The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Westworld' Season 4, Episode 1 Recap
Episode Date: June 28, 2022Joanna, David, and Danny break down the Season 4 premiere of 'Westworld,' from the new opening title sequence to theories about how the upcoming season will play out. They start by discussing what's g...oing on with the flies, and getting into how Caleb's story has changed since last season (6:32). Then, they talk about Christina and if she really is a new, human character or if she is still Dolores (21:12). They also discuss whether William is human or not, before getting into theory corner and discussing some major questions they have going forward (42:29). If you have any questions or thoughts about 'Westworld,' you can email Joanna, David, and Danny at EdHarrisBodySuit@gmail.com Hosts: Joanna Robinson, David Shoemaker, and Danny Heifetz Associate Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey, it's Sean Fennessee, host of The Big Picture.
Did you just see the latest tent pole blockbuster?
Or a surprisingly fun new movie on a streaming service?
Or maybe you just want to bone up on the greatest films ever made.
From reviews to rankings, career retrospectives to movie drafts,
and everything in between, the Big Picture is here for you.
Listen to The Big Picture for free on Spotify.
It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot.
Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills, starting at $179,
like the next grill three burner gas grill,
or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill
and bring big flavor to your backyard.
Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights
that bring it all together.
Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot.
Now through May 6th,
Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details.
Good sleep is everything.
That's why Ali's science back support
is made with a blend of melatonin and L. Theanine
for both kiddos and grownups.
So when your mind won't switch off,
you've got something that can help.
You're racing thoughts and restless nights
won't stand a chance.
Find Ollie Sleep Solutions for the whole family
at ollie.com. That's
OLLLY.com.
Welcome back into the Prestige TV podcast feed.
I'm Joanna Robinson and joining me
here at every Monday
to break down the latest episode of Westworld.
It's David Shoemaker and Danny Hyfitz.
Hi, hi, guys. How are you doing?
I'm doing great. I'm doing great. I'm glad to be back.
This just feels like
Just yesterday, we were watching Westworld season three.
This is amazing stuff.
Danny, how you doing?
Just when they pull you out, you get sucked back in or whatever that line is.
I've been sucked back in.
That obscure text, whatever it is, you're quoting.
I've never heard of it.
We're back.
We're here.
Talk about Westworld, Season 4, episode one, the auguries.
And like I said, we're going to be here every Monday breaking down the latest Westworld
episodes. We were recording on Monday afternoon, which means you're going to have time to email us or tweet at us. We're going to have time to scroll through Reddit and check out some theories. All of that stuff is going to be baked into the show. We'll be back at the end of this episode to talk about what email you can use to contact us. That's a future discussion. But for right now, just know that we want your feedback, your theories. We love a theory to be baked into what we talk about when we talk about Westworld. Because what's the point to talk about Westworld if you're not talking about what the hell is going on here.
But let me explain this right now.
I want to just say I messed up last episode because I got the email wrong.
And I said recapables Westworld Gmail.
It's actually the Recapables Westworld.
But we're not calling this the Recapables anymore anyway.
So we're going to have a new email.
And that's right now if you're listening in the episode description.
But we're also having decided what's going to be.
So we're going to figure it at the end.
And we're going to finish an argument we're having before the show.
We're going to finish that at the end of what we're going to call our email.
Love to fight.
Love to fight on the first podcast of this new season.
Let us talk about, before we get into, we're going to do like a character breakdown.
We're going to do some theories.
We're going to talk about Ramin Javadi is back giving us covers of songs.
But I want to talk about the episode title because Lisa, Joy and Jonathan Nolan always love to give their episodes.
Very, very classy, very artistic titles that usually point to a painting or piece of music or piece of literature.
This week we have the auguries.
I have some ideas of what that might mean, but do you guys have any thoughts or feelings about it?
it.
The name of the show?
The name of the episode, the auguries.
Oh, well, we'll get back.
I'm sure it'll make a whole lot of sense in the future.
But you know, but an augury is what?
Like a, like a permanent, not a premonition, like a sign of the future, right?
An omen.
Yeah, yeah.
Danny.
Well, there's also a poem that Ford quotes in season one or two called the, the auguries of
innocence.
I'm not going to like, don't know how to pronounce the word auguries.
I've never heard it spoken until like just now.
You crushed it, I think.
I'm going to go with that's the pronunciation, but I, that's a poem, right?
And the four quotes, the opening lines are, what are they?
It's to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven and a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.
It's really just the poems, the vibe seems to be don't kill things.
It's bad.
Yeah, it's, there's a couple different meanings you can pull from this poem.
Like, I feel like this has to be the reference since they've used auguries of innocence in the show before in season two.
And it's, yeah, it's that idea that, like, there's this line about, I'm going to misquote it, even though I could quote it directly, but I'm misquote it, which is just sort of like, if you see an abused dog, that means to see a dog abused means the state is abusing the people because, like, the abuses of the small, the innocent, the animals speaks to larger sort of rot in the system.
There's also this great section I love that's that is from this, that's used in this great Agatha Christie novel, Endless Night.
Yes, I know exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is good.
Every night, every morning, every night, some to misery are born every morning and every night.
Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to sweet delight and some are born to endless
night. And that's the part of the poem I've always loved. I don't know if that's like
what they're talking about here, but I love that. It makes me think of like the loops,
like hosts on the loops. Delores was on a loop where every single day she was tormented and this
is the loop that she was put on. There's also a line in the poem I'm looking right now
that says the wanton boy that kills the fly
show feel the spider's enmity,
which is,
that can't,
that,
you know,
any fly reference,
I guess,
has to be inspected pretty meticulously at this point.
So that's,
I mean,
that's,
I think,
what we're going for here.
Some folks have pointed out
that also auguries and reveries,
which is,
you know,
the reveries is also a constant refrain in Westworld.
I think that might be a connection as well.
But I think,
I think,
look at the poem.
quite long, explicate it however you care to, and you will find something that you can then relate to Westworld.
And that is classic West World title, Hocus Pocus there.
But speak of the Fly, we're now going to do David Schemaker's least favorite game, which is, what's new in the opening titles that can tell us what this season is about.
I want to talk about the Fly, but Danny, I'm curious if there's anything else you saw in the opening that you wanted to talk about.
The opening title is just the episode as a whole.
The new opening credit sequence.
Yeah, the fly seems to be quite the theme, doesn't it?
I feel like, I mean, there's, I think I'm most interested in the people on fire.
But the fly, I don't, what are we talking about here?
People literally, the flies literally fly in the guy's brain and are like in control now.
Is that what we're doing?
I mean, that seems to be the case, right?
that it might be nanotech of some kind
and that these little nanobots
is sort of a reverse.
You know, the hosts are taking control of the humans, it seems like.
Yeah, you know, I think that obviously there's a lot
to discuss in this episode about what's, you know,
what pieces we're watching are real and which are a simulation.
I mean, this is what's what we're talking about.
I think that like whatever the literal explanation of the flies are
will be pretty straightforward when we get there
if we're not there already.
But it's sort of the metaphorical significance
is interesting to me, right?
And like they were, you know,
a fly was like a pretty, well, I mean,
a fly was it like a pretty direct metaphor
at the very beginning of the show, right?
I mean, they're crawling all over host eyes
because there's no humanity there.
There's nothing to fly away from,
like whatever, however you want to read it.
And now they're not just a metaphor.
They're a weapon.
Or maybe there's still a metaphor,
but they're also a weapon.
I think it, I think that we'll probably see,
I don't know.
I'm not going to try to stay away from the big broad predictions I say now as I'll immediately
go back on it.
But whether or not now the hosts are using such tools to establish power, I think will be
an interesting question going forward.
The use of fly at the beginning, as you point out, like in the interrogation, when
QA, right, it was quality assurance, right, at the parks would interrogate the host to see if
they had, you know, how their programming was working. One of the questions is like,
would you harm a living thing, you know, and I wouldn't even harm a fly. Like, I would never
harm another living thing. I wouldn't even harm a fly. A little fly crawl all over me. And, of course,
like, one of the coolest moments in the premiere is Dolores slapping that fly that's crawling
on her. And you're like, oh, shit. Like, what's, what's to come here? Danny, what is that,
like, what is the long history of the fly and its use in this season? Is it triggering anything
for you? Well, I mean, I think that literally the fact that the
first 20 seconds of the show is Dolores having that like sitting in a chair.
She's like naked and the fly crawls over her eye.
It's clearly central to the core idea of the show, right?
It's not some like the last two years they got obsessed with flies or anything.
It's like apparently the fly, it's like core to the idea of it.
I almost wonder if the same way that like part of these sequence like Rehobo has all
the people and little pods and then it zooms out and it's kind of like everyone's in
their own little personal hell at your cubicle, but add up all the cubicles and you go
from seeing through the world through a straw to like it's an AI simulation of the world slash
looks like a fly's eye. But honestly, I kind of didn't think the flies were cool. Like, I get the
idea of what they're going for, but I guess I wasn't like, wow, look at all those flies
attacking the guy. I don't know. I didn't quite have like suspense of it. I was just kind of
confused. I'm interested to see where they go from it. I do think there's some kind of analogy
to be made. I don't know between like sight and everything, but I don't know what any of that means yet.
with love and respect because our partnership is new,
heart disagree on the flies.
I found them horrifying.
The buzzing of them,
the fact that it started with like one or two
and then there was like a hideous swarm of them.
Like that was deeply upsetting to me.
Maybe it's just because it's like plum season in my backyard
and we have a lot of flies in my backyard.
So I am like triggered by the sound of the buzzing.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's hard to watch
and not immediately go to like Candyman or whatever like
your point of reference in media for flies is.
I do think that there's probably this whole,
episode, well, in so much as we, you know, it's like a linear story. There was a whole,
whole lot about authorship built into this thing, right? It's basically just like the Terminator
meets, I don't even know what like Borgia's short story. I should point out as a reference here,
but it's all about like, like writing. And there, I think that there's a really interesting element,
both in terms of the way they're having to produce the show and the way they're telling this,
the story unfolds about sort of like, like, like the evolving use of something.
something like a fly or maybe you, I mean, you could totally imagine them in the writer's room,
like, everybody rewatching season one and thinking, like, what are the pieces we can call
from this to give new meaning in season four? And I think that, I mean, that's, that's, that's,
that's what I was thinking the whole time I saw them. That's what I would think is that they're,
like, we want to have a thing where they take over control, oh, what if we use the fly?
