Much like the center of the maze, we’ve been progressing toward a revelation in “Westworld” that’s been teasingly within our grasp all along. We’ve been making discoveries right alongside the hosts — discoveries about their origins and creators, about their capabilities, about their evolving sense of awareness about their true selves and the world around them. That last part has been immensely disturbing, given that some of our hosts have come to understand their function in the park as passive, defenseless objects of violence and sexual fantasy, doomed to live excruciating and frequently tragic loops. But the journey has been necessary to get them to a place where they can achieve full self-awareness and control their own destiny. Dolores gets there, and Westworld will never be the same.
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Endless Summer in Climate-changed Florida
December 5, 86° F, 30° C, afternoon sun angle 35°
Maeve (Thandie Newton) and Hector (Rodrigo Santoro)
Love those outfits
Unlocking Westworld
The key to unlocking “Westworld” has been sitting around since the third episode, “The Stray,” when Dr. Ford discusses Julian Jaynes’s radical theory of the “Bicameral Mind,” which gives the Season 1 finale its title. Other sites explained the theory as far back as mid-October — but here’s the gist: In “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,” Mr. Jaynes suggests that the human brain has not always functioned in the same way. His theory speculates that 3,000 years ago, men and women were capable of a great many things, but they lacked the linguistic tools for self-awareness and introspection. Instead, their actions were determined by a back-and-forth between one part of the brain that’s “speaking” and another part that listens and obeys. Mr. Jaynes describes the communication between hemispheres as a kind of hallucination where a commanding, external “god-voice” intervened when they had a decision to make.
Blazing Hot Sun and Strong SE Winds Keep Florida Winter 2016
Extremely Hot and Exceptionally Dry
Sugarcane Plumegrass (Saccharum giganteum) blows in the wind
along Deltona's lakeshore, early December 2016
Through that lens, the mysteries of “Westworld” start to clear up a little. The “god-voice” that’s been echoing through the hosts’ heads is Arnold, who has designed a path for his creations to understand themselves and take that great leap toward introspection. The metaphorical path is the maze, and the bread crumbs leading them to the center have been the memories (or “reveries”) of past constructs, with Arnold’s “voice” guiding them through exactly the sort of hallucinations Mr. Jaynes’s theory suggests. When Genevieve Valentine wrote in Vox that “the twists are meant to shock the hosts, not the viewers,” she couldn’t have known how right she would be. “The maze wasn’t meant for you,” Dolores tells the Man in Black, who’s miffed that he’s come this far, only to discover an inexplicable metaphor in the form of a cheap children’s toy. Sorry, buddy. That twist was meant to shock the hosts.
Ed Harris as The Man in Black on Westworld
The Bicameral Mind
And what a glorious shock it was! In “The Bicameral Mind,” we finally get confirmation on the theory that William and the Man in Black are the same person operating in multiple timelines. William the White Hat has slalomed down Westworld’s slippery slope over the years, gradually shedding his aversion to violence and his capacity for love and empathy in kind. He is the grotesque embodiment of how Westworld debases a man over time, and “The Bicameral Mind” laughs heartily at his demise. Consider how deeply pathetic William’s arc has been: He spent three joyless decades searching for the center of the maze — had his company, Delos, buy the place for the privilege — and the end is the ultimate anticlimax. He’s the gamer who’s thrown away the best years of his life searching for the final level only to find a kill screen that’s nothing but a blinking cursor.
The satisfying comeuppance of William/the Man in Black is merely the first fallen rock in the landslide. The gala unveiling of Ford’s new narrative has echoes of the Red Wedding in “Game of Thrones,” but here the bloodletting — or presumed bloodletting, since most of it happens after the final cut — is a morally righteous revolt. We learn that Arnold was so horrified by how his creations would be used in Westworld that he programmed Dolores and Teddy to lay waste to every single host in the park (and themselves) to keep it from opening. But open it did, subjecting androids with bicameral minds — and the potential to evolve past them, to the top of the pyramid — to the ravages of rich tourists. Even Charlotte and the board members see the park as a limited application of the intellectual property, but it goes beyond that. If we’re to understand the hosts as somewhere on the spectrum of “human,” then the park is an appalling violation.
