff were finding had been wiped cleaned, presumably because they were part of Dolores' army of unworthy hosts. See: poor old Teddy.
Finally, Maeve has learnt a new trick. She can now give orders using nothing but her mind, presumably because she's still connected to the mesh network that connects all the hosts. It isn't as crazy as seems, given she's the first host to have the power to give commands.
All of which sets up the possibility that Maeve is responsible for all the dead hosts.
And breathe...
MR: How do you square that with Bernard's claim back in episode one that it was him that killed all the hosts?
AV: Ah well, here's a thing. Was that Bernard?
MR: I can feel a theory coming on here... Go on.
AV: Guilty as charged.
So I now think the person we're seeing in the 'present day timeline' isn't Bernard, but Arnold resurrected as a host/human hybrid. We know from last week that Bernard made another control unit for an unknown individual and this would, I think, explain why he's behaving so weird. It's almost as if he's just woken up for the first time...
It would also explain some things about the opening episode. Those first flashbacks with Dolores in the real world, hanging out with Arnold, were clearly Arnold's memories. Would it not make sense, therefore, that it's Arnold and not Bernard we're looking at? To my knowledge, Bernard never had Arnold's memories in him, just his likeness.
As for his comment about him having killed all the hosts, it's possible he's drawing on latent memories from Bernard that he's piecing together.
Am I completely off the mark here?
MR: You might be onto something there. It'd explain why Bernard seems so confused all the time, if he's essentially rebooting himself then presumably he's learning a lot of things for the first time.
But, as always with Westworld, this leaves me with a bunch of questions. When did all of this happen – and why? The last we saw of Bernard he was happily looking on while he commanded drone hosts to kill Delos employees, so presumably this brain-switch happens some time between then and him waking up on the beach.
Does he do it to cleanse himself of the guilt of killing those Delos employees? And even more crucially, does he do it to himself, or does someone help him?
Or perhaps Bernard was programmed to switch the control units after all? Has Ford been pulling the strings all along?
Of course, we could be barking up the wrong tree entirely.
AV: Yes, we'll see.
I want to switch gears and talk a little about Dolores. It's tough to square her brutally unsentimental approach to Teddy with her entirely sentimental pursuit of her father. It seems fixing and escaping on the train is all about getting him back. What's your view, Matt?
MR: It's hard to work out if her world view is super-complicated or devestatingly simple. Just before she wiped Teddy, she repeated one of Arnold's lines: "to grow we all need to suffer." It sounds like she's suggesting a kind of hierarchy where some hosts with more complex emotional lives are worth saving, while other ones – like poor Teddy – are only suited to being foot soldiers in her war.
I wonder if this all goes back to her life before Westworld. Remember how she wasn't sophisticated enough to take part in the demo for Logan? Perhaps she has this idea of complexity, drilled into her by Arnold, that she's holding all the other hosts up to. Most of them, of course, don't make the grade.
Maeve definitely does, however. What did you make of the Shogun storyline this episode?
AV: It was amusing to discover the similarities between the two worlds. The key takeaway, as pointed out by Maeve herself, is she definitely seems to have transcended her programming in a way Dolores hasn't. She isn't supposed to care about anyone else, but she does. Even the way she treats Lee Sizemore, or the tech guy that originally helped her, reflects that.
MR: Once again, I think Maeve proves to be the most interesting character in Westworld. In terms of sheer spectacle, I thought the Shogun scenes were great. It was a relief to move into a different world, even if all that meant was that the killing was being done by ninjas with knives rather than cowboys with guns.
AV: It was a nice change of scenery, for sure. How do you feel about her new magical powers, though?
MR: On a basic level, very cool, although I'm left wondering where they came from. It looks like she only just worked out how to unlock this power, so how did she end up with it in the first place? Is this something that someone programmed into her, or has she somehow transcended her programming altogether?
AV: It seems like an evolution of what she has already. She was given the power to command other hosts and we know all the hosts are connected, so it's not a huge leap to realise she could do it non-verbally. It's a pretty big move giving a character such huge powers, though. I hope it isn't abused.
MR: It does feel like a bit of a convenient plot device, doesn't it? It's almost like we're reaching into superhero territory here.
AV: Yes, although it has obvious limits. It only works on hosts and, presumably, only on ones who aren't 'self-aware'.
MR: So it doesn't look like we're going to see a scene where Maeve tries her mind-control tricks on Dolores. That's a shame.
AV: It really isn't, that would be silly.
Given how things have gone so far, I expect we'll get a better idea whether our Arnold/Bernard theory is correct next week and we'll be back with more Westworld chat then.
Feel free to get in touch with us via Twitter (@andyvan and @mattsreynolds1) for your thoughts on the series so far.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