Like, it's use every, use every piece of the buffalo sort of thing, right? And it's like,
the way in which they're recycling in this episode, we see a host from season two who was in
one episode of season two and a host from season one who was in two episodes of season one,
they're brought in to this episode to just appear briefly.
Like, we're not bringing back like Jonathan Tucker or someone they've used a bunch of times
or something like that.
We're bringing in the tiniest pieces to make it all feel like a coherent narrative.
And I feel like that's the approach they're taking here.
Not like they always knew that the fly was going to mean this throughout, but they're like,
let's go back and grab the fly and make it mean this other thing too.
And even if it's an empty gesture, I appreciate it.
Right? I mean, isn't that like we want to feel like that the show is being, that the showrunners, that the writers and everybody are like, you know, trying to pull those threads together to sort of read meaning back into all the stuff that we've spent so much time and energy on.
Well, I guess before we get too granular here with the flies, I'm kind of curious. We have not talked about this episode yet. Did you guys like the episode? Like, Joanna, did you like this?
That's a great question, Danny, that I should have started with. I did. I did.
I was like, I don't know.
I felt in it.
I felt excited by my, like, many conspiracy theories that cropped up mainly around Evan
Rachel Wood's storyline.
That, like, seems to be the ripest spot for conjecture.
So that got me really excited.
Westworld was always beautifully designed.
So this, like, future Manhattan that they put together in her storyline, I thought, looked
really cool.
And then this is something I was talking about on the preview episode with you guys.
And I'm curious to see if you agree.
Like, I think the.
the rehab or, you know, re-invigoration of my interest in Aaron Paul's character, Caleb,
was really well done in this episode.
Even if I can see the, like, seams of it, I think they did a great job making me care
about a character that I had a really hard time caring about last season.
Yeah, I mean, I think both in terms of the way that they, well, if this was your, if this,
if you were watching it and you came in, as I think we all did on some level with the sort of,
you know, less than,
Something less than love for him.
Yeah, I mean, it was presented in a way that it did make you like him more.
It was also presented kind of as like a straight up mulligan, right?
I mean, we were like reintroduced to him.
I don't even know how granular we want to get.
There's nothing about what happened except, I mean, the wife and the kid are different,
but there's nothing about this episode that couldn't have been us meeting him last season, right?
I mean, that was, and in some ways his character needed that sort of refresh.
What do you think, Danny?
I, again, respectfully.
Where, you know, we can disrespectful civil disagreement.
I thought the Caleb family plotline was everything wrong with the show to its core.
And I overall, I think I was pretty disappointed with the episode because I kind of thought that a lot of my core issues, like they weren't totally solved or not really addressed.
But I'm stunned to hear the Caleb thing because I guess I don't know.
I think overall, my feeling on this episode is basically what Dolores said about her first date, which is like, setups are awkward.
And I get that.
And they're always going somewhere.
So I'll give him the benefit of the doubt of where it could go.
And I'm still intrigued about a lot of things going on.
But I do think some of the core issues I've had as the show has progressed from like where I loved it so much in season one as it's kind of like progressed to further and further away from the core.
I didn't think those things were super addressed in a way that made me totally buy back my faith in the show that I did at by the end of season one.
I'll tell you what I loved about this show, about this episode of the show.
it was so, like there was so much,
so many callbacks of things that happened before,
so many, like, there's so much reference,
like with the flies and everything else.
And I know people overuse this phrase,
but you really didn't need to watch any of the previous seasons
to appreciate this episode of the show.
It was like, it was its own sort of, like, on its own,
it made sense.
It also had a narrative drive that certainly,
like, some of the episodes in previous seasons
had not have.
They're sort of like, it's driven by the bigger concept of story,
but like episode to episode,
it's not necessarily as driven as you might like.
I don't know.
I mean,
I was caught up in every minute of it,
and there was no point where I felt like I was being,
you know,
hit over the head with a mystery that was right.
I mean,
it was only after,
like, on the second and third,
and the partial third watch that I started feeling like,
you know,
weighed down by all the potential things that could happen.
But I really,
I enjoyed every bit of it.
I think even like, you know,
I was kind of over Dolores,
most of last season.
Not, you know, I was,
there was definitely a version of Mave
that could have kicked off the season
or I would have just been like,
nah, I've had, I've had plenty
as much as I love that character in seasons past.
I mean, I just, I was fully into it.
Maybe I just wanted to be,
but I love this episode.
I feel like there was probably a remit of some kind
because anecdotally, I've heard a lot of people,
that a lot of people dropped off in season three,
that the viewership data reflects that, right?
So if I'm a writer,
putting together my season four,
maybe I want to craft a story where you won't feel totally lost if you miss season four.
There's a little clumsy exposition about the sort of uprising that we get in this from Caleb's
co-worker.
But other than that, I feel like you could probably skip season three and you wouldn't have been a
wholly loss.
And so if people hear anecdotally that Westworld is good again, they won't hear it from Danny,
but they might hear it from me.
Maybe they'll hop back in and they won't be totally at sea with what's going on.
Do you know what I mean?
But, Danny, my question for you is like,
would you rather those things that you're talking,
I'm so curious to hear,
like those things you talked about
that you were dissatisfied with Westworld
that you don't feel like they address,
would you rather sort of hit some of those broader things now
or do it as we hit the beats of the episode?
I mean, I'll tell you now.
I mean, I think that, for example, the Caleb thing,
I think that the Caleb family story,
I think we just disagree.
Like, I thought that was also very clumsy with the,
he's like, I'm not paranoid.
And then five minutes later, she's like, you know, I did always think you were paranoid.
And then it's just, I don't know, there's a lot of odd things going on.
But I think the core thing, and again, some of these issues I've had that continue to this,
the whole thing is with that scene where his daughter, who's seven years old, is in the alley.
And a guy, a strange man is there trying to shoot her in the face.
And then that guy gets stabbed in the chest with a katana and dies.
And the girl isn't crying.
She's not destroyed.
She's just sitting there, like, completely calm.
And it's like, who are?
Are you? Not like scared. Not crying. She's just very calm. And I'm like, there's only two options here. Either she's a human and these people don't know anything about humanity, which I don't think is the case. Or the daughter is like a robot, a simulation, a AI, whatever you want to call it. And it's like a decision that the writers have made to like, you know, have some less emotion. And that's kind of the core premise of the show, right? The humans, the robots, like at what point are they so alike that you?
you can't tell the difference, right?
And if you can't tell the difference, does it matter?
I think the core problem that the show has got wrong,
at the absolute center heart of it,
is that they made the humans robotic
instead of making the robots human-like.
And instead of making the robots very emotional, very human,
very like, just human, the people are all robotic.
And the core problem is,
it's not interesting to me to watch a show world,
the people are very robotic.
I thought season one in part was genius
because all the hosts started very robotic in their acting
and then as Maeve gained consciousness
was a better actress.
Dolores was a better actress as she got consciousness.
And they've gone away from that.
And I don't understand why in season four,
a seven-year-old girl's not scared that someone just tried to kill her.
That's a completely fair point.
I think you could say
if this is a girl who was born during a wartime
and raised by someone like Kayla,
to like sleep with a gun under her pillow and stuff like that.
She might not react the way that a seven-year-old child that we know in the world that we live
and might react to something like that.
I think more to what Danny said, the fact that she's like, like at that moment scared
of monsters probably would lead me to believe that she would actually scream or something
if she saw the man.
But setting that aside and even setting aside Danny's, I think, correct point that, you know,
everybody's more like a robot than a human.
And I don't know.
I feel like there's a, there have been a lot of points in the show.
It didn't bother me a ton, but I think there's been a lot of points in the show,
both in the way it's presented in me as the way I watch it,
is that like the stuff that doesn't matter really doesn't matter.
And a lot of the times when you're just like, well, why didn't fill in the blank?
It's because, it's because, like, you know, one calendar week from now,
we will find out that that's a simulation.
And that's why it was all just slightly off and weird, right?
I mean, or like, or whatever.
Like, it's just, I don't know.
There was enough going on with the characters that I,
cared about with the characters that we know. It's sort of like the background, like the semi
background is fully background. But I, but you're right. The point you're the point you make is
correct. Yeah. And we talked about that a little bit on our preview podcast where like messy human
characters like Logan or Lisa Ismore, like that we've moved away from a lot of those like messy
human emotional kind of characters and that Caleb read really stiff to us last season. And I think
them trying like giving him a kid to care about giving him a wife.
I agree with you that, like, there are versions of this family scene that wouldn't work for me.
I do think that Nizifo McLean, who played his wife, who plays his wife, I thought she, like, she just had enough charm coming off of her, enough charisma that I was, I bought in in a way that I might not have been and resented, like, oh, just give him a family and then we'll be emotionally invested him.
I might have resented otherwise.
that's sort of where I sat with it.
Do you know what I mean?
But I agree with you that I can like see the seams of it.
It's like having your hero rescue a cat.
It's a rescue cat.
Let's give him a cute kid and a wife and get you interested.
But for me, it worked.
Well, and even though the rest of the mechanics of the scene, right?
I mean, that terrible thing happens.
And not only is you say, like, I have something more important than protecting my family.
You can understand the sort of broad strokes of the argument where like the way to protect
my family is to solve this massive crisis.
I get it.
It's every action movie.
But like, it was like, the dudes will be here.
soon to take to take you to the place or whatever and then walks out the door and like high fives
them in the driveway. It doesn't like actually like stay with this family for the handover.
I mean, the whole thing is just very like the point of this scene is to get us into the whatever
scene we're in starting next episode and that sequence. And at some point, you just got to be
okay with that. I, so I, we disagree on the Caleb thing, but I hear where you guys are coming
from. What about the Dolores rebranded to Christina? How did you guys feel about that, Joe?
My feelings on it is going to depend on how much
nonsense is going on around it.
It's going to depend on what trick they're trying to pull here on me.
And if it feels like fun and satisfying, I'll be fine.
But if it feels like this is just ones and zeros this whole time,
I will have some questions of feelings about it.
Well, first of all, are we all in agreement that there is a trick that they're trying to pull here?