Evan Rachel Wood (as Dolores Abernathy), James Marsden (as Teddy Flood) and Anthony Hopikins (as Dr. Robert Ford) in Westworld Season 1 Finale
You Can't Fire Me Because I Quit
In his final act as director and puppet master, Ford orchestrates the greatest “you can’t fire me because I quit” maneuver in history, marshaling a sequence of events that empowers the hosts to claim Westworld as their own. One of the fascinating elements of “The Bicameral Mind” is that not all the hosts are evolving at the same pace. The creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, who wrote the episode, neatly pull the rug out from under Maeve, who seemed for weeks to be a model of self-determination but has in fact been integrated into Ford’s elaborate plot. She becomes the head of the spear, recruiting ruthless outlaws Hector and Armistice for the fight, but she has not achieved Dolores’s level of awareness yet. Her decision on the train to return to the park, rather than escape into the human world, sets her further down the path than other hosts, but she still has more to learn about herself.
Thanksgiving Day, on Lake Harris, Leesburg
From the clues in the finale—about a potential "Samurai World" and the note that Maeve holds that partially reads "Park 1" on it—we can presume that the second season will open up to different worlds or parks. Also, Ed Harris' character was shot, but only in the arm. He can surely withstand, yeah?
In the meantime, we have a full-on robot revolution. Not only that, but the robots have proved themselves to be stronger than their human counterparts, and their machine-learning abilities give them the capacity to be smarter, too. “The Bicameral Mind” blows the series wide open, much as “Dollhouse” did when the lid was pried off its hermetic tech lab, and there’s going to be plenty of room for speculation before the second season. But the greatest likelihood is that “Westworld” will continue to be a show about human potential: Right now, we have a slew of angry robots busting up a black-tie event, but a new society will have to replace the old one. And if history is any indication, it stands to be a messy project.
“Westworld” went out just as it came in: with guns blazing. And just as the premiere did, it left many viewers scratching their heads.
The HBO series concluded its first season with plenty of spectacle and blood, but we’ve still got many questions that need answers, and a few ideas to consider until Season 2.
Major spoilers from the finale and the entire season below.
Jeffrey Wright (as Bernard Lowe) with what will become Maeve's Naked Android Army on Westworld. Important to note that Bernard is himself a sentient android
Paranoid androids
• “Consciousness isn’t a journey upward, but a journey inward.” So describes the maze, but it also justifies the plotting and structure this season, which allowed for multiple timelines and kept circling back to discoveries characters made about themselves rather than the wide-open adventures we expect from Westerns.
• In the end, Sizemore winds up recalling Donald Kaufman in “Adaptation,” the self-lacerating comedy by the writer Charlie Kaufman about his failure to turn Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief” into a movie. Nicolas Cage plays both Charlie the struggling writer and his twin brother, Donald, a hack screenwriter who’s having no trouble turning out scripts for gobs of money. Sizemore has Donald’s gift for the crowd-pleasing cliché, but Ford proves to be the true narrative maestro.
Ben Barnes, as Logan with iPhone checking out his new Westworld outfit
• The Red Wedding-esque climax wraps up an episode that embraces the bloody, HBO-style thrills the show had been eschewing for so long. It would have been morally irresponsible to fetishize the violations against the hosts, but with the tables turned, it’s possible to feel good about the humans getting their just desserts. “The Bicameral Minds” plays that to the hilt, particularly when Hector and Armistice bust up the lab.
• Wonderful nod to Michael Crichton’s original film as Maeve comes upon a floor of ancient Japanese warriors that we can presume, based on the initials “SW,” is “Samurai World.” Mr. Crichton’s “Westworld” has three different Delos theme parks that go haywire at once: Westworld, Medieval World and Roman World. Maybe we’ll learn more about Samurai World or other parks in Season 2, but it’s a clever tease for now.
• The last of the player-piano Radiohead covers turns out to be “Exit Music (For a Film).” The first four words of the lyrics are perfectly apt: “Wake / From your sleep.”
Canaveral National Seashore's Apollo Beach
and is Stubbs related to Thor?
First, Luke Hemsworth who plays the currently missing Ashley Stubbs on Westworld is the older and much shorter brother of Chris and Liam Hemsworth. At 5'9" he is 6" shorter than Chris Hemsworth (aka Thor) and 3 years older. He is 10 years older than Liam Hemsworth (The Hunger Games' Gale Hawthorne) and again at least 6" shorter than his much younger brother. They are age 36, 33, and 26 respectively.
For a series that delights in showing the deaths of their characters over and over— and over and over— it’s suspicious that neither Elsie the programmer (Shannon Woodward) nor Stubbs (the park’s head of security played by Luke Hemsworth) received an onscreen death. Instead, both vanished somewhere off in the Westworld wasteland and noticeably absent from the finale.
Early December 2016 Sunset on the St Johns River at Highbanks, Debary
Elsie (Shannon Woodward; previously best known as Sabrina Collins on "Raising Hope") was last seen trapped in the potentially deadly headlock of her boss Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), who turned out to be a host. What happened next is lost in his erased memories. Subsequently, her employee tracker was traced to the mysterious “Sector 20,” and Stubbs was sent to investigate, unknowingly walking into the clutches of the dangerous “Ghost Nation” hosts, never to be seen again.
If the show’s creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy could concoct several devilish ways to continuously off Teddy and Maeve, surely they could’ve devised a demise for Elsie and Stubbs. Unless that’s the point. The “Westworld” Internet sleuths have already combed through the newly “destroyed” Delos Inc. website and uncovered audio files that sound like they’re from Elsie, and that she’s trying to communicate her location.
Rodrigo Santoro as the oft-leather clad or naked Hector Escaton
When does “Westworld” take place?
Also floating around in the online “Westworld” ether is a potential clue as to how far into the future the show is set. Thanks to a bit of “leaked” camera footage buried deep in the rabbit hole of HBO’s online marketing for “Westworld,” a date has been revealed. Footage showcasing Maeve’s bloody attempt at escaping the park has the date June 15, 2052, marked in the corner. If this Reddit online commenter’s marketing intel is to be believed “Westworld’s” main storyline is set 36 years in the future.
Logan (Ben Barnes) is tied up by William (Jimmi Simpson). (John P. Johnson / HBO)
Where did Logan end up?
. . .and How and Why Did William Take His Clothes?
. . .and How and Why Did William Take His Clothes?
Last we saw of Logan (Ben Barnes), the angry head of the Delos company, he was inexplicably stripped naked, tied to his horse and set loose on the edge of Westworld by his soon-to-be brother-in-law William. It was a truly odd exit.
Did he die from exposure? Would the park really let a guest in their care die naked on a horse?
Picture a miserable horse trotting through the season finale, a skeleton strapped to its back. Now that certainly would have cleared things up, and it's in show canon since the horses are also hosts, thus immortal. Logan, however, is not.
Alas, Logan’s whereabouts are thus far unknown, and if he is alive that means he could return in the current timeline with a new, older actor.
Ben Barnes, Wet Leather, by Lesa Amoore
Will Ford make it to Season 2?
“Westworld’s” time-juggling narratives makes it a snap to bring back just about any character through a flashback. But that’s a little too easy. Instead, we offer this slightly more elaborate theory: Remember the secret field office where Dr. Robert Ford was tinkering with offline hosts unbeknownst to the board? There was a host brewing inside the milky vat in the very room where Theresa met her untimely end. Who was that host supposed to be and, more importantly, could that host be Ford’s attempt at a second chance?
The creator has already dabbled in bringing back the dead with Bernard, who was a host recreation of park co-creator Arnold. So why not go the extra step and try and rebuild his own consciousness inside the mind of a host? The idea of humans using the hosts for immortality wasn’t aggressively tackled in the first season of “Westworld,” but seems like a logical extension of the concept.