Always.
It's Westworld.
Yeah.
My concern sort of goes to the last thing I said about,
it doesn't matter, doesn't matter.
It was so funny,
it was reading a lot of viewer theories and stuff online.
And everybody has a slightly different or sometimes dramatically different idea
of what's going on with Dolores.
But like the first sentence of the explanation invariably doesn't matter for what comes
after.
That's not really the best way to say it.
But it's like the explanation is much less significant than like the mechanics of
how it's going to apply to the rest of the show, if that matters.
Because people like, well, Dolores' brain got, like, sucked up into Roeboem, and now they're
operating together, or, like, or, like, Charlotte Hale took the pearl from Dolores'
thing and is now, like, has her inside, we can, we know we're going to talk about all this stuff,
but has her, like, inside of another simulation to try to get her to write stories so that
she'll eventually, like, give up the access code to the, I mean, there's, like, so much stuff,
but, like, how it happened, like, what is actually happening?
is it seems sort of subordinate to just a thing is happening, right?
Something's happening.
Something's happening.
I think that I agree with you're saying shoemaker is like something happening, but there's also
like the episode where you're watching.
It's kind of like, I think my fear sometimes is that the show is so obsessive twist,
the destination of the twist that they don't really care whether you're having fun
on the journey.
Like they're doing the magic trick and they're thinking about the reveal, but did you enjoy
watching the trick?
And I think sometimes, is it funny that she asks white or black shoes?
Which do you think go with my white dress?
Kind of thought that was funny.
But like, I guess it's...
Did you enjoy...
Are you interested in the Christina writer plot?
Yeah, I'm interested in, like...
I think Ariana Bose is fantastic on the show.
Whether or not she turns out to be a real human
doesn't matter to me.
The fact that, like, I think she's entertaining and fun.
And I think watching Evan Rachel Wood
get to play something other than
and like a murder Terminator is really fun for me,
like because I got really tired of Dolores at the end of everything.
And watching her go on a bad date was also kind of,
I liked that bad date exchange.
I thought that was good.
That guy sucked.
Yeah.
I did.
Well, okay.
Put a pen in that for one second.
Yeah, I think, Danny, to your point, I mean, your question,
I really enjoyed this episode.
I mean, I liked her storyline too.
I didn't think that it wasn't dependent on wondering what was going on.
Because the first three quarters of my first watch through,
I was just like, oh, I mean, this is very reasonably a bunch of different players
in the exact same world at the exact same time doing different things.
Like they're sort of far flung having very different experiences.
Once you start wondering what's going on, like Joanna said, then, you know,
then you start wondering, well, is it, was this worth my time, like retroactively, you know?
I mean, and I guess that's a, that's part of the weight of doing a show like this.
But for the, I mean, on this episode standalone, I thought it was really great.
So at the risk of blowing up the outline here.
So there's kind of two ideas, right?
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Two big ideas.
We're just like leaning all the way into the Christina theory.
All right.
Well, no, no, I'm separating Christina.
Let's, I've been parceling out.
What we're watching is either a simulation, well, if it's not real.
It's either a simulation inside some.
something or this is like future world like we're freaking in a park right you're talking you're
talking about but you're not leaving aside who christine is you're talking about the christina storyline
only right christina storyline only what the her day-to-day experience is either some sort of like
endless loop inside a computer brain or it's a physical place i mean this sort of goes without saying
it's either not physical or it's physical but it's like it's a physical place that people are
already going to future world as being just like,
this is another land
in the park and these things are happening.
We saw the dudes walk past her in one scene and say,
like, this place is freaking awesome.
You've never been here before and have the best time.
Yeah, I love a park bro.
I love that you left out the possibility
that it was the real world.
No, no.
That's not even possible.
It could be the real world.
Yeah.
Here's the, okay, here's the court.
Probably not.
This is blowing up the timeline
and maybe in the future I will be more of a stickler.
for, but I am excited to talk about Westworld theories again, so we'll go forward.
But we will circle back to William, et cetera, I promise.
But like, I think that the key turning point of developing a theory around what's going
on with Christina actually does depend on Christina, and it depends on whether or not you believe
that the lovely and talented Lisa Joyne Nolan is telling the truth when she says that this
is a human, which she has said over and over and over again.
Do you believe that Christina is a human?
And if you decide to believe Lisa Joy, which I want to, because to my memory, she has never overtly lied about something pertaining to the show.
But usually there's some sort of hook to it.
So what I've been trying to do is I plot out my Christina theories is like what could the answer be that would still also technically satisfy this is a human?
do you know?
And
do you have an answer
to this question?
I don't have any like
I feel very firmly
that this is some sort of simulation.
I do.
I could be wrong.
But and that
goes to the tower question, right?
Because like something
that has been very prevalent
in all the advertising
in the posters,
in the trailers,
in the like pop-up
that they did in New York,
all that sort of stuff,
is this.
trailer is this tower thing.
That is the shape of the lamp post in Christina's world.
Yeah.
You're talking about the big tower thing that's like in the South Street Seaport, right?
Like whatever that is, it's like off Manhattan.
Is that the one that I'm thinking?
No, I think that.
So remember that scene where Dolores is walking under the street lamps and I mean,
I love that they're in the future and they're trying to conserve energy, I guess.
So they do one light at a time, which seems very not safe.
And then she gets jumped by very creepy man.
And like the same very unique structure that those street lamps have, it also seems to be that there's a tower that is, I don't know, vaguely controlling people's lives or something that they keep referencing in the promotional materials.
It's like a big deal.
It's on the poster.
You said it's at a pop-up too in New York, right, Joe?
Yeah.
So I think my feeling of it was this way.
The homeless guy, sorry, that unhoused person was talking about a tower.
He's like, can you see it?
And then the guy, Peter, the guy who creeped and stalked Dolores,
who was like, you're controlling my life, you're writing me into the game, blah, blah, blah.
Was like, I see what you're writing.
And I think that there's two things going on here.
It's like the people who are maybe if she's in control of whatever the hell she's doing,
in control of a simulation, they see a tower.
And the tower, I feel like would be like an, like a video game, basically, right?
She's a video game.
and what reminded me of the streetlight thing is not only do they apparently literally the tower,
whatever it is, looks like a street light, is the streetlight was only turning on as Dolores walked by it.
That's very simple to how the world renders in a video game.
If you play video games in an open world, they're only loading the game around you in like a hundred yards circle around you or whatever.
And then as you approach, sometimes you can see things render in front of you, kind of like a light turning on,
but around you it's not all there all the time.
and it kind of reminded me of like if this AI sim was rendering.
It's probably only rendering around Dolores, basically.
And those like non-playable characters are not necessarily like there all the time until she's there.
Does that make sense?
It's very suspicious that Maya, played by Ariadobos, like sort of just vanishes from the date as soon as she's out of view of Dolores and then like calls her later.
That felt like real NPC behavior if we're talking about video game technology.
But like, yeah, let me let me double back on this tower thing, right?
So there's this tower.
The homeless man says, can you see it?
It's looming over us the tower.
And he has a drawing on like a piece of cardboard that looks like the lamp post, that looks like this tower thing that has been in all the promo material.
And then, yeah, the Peter, the guy who's like stalking her says, you're real, like the tower is real.
Right?
So there's this idea that like people or robots, whatever they are, who are awake.
AI that is awake in whatever this is can see the tower and other people can't.
Does that, does that sound right?
Yeah, that tracks.
Okay.
But the question is like, what is a tower?
Does it have to do with a video game?
Here's my, my possibly, like, number one, get ready, exciting wrong theory of the season.
Is what it kind of looks like to me are the spindles that like,
like draw the hosts like in the opening credits that we see on all the machines.
Those like things that come down.
It's got a needle on it.
Right.
Like and so I was just wondering if they're like, if they're inside something, if they're
inside like one of those printing machines, you know what I mean, that we saw that
Hale had a million of at the end of last season, like in the basement of Delo somewhere.
Something like that.
And so if you were inside that, this thing would be like looming over you, right?
and maybe it would look like a tower to you,
but it's actually the arm of like one of the printing machines.
That's my...
That's actually kind of...
Wow, that's sick.
That's pretty great.
That's my first terrible theory on the season.
I like that a lot.
But so, I mean, whether or not that's like the literal truth, right,
the sort of the symbolism,
which I think a lot of people are sort of gleaning from the show already,
could be that Charlotte Hale has somehow rendered a world
in which the roles of human beings,
and hosts are reversed or something to that effect, right?
I mean, this is, if not a simulation, it's going to be impossible to sort of define
until they tell us what it is, I guess.
But, like, that would be, that would go to what you're saying, I think.
That's, that's pretty cool.
So, can we, can we stay with theories here for a second on the Christita thing?
No, facts, facts only.
Fly only.
I'm just going to shut, there was a great Reddit theory.
It's been kind of floating around.
Someone summarized it well, who's, I'm going to get the username.
Codeaily, I don't know how to pronounce it.
Your Reddit username, but someone named
Codalee kind of posts this theory, I thought was really good,
which basically is the idea that
what we're watching with the Dolores...
I don't want to call her, Christina, I'm sorry, she's Dolores.
And what we're watching with this storyline she's in,
is that... Because remember the last time we saw Dolores at the end of season 3,
she had all those blue tubes sticking to her,
and she was, like, hard-lined Ethernet into Rojoboaum,
and they, like, deleted Rojoboeum,
and deleted basically Dolores's memories.
And so Dolores died, quote, or whatever.
And that the idea is that Dolores has actually murdered,
with Rehoboam, or her consciousness is like stuck inside Rehoboam.
And again, Rehobam is this giant AI that simulated the real world.
And so, but it was kind of imperfect.
And so that Dolores is basically stuck inside this simulation of the world, but that Rehobo
and her have kind of like merged in a way.
Rojobam's taking her personality, like venom or something in Spider-Man or like
whatever.
And so she is writing all these stories in this AI world because she's also like the
computer and she's trapped there and that to take that even, which I think actually would explain
quite a lot, but also to take it a step further, the reason there's like the maze appearing
or whatever is that someone on the outside of Bernard or William, whoever could be going on,
is like trying to awaken conscious, like trying to get Dolores to wake up and then
leave Roham to like save Dolores.