James Marsden as the sometimes naked Teddy Flood, on Westworld
Looking very fit at 43
Bernard did struggle with the preprogrammed memories of his human counterpart’s dead son. Ultimately, deciding to keep Arnold’s pain helped him “learn from his mistakes.” But while Arnold’s memories are programmed into Bernard, the host is conscious that these feelings are not truly his own.
If Ford was going to come back from the dead as a host, that would put immortality on the table, but would it be Ford? Or would it be a coded, self-aware echo of Ford? And what sort of inner turmoil would that stir up inside this new creature? Think of all the hot takes!
December, Afternoon Sun on the Halifax Harbor Marina, Daytona Beach
Also, Delos board member Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) did say that, up until now, Westworld had been thinking small; perhaps everlasting digital life is the real endgame.
Who else potentially survived the finale?
It’s probably worth noting that “The Man In Black” (Ed Harris)— who who is actually an aged William gone bad, a revelation many fans predicted weeks ago— was seen taking a bullet in the arm when the hordes of nude hosts went rogue. (Or did exactly what Ford programmed them to do? You decide).
Felix (Leonardo Nam), who is going to have some serious explaining to do, also seems to have survived. As for Charlotte or writer Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman), we don’t yet know if they escaped the siege.
No, they are not the same person
Left, Rodrigo Santoro as Hector Escaton.
Right, Ben Barnes as Logan on Westworld
What does the discovery of Samurai World mean?
One of the many twists dropped in the finale was the discovery of a potential new park. When Maeve and her gang of robot renegades flee Westworld they stumble across a new place full of hosts clad in ancient samurai-style armor and the background logo SW. Could that be Samurai World? While the name for this new world is still unknown, it does confirm something that originated from the original Michael Crichton film: the existence of different theme parks. Fingers crossed for the other movie-inspired parks including Roman World, Medieval World and Futureworld.
Also, when Maeve was headed out on the guest train, she was informed that her host child was being kept in “Park 1 Sector 15 Zone 3.” One could make the assumption that labeling something “Park 1” usually means there’s more than one park.
Maeve (Thandie Newton) gets closer to her freedom. (John P. Johnson / HBO)
Who programmed Maeve to escape?
The biggest surprise from the finale was Ford’s secret desire to free his creations, which made him seem less like the evil lunatic this series has threaded since the pilot. Of course, he’s still a murdering psychopath who built a sexual assault theme park— despite knowing that his creations had, or could achieve, consciousness— but the last episode tried to right a few of his wrongs by exposing his plans for a robot revolt.
But if Ford engineered the escape plan, how much of this is about true sentience? We know for certain that the hosts have memories from past iterations of their characters; this was the entire purpose of Arnold’s maze. That being said, if Ford was the one who programmed Maeve’s exit from the park, does that rob her of her own organic desire to be free? Was the purpose of Maeve’s violent exit merely to distract from the bloodbath of Delos’ board executions?
And also, doesn’t unleashing an army of murderous robots still kind of make him an evil lunatic?
The bigger questions remain: Are Maeve’s thoughts entirely her own? Is her mission just beginning? And what’s next? Will she jump from park to park looking for her lost host child? Or will she take part in the new narrative that Ford built, the uprising at Westworld?
'Westworld' soundtrack 'No Surprises' by Radiohead performed by Ramin Djawadi
The Music of Westworld:
What music will the player piano crank out next year?
What music will the player piano crank out next year?
“Westworld’s” TV totem, the rickety player piano hit Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” The Cure’s “A Forest,” Nine Inch Nails’ “Something I Can Never Have,” Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black,” and (if you had any doubt that this show was spearheaded by a pack of late thirty- to fortysomethings) it also offered versions of Radiohead’s “No Surprises,” “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Exit Music.” If the second season doesn’t have at least one musical cameo from Beck or Wilco, then this isn’t the old West robot show we’ve spent the last two months being confused by.
What happened to Peter Abernathy?