I thought that was a really compelling theory and it would make a lot of sense.
I like that theory so much.
And I definitely think there's some sort of wake-up Dolores mission going on, no matter where we are.
But the only thing that brings me back to is, like, that means Lisa Joy is lying to our faces when she says this is a human.
If it's Dolores' host brain merged with an AI.
And that makes a lot of sense because in last season, like, these various AIs were speaking with, like, French accents of the people who made them, right?
So, like, this AI likes to take on some sort of persona.
It's a thing that it likes to do.
so I like that theory.
I just don't, I don't think Lisa Joy is wholly lying to us.
So there has to be some other hook there.
What do you think, David?
What if Christina is in the, what if this is actually in the past and Christina was like the basis for Dolores?
That's a theory that I've seen too, but that has been, that's negated for a couple of reasons.
Wait, so knowing Lisa Joy as well as you do, do you think it's...
We're best friends, no.
Do you think it's beyond the pale?
I mean, do you think it's within the realm of comprehension that she means just something more,
nebulous, like, humans and hosts, there's no distinction between human host in the future
or something. Or, you know what I'm saying? Like, is this like a, could it be that she's making
like a philosophical argument? Like, no, no, no. She was not raised in Westworld and she has, like,
you know, a soul. So, yes, this is what we call a human, you know? Like, this is, like, why would
you call it a host? That reminds me when, like, Paul Bettney was doing Wanda Vision, he's like, I get to work
with this amazing actor, I can't wait, and it was himself, which is one of my favorite trolls
of all time.
It's possible.
I just think that, like, at the end of the day, whatever the reveal is going to be, Lisa Joy is
not going to look like an asshole.
Like, that's not what's going to happen.
So I feel like we're so close.
There's just, like, some extra hook that we're missing.
Yeah, I think that's probably the case.
That, you know, has to do with it.
Producer Carlos just, who's been on the Star Wars beat with us, she's not lying to us
from a certain point of view, the old Obi-Wan-Kanobie language.
Danny, to that theory about this Christina character being the blueprint from Dolores,
like she is a human that existed before the park and Dolores is modeled on her.
The Dolores model was made in like, I think according to the timeline, it's like 2017-2018,
and this is like future tech.
We know it's way in the future.
Yeah, right?
Well, just we obviously can talk about this all day, but if it's not, if she's not,
not, I mean, if she's fully human, presumably we're not meant to understand that it's a
just miracle of nature that this person was born that looked exactly like a pre-existing
robot and stumbled into the same line of work.
I mean, no, I think the argument would be this like what, season three, we saw that Bernard,
they were, but he was working at a meat packing plant, but they weren't killing animals, right?
It was like lab grown meat.
And maybe that she's just, it's not, they're not like robots anymore the way we've thought
of them? What if they're actually just making human flesh and like she's a person and we just put
a brain in her. It's like they just, it's not like you cut her open and there's metal. It's like all
these people are, we're made. But like other than that, I don't know how you could get to humanity.
But like, but like Dolores Nanotech inside a like flesh of human body that somehow looks like.
But they about this conversation we're having. This is ridiculous. But that's Westworld.
This is Westworld. I'm both incredibly excited by this conversation. Also just feel like, man,
this, this show just desperately needs one season just to reset without.
introducing some like incredible new like wave of technology or like or like philosophical
whatever preponderance that like we have to think about all this shit now but okay let's move on
but this before one thing i think that the idea christina's a writer i'm not going to lie it's a big
red flag for me when a show introduces like a writing character of it i just in a show when you're
watching there's a character that's a writer it feels like the writing the writer is always kind of imbue
that character with their perspective, right?
It's like there's kind of like a lot of the author is putting their, you know, a lot of
their self into the characters.
The author answer, yeah.
So when a show, which has been very heavily criticized for bad writing, pivots by having
their main character be a writer, kind of a red flag for me, especially when Dolores is
Christina's first scene at work is basically, well, my writing genius is not recognized by my
bosses. And I'm like, is this about Dolores or is this like the Westworld writers mad that
people don't get their show? Is this giving you real Tyrion Lannister at the end of Game of
Thrones saying what's more important than story vibes? Yes, exactly like that because the first
six seasons of Thrones were written by George R. Martin writing books and he was putting himself
into Tyrion's mind. And then once the actual showrunners had to write Tyrion, instead of George R.R.
Martin, they didn't know what to do with them anymore.
So I know we have to move on from Dolores.
We have other stuff to talk about.
But can I just ask you one question and we can move forward?
If this is a future world, if that's an opportunity, if this is a place where they're
humans here having fun, do we think that the guy that Dolores went on the date with is a,
is a park goer?
Is this the future?
Is this like instead of going to the saloon and like hanging out with the robot prostitutes?
Is it, do you just get to go on dates with people?
future world. Shoemaker, I can tell you're a family man, because if you think anyone would pay like
$10,000 a day to go on a bad first date on hinge, then you've been out the game, man. No one's out
here trying to have hinge date. You can do that in real life. There's these questions of like,
if we believe that there's some sort of wake up Dolores mission that maybe like James Morrison
Marston is a part of, because that's like, Teddy was created in the first place to like be Dolores's
protector right in the park. So like if we believe that's going on, what that means is that
there's other things actively trying to keep Christina, Dolores, whatever you want to call her,
asleep. And so, like, the Maya character or, like, this date being like, take a tab for that.
There's a, you know, she's, like, basically saying there's something wrong with this world and, you know,
everything feels wrong or the real world. There's something wrong with the real world.
And he's like, take some medication and you'll be fine. And listen, on this podcast, I will say,
I'm very pro people taking medication if they need it. So this is not an anti-pharma stance for me.
But I'm just saying, like, the example that I always go to is in the Jim Henson movie, The Labyrinth.
When Sarah's like on her mission to get to the Goblin King, at one point she gets sidetracked into this thing that looks like her childhood bedroom because they're trying to keep her off the mission.
And they're like, you're home, you're done, you've finished, you're done.
You like all these things stay here.
That idea of like keep someone asleep or keep someone comfortable so that they don't interrogate where they are.
that's the whole thing with the host in the first place in the park.
I feel like that's a big part of what's going on here.
So it's the Matrix without the great country.
Yeah, that's a way better analogy than the dusty labyrinth analogy.
But like someone's actively trying to keep her asleep and someone's actively trying to wake her up.
And in the meantime, she is unconsciously rewriting narratives.
It seems like, you know, this guy who's like, I had a wife and a kid and essentially like I lost them.
It seems like she rewrote this guy who's stalking her.
She rewrote him, but not in a way that she's conscious of, right?
It's very Wanda vision, right?
Or like Wanda is like a little bit more conscious of it, right?
But like this idea of rewriting everything around you without really thinking of the harm that you're doing because you're not really aware that you're doing that.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
No, I mean, that all rings really true.
I mean, and obviously the show has been in the past has not been like reluctant to explore threads.
from other shows or anything like that.
So, I mean, I'm not, probably, you know,
a lot of this was done before they saw a Wanda vision.
But I think that, you know, Matrix references and everything are totally,
are totally okay.
Table.
Danny, anything else you want to say in the conspiracy theory realm
before we zoom back to the man in black himself?
I think once you hit the Matrix, I think I'm good with the.
If you're like, I'm tapped out.
I'm in Zion.
Are you looking for support in your weight management journey?
Zepbound terseptide may be able to help.
Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity
to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical
problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.
Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection.
Zepound contains terseptide and should not be used with other terseptide-containing products,
or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines.
It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children.
Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles.
Don't take if allergic to it.
Or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer,
or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.
Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck.
Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction.
Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems.
Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia
if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills.
Taking Zepbound with a sulfonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar.
Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.
Talk to your doctor.
Call 1-800-545-99 or visit Zepbounds.lily.com.
You said this place was steps from the water.
We just haven't found the steps yet.
How much did we save?
Enough.
Enough to get lost.
Or you could book a stay with Hilton.
Welcome to your ocean front room.
Just steps from the water.
The Hilton sale is on now.
Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app
and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected.
When you want savings, not surprises.
It matters where you stay.
Hilton, for the stay.
Starting a business can seem like a day.
daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and
grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help
with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and all
birds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into
sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. All right, let's go back to the
beginning. It starts with, like, William. Here's the first question at the top of the episode here.
Do we believe that this is the real William or is this, do we really believe that that guy died at the
end of last season and this is the host replacement? What do we think?
Watching the show in real time, I mean, it's been so long since I watched the rest. It really
didn't occur to me. This is anybody but the real William. Are we allowed to talk about like the
coming up on Westworld trailers that we've seen or is that off limits? Let's say that until the
Let's do like, but you can say that there's stuff in there that makes you think that what?
That this is a host or some iteration of it, right?
We saw, we saw William host last season.
Yeah.
At the end of last.
Yeah.
Yes.
That Charlotte Hale constructed.
I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that any time there's like corporate machinations going on.
And that there was a Charlotte Hale controlled robot William hanging around that it could very
much be connected.
That could be who we're looking at.
I think that the trick, you know, I think that the thing that deliberately sort of confuses
the point if that's the case is that we've come to understand William as a man of,
especially in the park, as a man of sort of like ego-driven cruelty, you know, and that's
exactly what we saw.
Like from what we know about William, which is very little in the real world, this was
William showing volition. This was William being human, you know, and so that's what makes it a little bit
hard to parse. So to be clear, we're having this conversation because at the end of season three,
after the credits rolled, Charlotte Hale, who's actually Dolores, made a copy of William to kill the
real human William and slit his throat after the credits rolled. And now we're here having a
conversation that is basically asking, is Westworld going to be the only show in the history of
television to kill their most famous actor on the show after the credits rolled in an episode?
or are they trying to plot twist that he's dead,
even though they showed his throat getting slit?
Like, that's the thing I keep was thinking.
It was like, I don't know if he's human.
And I don't know what to make of that whole storyline
because the only thing weirder than him being not human is like,
did they really kill him after the credits rolled?
I just can't get over that fact.
It seems so weird to me.
So I kind of, I have honestly almost given up
on trying to figure out what his deal is.
I'm interested in what he's doing.
I think I'm pretty interested in,
whatever the hell that they're trying to do at the Hoover Dam.
I thought that was kind of cool.
And I would like to know, I think that Ed Harris just being a bad guy is good.
I agree with Ed Harris.
I know Ed Harris wanted to be the man in black, not the one of man in white.
I agree.
I think Ed Harris is better when he's like being a mean dude instead of sitting there like,
I'm going to save the world.
Like that's the most eye roll moment as Rest World's ever had for me was when Ed Harris,
I'm going to save the world.
At the end of season three, he was like, that's my mission.
Yeah.
I'm pretty firmly in the camp that like human William is dead and that this is host.
Why did they kill them after the credits then? Put that on the show.
They just did, man. And we're just rolling forward with it. Right. So like real William is dead. This is a host. Let's talk about his mission. That's just my take. I could be wrong. That's my take. They're at the Hoover Dam. As you mentioned, this is like a really fun location, like real world location that they use. I really love when they go to the real world locations like they did those cool.
locations in Spain in season three, et cetera.
I thought this was really cool.
It brings us back to sort of our monument valley roots of season one that were like in,
you know, the Arizona-Nevada border.
Let's just be clear about what, whoever this is, what his mission is.
He wants the massive data server that is now being kept energized by the power created by
the Hoover Dam.
Hoover Dam is now turned into an energy resource to keep this server alive.
And on that server is some data that William says, or the host William says, was stolen from him eight years ago.
And if we're doing our timeline math, if we believe this is the same timeline as Mave and Caleb, that means seven years ago was season three.
So eight years ago is season two-ish.
And season two is when that sublime data steal happens.
And he says the data that's on there was stolen by someone who's dead.
So that's Dolores, right?
So what he's after here is probably the robot heaven, sublime Valley Beyond post data.
That's 100% what I thought that we were supposed to infer,
and it's the only thing that I'm really willing to entertain until we know anything else.
But can I ask a quick question about the timelines?
I got the eight years.
I got the seven years was from Pinkman's timeline, right?
Yeah.
And also Maves and Mave mentioned seven years.
they're together. But there was never a tough. We never got anything from Dolores' timeline.
Exactly. There's like an eight years ago in the William storyline, a seven years ago in Caleb's, a seven years ago in Mave, and no timeline mentioned in Christina Land.
So that's another suspicion. William is doing all this to get, again, to, as you said, probably to get the key out of Dolores's head, which is like it needs to be decrypted to go to the sublime.
But wasn't that in Bernard's head? So isn't even if he does all this in theory,
it would, like, it's not in Dolores's head, right?
It's in Bernard's head.
Right.
And as far as we know, they don't know that Bernard has the key in his head, that nobody
knows that except for Bernard.
Bernard didn't even figure it out until the season finale last season.
But like, they want the server where the data is and then they need the key, right?
But they've got, they found where the data is.
It's at the Hoover Dam.
If you had that on your prediction card, my, I tip my hat to you.
If you're like, I know where the server is.
it's the Hoover Dam.
I saw someone online suggest that
I mean, again, I'm not going to pretend
to know the mechanics of this
and even to understand what I've already seen,
but someone online suggested
that basically like Dolores,
or sorry, Christina is in some sort of inless loop
to sort of like,
infinite monkeys and infinite typewriters
that she would eventually get to like expose
the thought process that would have
as she was the person that encrypted it or whatever,
that there would be some kind of key there.
I would kind of buy whatever the explanation.
was on that front. Like, I'm not, like, I don't know that I would, that I would point, like,
get upset if I didn't think everything entirely, like, lined up exactly. But yeah, the,
the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, and I just went to the
Hoover Dam. I just went to Zillow and tried to find the Hoover Dam, and it just said,
for sale or for rent. I don't think Zillow is the first place I would look. Although, when I was
in college, and this is many, many years ago, I went on a road trip one spring break to
California and back to Texas and we're driving in the middle of the night and I was asleep in the
back seat and woke up in the Hoover Dam just out of nowhere at like two in the morning.
And it was like in the car.
But it was like pitch black, but like it's all uplit at night.
And I thought I was like, I was totally sober and thought that I was like losing my mind.
Like it was the, it was the craziest place to wake up.
So yes, wonderful place to shoot a show.
That sounds very much like a robot story.
I love that you went to Zillow.
That's amazing.
Well, I'm trying to think, what do you buy the Hoover Dam for?
What does that even cost?
Well, he got it for free, didn't he?
That's good point.
That's good point.
Guy chose door number two.
But I'm ashamed to admit that the reason I immediately recognized that that was the Hoover Dam was not because it is a recognizable monument of the United States, which it is.
But because I've seen the fine Matthew Perry Salma Hayek film, Fools Russian, too many times in which the romantic climax happens on the Hoover Dam.
So thanks for that education, Fools Russian.
But I like this line where the cartel.
guy, by the way, cannot find that character's name anywhere.
I would love to give that character his name.
I'm calling him Cartel Guy because I could not find it.
But he's played by Arturo del Porto.
Dude, I spent the first five minutes to show so excited about, or the first three and
a half minutes of the show, so excited about this new made cast member.
I thought he was, I thought he was going to be great.
Well, that's how season two started with that guy in his, like, future house.
And then Dolores just like helped him kill himself, basically.
Or season three, sorry.
I think you guys are right.
We're not giving them their due credit.
Like, shout out to Mexico.
Mexican drug cartels. Like, great purchase on the Hoover Dam. That's like, I've talked about money laundering.
Like, that's, what an amazing asset. And, and like, William says you were paid handsomely to store this
data here in your massive server, maybe one of the biggest servers in the world, possibly. I don't
know how big servers are. But I like, I like this point where he says we buried, we buried most of
them, meaning they're like enemies, right, at the bottom of this lake, which made me, like, think about
all the hosts that were sort of dropped in the bottom of the lake in season two.
So anyway, I mean, like we feel we understand what's going on.
There's some sort of nanotech something that the flies, once they go inside of you, I guess,
infect you with some sort of technology where you, a human, are able to be controlled by
William or whoever, to their nefarious ends, where you kill your bosses and give over
the Hoover Dam and then kill yourself.
That's what's happening with the flies, right?
Okay.
Anything else we want to say about the sequence?
Oh, Michael Crichton's Prey, which is a book I definitely have read, but it's very much towards
the weird part of Michael Crichton's life where he became like a climate change denier and like
all this all this weird stuff.
So I cannot in good conscience recommend it.
Wait, the guy who wrote the book about the dinosaurs was a climate change denier?
Yeah.
Michael Crichton took like a very distressing turn late in life.
You should have asked the dinosaurs about climate change.
But pray is about swore.
So like if we're, you know, Westworlds are in by Crichton, if they're doing like more Crichton,
they're doing prey essentially. So if you want to read prey, I don't recommend it, but you can.
I will say this about the swarming nanotech, just a little bit heavy handed. You know,
it's like if you have the technology to do this, do you really need them to all appear in this,
like, really creepy swarm in somebody's closet? Could you just like just put a couple of flies in
the mail slot and let that be enough? I feel like I've been Debbie Downer for this entire
podcast. And I didn't want to say it. But man, it feels like you could get that done.
with one fly.
Like once you get one fly in someone's nose,
like why do you need like 100 more flies?
It feels like one will do the job.
I love the flies, but I will agree.
Probably whoever's developing this tech,
I would like them to consolidate.
Poor allocation of resources.
I have one guy with one fly just take like,
I don't know, three flies per person,
and then you could just do the cartel thing
and then he wouldn't have had to pay the money up front anyway.
I don't know.
I want to tell you to do business.
The last thing I want to say is that when the cartel guy slashes his own throat on the Hoover Dam, what a way to go.
And he says, you know, am I done, basically?
And William says, you can rest now.
It felt to be very like trigger language of like the programming of the hosts from back in season one, right?
Bring yourself back in line, like whatever it is, a deep and dreamless slumber, all that sort of stuff.
You can rest now.
And he's like, great.
throat slashing time.
All right, let's talk about, we already talk about Caleb Plenty.
He's still laying line just like he was in the season three.
Like he's got the same job.
And like his buddy does all that, as we mentioned, clunky exposition about like, well,
at least all the robots are scrap metal now.
And it's been seven years since the riot.
And so like, weird to take that to mean the results of the riot that Danny hated at the end of season two means that this war was fought.
They've fought in the war alongside Caleb.
And the end result is that the robots were quote unquote eliminated, though we know that obviously they weren't.
So the end of season three, right?
Sorry, at the end of season three.
I keep seeing too.
Time is a flat circle, guys.
But that the robots have been eliminated from the world.
The hosts are gone.
There are no friendly neighborhood construction robots.
Can I ask a stupid question?
I bet it won't be stupid, but yeah.
Was the riots about Rehoboam, this AI that was guiding their world?
Or about the robots?
Why kill the AI?
Everyone's mad that this AI robot has dictated your future, which I still don't totally get.
Why are they mad about the robots building construction?
What are those things have in common?
One of the things about humans is they're not rational, right?
They'll just lash out at, you know, you have economic insecurity and suddenly makes you a racist.
But yeah, I don't know.
Is there a direct line?
Rehoboam, I think Rehoboam is sort of synonymous with the entire, like, post-human future.
So maybe they just, I don't know.
I don't know.
The theory that I've always liked on this has been Shoemaker being like they had a theory.
They had, like, more plans for the riot and stuff.
And then HBO was like, I don't like that.
And they just kind of truncated it.
What I really loved about this episode is that Caleb's clunky exposition buddy sounded
a lot to me like Danny because he said
what exactly was the point of the riots
the insight machine didn't tell us who we could be
but what we already were and I was just like
oh like Danny he was like what the fuck was that riot about
so like do you feel represented
Danny by yeah I do
and I still half I feel half represented
I like that they seem to nod toward
what was that all about but I also just can't
believe, I know, I know that I'm just, I'm the butt of the joke here because I'm just trying to
read too much into fucking Westworld dialogue and like, why am I doing this to myself?
But I just think that the entire, but it's also like a very big premise for the show is that
they rioted against the AI machine because the AI told them their future.
And the idea that people will be like, yeah, you know what?
My phone, my phone really knows who I am, like a total complete picture.
Like, and like if my phone thinks this will happen to me in 10 years, like, yeah.
what am I going to do about it?
It's like the least human thing I can think of.