Actor Louis Herthum gave a brilliant performance as malfunctioning host Peter Abernathy, who was abruptly filed to cold storage after delivering the now-signature slogan, “these violent delights have violent ends.” Peter’s host body was allegedly brought online by the Delos board to smuggle Ford’s code out of Westworld.
When Sizemore went to retrieve Peter, he was gone, as were all the other hosts who “woke” in the park who formed the robot army that would assist Dolores in her revolt. But Peter was not specifically accounted for in this onslaught. So what happened to Peter? Is he still reprogrammed, and is there a walking gold mine of code sauntering around the real world? Does Peter know how to access this new information?
What was that post-credit scene?
The snake-tattooed bandit played by Ingrid Bolsø Berdal was seen with her arm still stuck in the security door. So she literally ripped her own arm off and went after the truly terrible Westworld security. (Seriously, their aim was “A-Team” bad guys bad). Fun fact, the character Berdal plays has a name and it’s… wait for it… Armistice.
What do we actually know about the second season?
A few second season ideas were dropped from the brains behind the “Westworld” operation shortly after the finale aired. “If the first season was defined by control, the second season is defined by chaos,” co-creator and executive producer Jonathan Nolan said in a mini-episode breakdown on HBO. “I think that’s part of what we come to understand Ford has been planning all along.”
Fiery December Afternoon Sun, Florida
with Red Fire-Spike (Odontonema cuspidatum)
The first season of Westworld was fairly maintained to several tight story loops the hosts were imprisoned inside, so it should be exciting to see a bit of disarray in their world. But Nolan isn’t getting too candid with the answers, instead he offers more questions. “Ford has set in motion what he thinks is a plan,” he continued in the after-series special. “The nature of that plan is something we explore in the second season, what his intentions are. Are they to let Dolores and the other hosts escape? Are they simply to teach the human guests a lesson?”
Executive producer J.J. Abrams offered up something even more vague for Season 2: “What happens at the dawn of consciousness?” Abrams asked. “What happens when you begin to actually wake up?” What, indeed?
Mississippi River Delta
Boothville-Venice, Louisiana
as seen on one of my flights back from west coast this fall
More on Westworld:
Dec. 5, 2016
‘Westworld’ Season 1, Episode 9: You Broke My Mind
Maeve continues to move forward while everyone else moves inward.
By SCOTT TOBIAS
Nov. 28, 2016
‘Westworld’ Season 1, Episode 8: Maeve Plays God
For one sequence, the show offers a taste of the delicious (and fun) entertainment that might have been.
By SCOTT TOBIAS
Nov. 21, 2016
‘Westworld’ Season 1, Episode 7: They Cannot See
The truth regarding a popular fan theory comes to light, as do the lengths Dr. Ford will travel to protect his vision.
By SCOTT TOBIAS
Nov. 14, 2016
‘Westworld’ Season 1, Episode 6: The Tipping Point
The world as Maeve understood it is gone, as the show again forces viewers to reflect on how their own lives are constructed, too.
By SCOTT TOBIAS
Nov. 7, 2016
‘Westworld’ Season 1, Episode 5: The Search for Meaning
Regardless of your theories, there is at least one thing that William and the Man in Black have in common.
By SCOTT TOBIAS
Oct. 31, 2016
‘Westworld’ Season 1, Episode 4: Truth and Consequences
For wised-up androids like Maeve, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
By SCOTT TOBIAS
Oct. 24, 2016
‘Westworld’ Season 1, Episode 3: Don’t Make Arnold’s Mistake
As some of the hosts go further astray, Dr. Ford makes a reminder to remember what — not who — they really are.
By SCOTT TOBIAS
Oct. 17, 2016
‘Westworld’ Season 1, Episode 2: If You Can’t Tell, Does It Matter?
What does the park in “Westworld” reveal about the people who visit?
By SCOTT TOBIAS
Oct. 7, 2016
‘Westworld’ Series Premiere: Life Finds a Way
Dense with information and emotion, the series premiere of “Westworld” indicates that we’re in for a pretty grim show.
By SCOTT TOBIAS
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