It's like, I don't know.
There's no, I feel like the most human thing to do is to be like, deny that.
And be like, no, no one knows me.
Even if it were true, no one's going to accept that.
So I think that construction worker is, I doubt whether he's a representative member of his.
I have absolutely no theory to back up my reading of that whole sequence.
But like, except for the fact that it overlaps with Mave and I haven't thought deeply enough about it,
that whole thing felt like a simulation to me.
It's so not human. It has to be, right?
And maybe the point is that our human, this would be the greatest Westworld point of all time,
that are real human lives, unconstrained, free from the, free from the tyranny of Rojobeum and whatever else is guiding our lives,
is just as weirdly, like, recessive and, like, inherently sedative and controlled as the life we had before,
that, like, is the less.
that like, like, our nagging wives are the robooms of our life.
Like, it just seems so weird.
No, I mean, I think Lisa Joy and Jonah have talked about that.
But there are like, there are many ways in which we humans are on our fucking loops.
Like, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I think, well, if that's not, if, I mean, that could be the weird moral here.
But, like, but if that's not the deliberate argument, it really felt like, like,
the riots stuff didn't bother me because I don't think I ever really internalized
it, like, the riots were real.
side of just like the 30 seconds we saw on that one episode.
It's just like they talked about it.
Like literally his wife talked about his experience as if nothing had happened in
season three.
Like she was talking about his time in the war, you know?
I think she meant that war.
I think she didn't mean his previous war stuff.
No, I know.
I'm just saying like the conversation wouldn't have been any different, right?
And it just, the whole thing just felt like whatever happened after season three,
he just got sucked right back into a situation that really didn't change
life very much. And now he's on a loop, whether it be literal or metaphorical, and I don't know.
I just didn't spend that much time thinking about it. I want, what's, what's that like to
watch Westler like that? I want to, I want to, it's interesting to me that he says nothing much has
changed. It's true. He's back on the same job. Like he no longer has a little, like, we get the same
shot that we got in season three of him eating his lunch on the side of the building, but he doesn't
have a little robot friend this time. So there's some implication here that like the whole,
sales scrap meddling of the robots was made, you know, like his little construction robot
pal was a hero last season, right? So like that that was not the way to go. But I think that
the major change is like last season he was told by Rojobeum that he could not have a wife
and a kid, that he wasn't suited for that life. What does that mean? That's just what the AI
decided that because he was likely to kill himself, that he should not get married or have children.
But this is my question.
Again, I don't mean to be like Debbie down and think too much about Westworld.
But like what is like what does that mean?
Like if he meets, if him and a person meet and want to get married, how is the AI intervening?
Is it like the AI is like sending them a notification like, hey, you should like go around the corner right now.
And I don't understand.
Like you're never going to be set up.
You're never going to be set up on a hinge date with someone you're actually compatible with.
Right.
So right.
The closest corollary.
in the last season was him going on to those job interviews and never getting a job.
And he was never going to get the job, although he kept going on interviews.
Yeah.
Okay.
No matter how qualified he was, they were never going to hire him because like.
So, okay.
I think that I think, I think, that actually makes a lot more sense.
I think that where I still feel this way, as I said earlier, I think that my issue with
all this is that what they want is, again, this question of humans, robots, what's the difference?
And also, I don't think they ever want us to feel comfortable like, this is real.
This is not.
I think they always want us kind of wondering what's what.
Because, again, I think the point they're trying to make is that, you know, our default
position is, well, robots will never replace people.
And the show is kind of exploring, well, you're saying the robots life, you know, it's all shades
of gray.
But isn't it your life also just shades of gray?
And I would appreciate it more if it's like, actually, the robot color palette is just
as colorful as the human color palette.
And I think that it's one thing to say humans also have loops, just like robots.
another to be like, your loops can be like diverse and varied and beautiful and specific,
just like robots can be.
And instead, I just feel like the default for all this is gray and just,
there is a veneer of just, there's a very basicness to everybody's life in a way,
like a construction worker just, I don't know.
I just kind of feel like there's not much belief.
in human freedom or capacity for a show that claims to be all about that.
Well, it's funny that you talk about the shades of gray because, well, that's the general
palette for the show, even from the beginning, has been shades of gray.
Now, a little bit, that's sort of what, like, modern prestige TV looks like in 2022.
You know, there's that sort of fog hanging over everything.
But the scenes with Dolores, or sorry, Christina, were, like, noticeably more brightly colored.
They're more vivid than anything else.
in the show.
I agree.
So even to take, I mean, just to take what you're saying in face value, it's funny,
the one sequence that we've talked about, like, almost certainly not being real is the
one that's painted as, like, vividly as possible.
That's fair.
And her roommate is definitely, her roommate, there's something a little off about her,
but I think that it's fair that her roommate is, again, and is trying to be funny and
is trying.
And I do think there are a couple moments of humor, and I did want a lot of humor in this
episode.
I think Maeve just like the little smirk when she like gets to rewatch her cutting the guy's head off was very funny.
And I do think that they are trying to do a little more humor in this.
But I don't know.
Something about the Caleb things off to me.
Let's wrap up Caleb's life.
Whether or not like that, I think it's always worth asking, are we watching a simulation?
Are we watching is what we're watching not real?
And it's always worth answering yes.
It's like probably maybe not or whatever.
But it would be odd because, again, as we mentioned, if we believe that William is dead, which I do, Caleb is our last human character.
I mean, maybe his daughter is real.
And if his wife is real, they're human characters.
But like of the layover characters from previous season, Caleb is our last human that we're clinging to here.
So it is important for them that the bangs work and the kid work and the wife work and they're not working for Danny and they're working for me and that is all fine.
Um, I think we, I mean, like, just to recap, like, you know, he's trying to be a good dad.
This kid, Frankie, we meet her.
She's like shooting cans.
It reminds me a lot of like Dolores learning on his shoot in season one and stuff like that.
He's reading a great book, my father's dragon to his kid.
A great book.
If you are looking for a book to read your kid, that's a good one.
And then he and his wife have this argument where she says, it's not that you fear war, you miss it.
which I think is an interesting thing to explore with people who have, like, are you going to be content, Caleb, to lay power lines and have this home life when, like, how are they going to keep them down the farm after they fought in a revolution?
You know, I think that's at least a good question to ask of any sort of veteran storyline.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think that whatever.
I mean, it got into it.
It got about as deep as you need to get really quickly.
But whether that, you know, I mean, it's, I don't know, again, my reading of it was that this, that he was sort of in some sort of other loop. And maybe that's the, maybe that loop is reality. But, but the, but, and I, not to belabor the point, but it is sort of like, if this is, if this is present tense, if this is what the everyday life is like for real human beings seven years after the end of episode three. Um, I don't know. It just seems like, like, he was the human savior.
of season three.
Like the step back to regular life
is definitely going to be a little,
is definitely going to be,
you know,
is going to probably seem a little bit
like a step back
or life's a little bit too slowed down.
But it's just,
isn't it weird that this is the,
I mean.
Well,
I want to hop to me real quick
because I think that there's something
that happens there
that might enforce this idea
that that's not real.
We'll see if we believe that.
But it does remind me,
this whole like,
how do you go back to normal life?
does remind me of some of the themes of like with like William and Logan like once you've
been in the park how do you go back to your life in the real world working at Delos working at
Delos marrying the boss's daughter once you've like fought the confederados and like had sex
with Dolores how do you go back um so I think I think that's something that's that's worth
exploring day is there anything else you want to talk about in terms of Kayla before we move on to
Maeve no I I liked Maeve's storyline I like that she's just like that
retired hitman in a cabin
like in the woods
like I'm retired
like I don't know
I felt like
didn't Nick Cage
just did something like that
like truffle pig
or like I don't know
it just felt like
there's like a thousand movies
and I was like
I could get with this Maeve
this is fun
she reaches out
in a way
like we
Maeve has these like
godlike powers
and whether
I don't know
if she's using
the radio to help
or whatever
to me just felt
like someone
reaching out into the force
to like sense
someone
and she was having
this like flashback
of all the traumatic
losses
experienced. And one of those was her and Caleb breaking into some sort of facility looked like
it was in Spain, but I couldn't say for sure, taking down some sort of like backup Rahobam,
like another AI, the thing exploding, and Caleb getting what looked to me like a fatal
abdomen wound. Now again, I'm coming off Obi-1 Canobeeby where like no one dies from abdomen
wounds. So maybe like that's not what I, but like that looked like something a human couldn't
survive. So did that already happen? And are we watching a host version of Caleb in, in, uh,
this is a problem with, I mean, just science fiction movies in general that like the medical,
like the ability to heal has for some reason really outpaces the ability to like,
to alleviate pain. You know, it's like if getting shot in the stomach is never going to kill you,
shouldn't you just figure out a way that you, you're not worried about getting shot in the stomach or
something. Anyway, but yeah, I don't know what the mean, I don't understand, I don't know what to make of
the potential that he's not a human. If what we're seeing is real, but he's a, but he is a host or
something like that, it does seem like, like, what, what's the point? I don't mean that in
a negative way. I just be like, what are we getting at there? Right. What do you think, Danny?
I think David took the words out of my mouth twice with the sci-fi medical thing and just, I mean,
I just, I don't know what the, just not knowing what kills people in a show where if you die, it doesn't matter.
It's like a layer on a layer.
But I agree.
Like, I don't know what the end game is.
I think that there's, I'm sure there's an end game for Christina and Dolores, whatever, we're calling her with, that's going to go somewhere.
And I think that that could be a good storyline.
Caleb, not being a person, I don't know how that helps.
I think it would explain why I think that there's just this grayness to his entire existence.
but I don't understand how it would help advance the story.
I don't know why eliminating humans is going to make us more invested in anything.
Because we're supposed to think of the AI, the host as valuable and lives worth investing in as humans.
Isn't that the whole thing about Dolores?
But Dolores is gone.
I don't disagree with you at all.
But like we're supposed to take-
But then Maeve, let's say.
Isn't Mayve's life supposed to be as important as a human's life?
I don't know how you can make, and again, I'd say this with the most love possible for the show.
I don't know how you can make the case with the straight face that we should appreciate host lives as much as or more so that we appreciate humans when you kill off your, you're the most important host on the show and then bring her back under a different character 15 minutes later.
Right?
It's like.
This is an excellent point.
This is my, yeah, I agree.
There's no, there's no opportunity to reminisce about how much we love Dolores.
We have her.
She's the same thing.
She has a different color of hair,
and she's like more like season one Dolores.
But they're pretending.
I mean, pretending.
They're putting it forward to something different.
I mean, well, and what I would agree with is like that's the ongoing argument in like
literature and philosophy and religion and all this sort of stuff like that is like the thing
that makes life precious is that it's finite.
And so if you unlock immortality, whether it's humans uploading their consciousness to robots
or robots in the first place being immortal, then can that life have as much
value as something that can be snuffed out.
This is not as theoretical of a conversation anymore.
I know this is an insane level of sci-fi like do robots deserve consciousness,
blah, blah, blah.
Did you guys see this story?
This is in the Washington Post that a Google engineer was talking because they can
do it a Google algorithm.
And the algorithm was having a conversation with the Google engineer arguing that the
algorithm had consciousness.
And the conversation was so Westworld in that the conversation was, you know, because the AI basically
vacuums a trillion words off the internet and tries to mimic human language in text.
And the argument was, are you conscious or are you just really good at pretending to be conscious?
But it's pretty insane that there's a Google right now, as we're recording this, in June of 2022,
there is a Google AI that's arguing to people who work at Google that I have personhood rights and what is the
difference between you and me. Now, I also kind of want to say, I don't think Dolores is right.
I don't think that people need to just be like, yeah, let's live in harmony at the robots.
Justice for people who don't want AI to be sentient.
I mean, I don't want AI to be sensitive. Like, the idea that Alexa is going to start speaking
with, like, the voice of your dead loved ones is terrifying to me. Have we, have we never actually
paid attention during a Terminator movie? Like, all that sort of stuff. That's why I kind of
hope, that's why I hope Williams is human, because if he's a host, just operating as like a
Dolores, I'd be more, I'd rather William just be like, fuck this, we're going to kill the hosts.
That's more interesting to me.
That being said, the premise of the show, like the show's philosophy is host deserve host rights, robot rights.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's the whole, that's a whole idea that Ford came around to in season one is that his whole life, he's like, nope, my buddy Arnold was wrong.
I'm right.
This is just bits of, you know, silicon and whatever.
And then he's like, I was wrong.
We bootstrapped consciousness.
They have consciousness.
They deserve rights.
That's the premise of the show.
Whether or not that's what I want my real life, that's the premise of like the story that
they're telling us.
That being said, I agree with you.
I really want Caleb to be a human.
I would prefer if William were still a human.
I like watching the human characters on the show.
So it's not that I disagree with you that like we should have some human characters on this
show that's about the human like host.
struggle. But I just think we need, you know, and in season one, Ford said that they had
basically cured all illnesses, like that basically Williams Company had figured out how like you
never need to have an injury again or like cancer's been cured and like all this sort of stuff.
Like basically everything is cured except mortality. And I don't even know what you die from
any more old age. Who knows? Whatever. So it's possible that Caleb and this random stranded beach
somewhere that May just like ran him to a hospital and he got like like you know fixed right up
but it's just a weird little flash that I think we should just keep in mind right is Caleb dead
or is he not anyway so yeah so this this host from season two shows up Dolores chops off his head
looks in the pearl finds out that William at least somehow involved in this host coming to try to
find her as if we had any doubts and she shows up just in time to save Frankie a
as Danny pointed out, a very calm Frankie from season one host.
And then she and Caleb right off.
And he's like, bye to his family without making sure they're actually safe.
Is that everything that happened with Mave and Caleb?
Is there anything else we want to talk about with them?
No, I think that's good.
All right.
To go back to Christina, is there anything we want to talk about Christina that we haven't already talked about?
She's on her little loop.
She's painting like Dolores did.
She's having these like mirror reverie moments like Dolores did in season one.
She's saying things that sometimes Dolores would say, like, lately I feel, like, these phrases.
So, like, if she isn't Dolores, there's some Doloresness that has been fed into whatever it is we're watching here.
Is there anything else we want to say about this sequence, about Christina?
No, I mean, I think, you know, the big questions are just like hanging out there, right?
I mean, to what degree, what does the authorship mean?
What is the dudes saying, like, why are you doing this to us?
He seemed to be coming from a lot of different, well, his exact angle was a little bit interesting, right?
It wasn't exactly what it seemed like it was going to be from the start.
And then not a creepy stalker and certainly not the, the, whatever the version of that is for someone who's figured out who she is.
He's not.
And I think putting him, like they, you know, she.
found the maze on her porch, but it did sort of seem like that was a separate, just a total
coincidence compared to whatever his motive is, right? So, I mean, I don't, the saved, he didn't
seem to be part of whatever saved Dolores movement as he talked about before. And then, you know,
but going to that, you know, Teddy is the, is the most interesting thing to talk about, I guess, right?
Danny, how did you feel about seeing Marsden again? I was happy he's back. I mean, do you guys,
I think it's good that he's back for the show. I think that he's a really good actor that just
they kind of just let him loose on this season.
I would love for him to kind of be back in full force.
Do you want to go to,
I feel like if we are accepting this,
not accepting,
but in a world where if Dolores is also Rahobo
or whatever,
Dolores has run in a simulation,
but also she's in charge of it inadvertently,
I almost wonder,
I think the question says,
is Teddy actually there?
Or is Teddy like a manifestation
of like her consciousness?
Like this is also a Reddit theory.
I think it was really good
on that same thread I was talking about earlier.
Basically, really, it's kind of like if you've seen inception in a dream, there's like, basically,
your mind can, like, protect you in a dream, but it kind of had that vibe of whatever Dolores or
Christina, sorry, needed him.
He just showed up somewhat out of nowhere.
And I think that kind of made me think that it's like her idea of Teddy is now alive,
which I actually like that a lot.
I think that's really cool.
I do too.
And I think, I mean, like, so there's a theory that she's actually in the sublime because that's
where we last saw Teddy.
So that we're actually Teddy, what we're looking at is robot heaven.
That's where we are.
Well, I hope that robot heaven, you don't get stalked by men.
That would be my preference as well.
Yeah, I don't, again, I'm not going to go to the science of this whole thing, because I don't claim to understand any of it.
But yeah, it would make a certain, I mean, I had to see people think that somehow her death or whatever, she was uploaded, her consciousness was uploaded into whatever.
And that's why she ends up in the Valley Beyond.
That's why Teddy's there.
There's also, I guess, you could make, you know, you could extrapolate.
late that, you know, Charlotte Hale, whatever, the Halloris, like, uploads, found some way to
upload her to the Valley Beyond to try to get her back out and try to figure out the way into
all that stuff. That would be why Teddy is there. I mean, if there's a save Charlotte, I mean,
yeah, sorry, if there's a saved Dolores movement, you can kind of write Teddy into whatever
reality and whatever way you wanted to. I don't know that we have to, like, assume that that
line is straight, or it's not wouldn't be straight, but that that line is discernible now.
Totally. Like I don't think just because Teddy is there that means we're in the sublime, I'm just saying it's an option on the table, right?
But I do, I prefer what Danny is talking about, which is the idea of her, her really leaning into that Dolores Abernathy, that like farm girl vibe from season one of like, I just want a romance. Like that's what I want. And then Teddy literally walks out of the shadows. Like when we're talking about someone who can write reality around her, this idea that Teddy would just show up when.
she needs him or when she's thinking of love.
I'm only going to, I only have one problem with that and it's not, it's not, it's not,
it doesn't disqualify it.
But it's, that's exactly what happened with Mave and, and Caleb's kid, right?
Does she appear at the exact right moment and the exact right time?
And for those two things to both happen in the same episode and for only one to have a
deeper meeting seems a little bit off.
But maybe, maybe that's exactly why they did it.
What do you make of this, like the, the Olympiad Entertainment logo looks like a,
doubled version, a mirror world sort of version of the Delos logo.
Oh, does it now?
Yeah.
I put it in the notes if you want to look at it.
But like...
Oh, so it's kind of like the Olympiad version.
Oh, yeah, it looks like the Delos version.
Yeah, with a mirror.
Okay.
Wow.
Yeah, it looks exactly the same.
But doubled over.
So, I don't know what that means to us.
Well, that's definitely on purpose.
Mirror worlds.
Mirror worlds.
And like mirror worlds, to go back to your Roe-Bomb theory, that's
what they were talking about when they talked about Rojobein last season,
it was like created a mirror world, essentially,
where it's running through all these options of the future.
Well, that feels like what we're looking at, right?
You know, when you get a hair,
you ever try to look in a mirror, like, see the back of your head,
but you see both mirrors, and it's like, you're in a house of mirrors.
And it's kind of what Dolores.
Like, I think that is, if Dolores were in Rojobein, whatever,
that's kind of what it is, like a mirror of a mirror of a mirror,
and then you just keep seeing reflections.
The only other, the, on the wake up,
Christina wake up Dolores front.
Maya says this thing about reminding her about her date.
She says, you didn't forget you repressed, which feels very much to me like a, if this is
Dolores, Lisa Joy is lying to our faces or whatever, which is probably what's true,
that she has like repressed her memories, but they're seeping in.
So when you see those park bros like run past her, that to me feels like a sort of repressed
but seeping out version of a Dolores memory.
Do you know what I mean?
Like all of these little echoes of previous Doloresdom
feels like she's repressing who she really is.
And that happened in season one too, right?
I love that answer so much, by the way.
I think that makes me so much.
Because it's like the thing with the park bros,
when I watched it the first time,
I thought that maybe we were supposed to think
that those were just some guys talking about Westworld or something.
Like it just happened that she happened to pass on the street.
But then on rewatch, it seemed pretty clear
that we were supposed to take,
that we're inside a simulation,
that we're inside a park
or that something like that's going on.
And so what you say feels a lot more true to the show,
that, you know,
because whatever happened is one degree off minimum from the truth.
I think it's supposed to be like a red herring,
like a surface read is we're in a park,
but like that there's going to be one layer below that,
as you say, one degree off.
Danny, any thoughts or feelings?
I think overall I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt on the whole.
I want to see where everything
Christina goes. And I want to see everything with like New York. I guess it's not New York.
Wherever the hell it is, I just want to see where it goes. I think it's supposed to be future
Manhattan, whatever, or a simulation of future Manhattan. Sure. Maybe the last thing I want to say in
sort of like a snooty artie way is to talk about this thing that Maya says when she and
Dolaura or Christina are walking to the date. And she like paraphrases Picasso, right?
She says, look around us. Nobody wants easy or natural. Art is alive. It tells the truth. The truth is
you need to get late. That's what Maya says. What Picasso said was, we all know that art is not
truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.
So this idea, and this is a constant idea that's been banging around Westworld, like,
this idea that Ford would say, you come to the park to really confront who you are. You go into
this fantasy world, and inside this fantasy, you're going to find out the true nature of yourself.
And William found out that he was a shitty son of a bitch.
thought he was a white hat and then he goes in the park and he finds out there's this darkness
inside of him. And so what truth is this lie, this simulated world, whatever this is that
we are in for Christina, what truth is it trying to bring out? Is it where the key is? Is it something
true about Dolores or Christina or whatever it is? But I think that's something that they're wanting to,
obviously, if they're bothering to, you know, port Picasso into this, that's something that they're
trying to do here, which I think. I don't know. Could be interesting or could be just
same as it ever was. All right, we're going to wrap up pretty quickly. I just want to shout out
Ramin Javadi is back doing beautiful covers of pop songs. He's got video games by Lana Delray,
video games being, of course, a real supporter of some of the things that Danny's talking about,
are we in a video game, are these NPCs? What are we talking about? Is there anything else in
Theory Corner that we want to make sure? Oh, I want to talk about this. What is the song without
sound really quickly, right? This homeless guy when he's ranting
about the tower, he says, can you hear it, the song without sound? What does that mean? I don't know,
but I'm interested. And then weirdly, when Dolores gets up to leave her date to go to the bathroom,
her date, Henry, I think his name is, he starts humming. And like, the captions bothered to say
like Henry Humbs. And I don't know what it is, but I just want to flag it because it's very
bizarre and unsettling. Song without sound sounds very cool. I like that concept. That's good. What is
the song without sound.
Oh, God.
Do we care at all that
Charlotte Hale and Bernard
were not in this episode and Stubbs?
No, I think the next episode, what I want to see
is I want, kind of like
the season three, the first episode
Mave wasn't in at all, and then the second
episode was like All Mave. And I
kind of want just 60 minutes
of just what has Bernard been up to?
And my guess
is that the same way,
like, again, we've established that like the
time moves faster in these simulations or
whatever. And so it's been seven, eight years, whatever, since he's been sitting there.
I kind of just want to see what Bernard's been up to for 60 years in like 60 minutes. That's what I
would like to see. I mean, I don't mind an eight episode, you know, series that they keep, you know,
they separate out for different, the characters out in different episodes. I would have liked to
see, I mean, maybe them all in the first episode just to have them there. But if they're making
choices to make the storytelling a little bit more linear or a little bit more deliberate, that's
fine by me, whatever they want to do. And also, without spoiling anything,
like I work in the art department.
So I've seen like the teaser images
from every future episode that they've posted.
So I have a pretty good idea at least
of the like the shape of the next,
or the cast of the next couple ones,
not the shape at all.
But yeah, you know,
it would have been good to catch up
with old friends there.
But I do feel like I have like a better,
well, I guess relationship with the characters
that we saw in this episode
than I would have if we'd been skipping around a lot more.
I guess if Bernard is on the same timeline
that we're on and I would hope so.
Like I hope that what I hope is this.
that the Charlotte thing is our mystery
and that everyone else is on the same timeline.
That would make me very happy.
Like, I'm fine with not knowing
what the hell is going on with Charlotte
if they're not fucking with us
on every single possible timeline.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, let's just keep it like relatively simple Westworld,
but like give us a mystery to hold on to.
So if Bernard is on the Maeve Caleb timeline,
that answers our question for the preview episode,
which is how long does it take for that much dust
to accumulate on Bernard?
And perhaps it is, seven years.
Stubbs has been doing zero dusting seven years.
That's the amount of dust we had there.
Seven years is a long time.
I mean, I don't think I've ever not dusted for seven years, maybe seven months, but definitely not seven years.
All right, anything else we want to talk about or do we want to litigate emails and then head for the road?
The only thing that I want to mention since now, are we in spoiler territory here?
We're in the look ahead section.
If you don't like looking at next time ons or whatever, like I'm assuming right, you're talking about like a
next time on thing? Okay. We're not spoiling anything. We haven't like seen anything except for what
HBO has put out, which is the next time on. So take it away, David Schumacher. No, I mean, I think that
I haven't poured over any of it, but I thought, think that the answer to the question about the man
in black or about William is pretty straightforward, right? We saw him, you know, get killed or whatever
last season. And then it seems like in several times throughout the various trailers, we've seen
a William in like a black body suit hung up, you know, like the logo of Westworld. And, and, and, and also
him like speaking or at least encountering another version of himself. I mean, my assumption,
and this is very basic and will probably turn out to be the opposite of truth, is that real
William is in some sort of cryogenic prison, you know, where like only his head survives or
something like that and that Hale has or somebody has all these other Williams running around.
Oh my God, I'd be obsessed with like if she slit his throat and then just like cut off the entire
head and it's just the head. And that's why he's in that weird black body suit. That hadn't occurred to me.
I love that idea. Danny, what do you think?
I would, that would be cool with me.
I just, the idea that, again, maybe I'm thick in the head, don't cut it off.
But I just feel like the idea that the most famous actor of the show was killed after the credits.
I just, I feel like it probably didn't happen.
I don't care what I saw.
Should her email be Ed Harris's bodysuit at gmail.com?
Let me check to see if that's available.
I'm going to say Ed Harris' bodysuit.
Yeah.
It's certainly going to be one of the most important parts of the show moving forward.
But yeah, I mean, there's, listen, a lot of the story.
that's out there if future episode seems to encompass more than just this season.
I mean, more than just the next episode.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's deliberate both to give us a big range, but also to leave us a little bit
perplex about what the next episode's going to be.
I feel like the next episode's always a counterpunch.
It's always like jab hook and then like whatever you think about this, you almost have
to pause and then they'll come back to its season, like episode three.
That's my experience with this show.
Okay, Ed Harris' bodysuit is available.
Let's do it.
Is that we're going to be your email for the show?
Ed Harris Body Suit is.
at gmail.com.
Let's do it.
Do you like you,
I'm sorry I messed up
the email for last time.
Oh,
this will be a new.
Ed Harris,
bodysuit at gmail.com.
Okay.
If you have questions, comments,
concerns, theories,
screen caps,
whatever.
I love,
my appetite for Westworld theory
is bottomless.
Cannot wait to read
what everyone puts in.
So Ed Harris,
2Rs and Harris,
bodysuit
at gmail.
com.
Amazing.
My only,
I guess,
looking,
forward, though, I mean, looking at the future episodes, I do think that the thing about not
seeing characters in the show is, well, I mean, I guess the question that it raises, right,
is that like, what if next episode is basically just Charlotte and Real William, right? Or whatever
the William's story is. What if that's all we get? And then what if, you know, we don't see
Bernard and Stubbs until episode three with any significance or anything like that? I mean, then
we've kind of dealt with this. We had definitely dealt with this in seasons two and three. Suddenly you're
halfway through the season and you haven't really touched base with your main character again yet or
whatever.
You know, I mean, there's, I mean, which makes me, I think we talked about this a lot last year,
I mean, last season, but at some point, the easiest explanation for a lot of this stuff
is going to have to be the explanation, or at least it's going to have to be a hand wave
to a slightly more complicated explanation.
Is that true?
Because, like, I felt like season two really disabuse me of that in terms of like,
Dolores was in Charlotte's body half the time.
This is not a conventional show.
You were watching a different timeline and like all, I don't know.
What do you think, Danny?
I think Shoemaker just hit it that it's not a conventional show and that I just keep coming back to whatever you want to call.
I think, you know, the Nolan way of making movies like prestige.
It's kind of like, you know, it's a trick.
And at the end of the day, are you impressed at the end by the magic trick?
It's like, are you impressed by the destination?
I just wonder if they are foregoing making sure people enjoy the journey of like, did you like watching this magic trick?
And that's nothing to say of whether you even land the plane.
I think that that's how some people feel is that not only did I not enjoy watching the trick,
but you didn't actually impress me at the end.
I think, one, if it's just all a simulation, I don't think that will be very impressive.
So that's why I am interested to see where they're going
Because I mean, if you just wanted to watch something where everything is simulation
The Matrix came out 20 years ago
So I'm kind of interested in how they're advancing on that
For me, I completely agree
You need to enjoy the journey.
It's not just the destination.
It can't be twist dependent, right?
They had a really good twist in season one.
Like everyone should give it off, like give it to them.
I'm like, season one twist, I thought was really good.
But we were having a great time leading up to the twist.
We didn't need the twist to have a great time.
with Westworld season one, right?
Westworld season two, we were so confused and, like, at sea and emotionally disconnected
for, I don't want to speak to everyone, but like, for the most part.
And then the twist comes and you're like, okay, that was tricky, but you work so hard to
hide the ball that I had a really shitty time getting to the twist here.
And I think they've learned some lessons for that.
It feels, I mean, like, David said this in a slack earlier, but, like, I feel like
they're not trying so hard to confuse us.
season. Like, I feel like we're probably watching three storylines on one timeline. And then
something where's going on with Evan Rachel Wood. And we'll find out what it is.
And we're going to have fun guessing what it is and talking about songs without sounds and what the
tower is and all that other stuff. Um, so if you have any thoughts or feelings about that,
please email us at Harris Bodysuit at gmail.com. My new favorite email I've ever owned.
Uh, anything else before we go.
No, I think we should wrap it up.
I can't wait for Temperance World whenever that pops up.
It certainly seems to have added gravity every time I see it again.
And, you know, it is a super cool visual.
Yeah, man, I'm excited.
I can't wait to see where we go from here.
All right.
So that does it for the Prestiheed TV Westworld podcast for season for episode one.
We'll be back next week.
More Westworld.
This episode was.
produced by the great Carlos Chirovoga. We'll see you next time. Bye. See you later, guys.
