The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Westworld' Season 4, Episode 3 Recap

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

Joanna, David, and Danny break down 'Westworld' Season 4, Episode 3, "Années Folles." First, they briefly recap everything that happened in the episode (2:27) before analyzing each story line— starting with Maeve and Caleb's visit to a new park (17:28). Later, they discuss some theories about what is actually going on with Bernard's story (57:52). If you have any questions or thoughts about 'Westworld,' you can email Joanna, David, and Danny at [e-mail] Hosts: Joanna Robinson, David Shoemaker, and Danny Heifetz Associate Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Are you tuning in to the Challenge USA on CBS? Well, tune in to me, Tyson Apostle, as I break down each and every episode with my co-host, Amelia Weddemeier. I'm also a contestant on the show, which gives you all the insider scoop. Amelia, how stoked are you to do this? Tyson, I'm freaking excited. I cannot wait to sit my butt down every single week to watch the show, then come here and recap it with you on the Ringer Reality TV podcast. Hello, and welcome back into the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson and joining me now that they've definitely not gotten gooped. Right guys? It's Danny Hafeus and David Shoemaker. Hi. How are you? Doing great. How are you? I'm doing great. Danny, are you gooped or not? Well, yeah, my brain is just black goo,

but I think it's been that way for a long time. Okay. You're like one of the O.G. Black G. Black goop brain people. Yes. Love that about you. I'm just sitting here covered in dust, but I'm not going to tell you how long because that would be a spoiler. Would it be, according to the HBO Twitter feed? Okay, we are here to talk about the latest episode of Westworld. We are in season four, episode three of Westworld. I think I pictured the French last time.

I'm going to do it again. I think it's Anna Ful, written by Kevin Lau and Susan Rubel and directed by Hanel M. Culpepper. Before we get into our discussion of everything, Shoemaker is going to give you a helpful recap of what happened in this episode. And before he even does that, I just want to say that if you're in this feed and you like the show Better Call Saul, I will like to tell you that Ben Lindberg and I will be back recapping the back half better call Saul starting this week. So Presti-CTV podcast feed is about to become Westworld and Saul every week in this feed. Plus who knows what else is going to be in this feed.

So it's a fantastic, like are you not already subscribed to this feed? Why not? So go ahead, check that out. Also, spoiler reminder, I guess, everything up through season four, episode three of Westworld. That's it. We haven't seen anything beyond that. We're not talking about anything beyond that. We may or may not talk about something that HBO tweeted out.

I will let you know if we're going to do that. That being said, Davis Shoemaker, what happened in this episode of Westworld? Well, Mave and Caleb go in an adventure and temperance world, aka the golden age, aka the Rory 20s, where they encounter a number of Sweetwater characters, scenarios from earlier seasons of the show only a little bit different. After Hector's safe heist in the Butterfly Club goes exactly the way it always does, Mave and Caleb explore the underground of this new park and discover that the Westworld massacre has become a new role-playing attraction.

Of course, very dark. They also discover more about the fly parasite plot and how it's connected to sound, I guess. It all ends in Caleb being infected. Meanwhile, somewhere else, Caleb's wife and daughter run off into the night after escaping abduction. And a totally unrelated plot, sure. Stubbs and Bernard are somewhere in the future and encounter a mysterious young woman outside a post-apocalyptic diner. Bernard has been to robot heaven, seen all versions of the future, and narrowed in on one version that leads to success. Subs and Bernard have brought a shovel,

and they want to join this team of mysterious human survivors in order to find a weapon buried somewhere in the desert. All right. I'm a little bit under the weather today. Got a little bit of the brain fog. Did I miss anything? Did I get anything wrong? Danny? I think you left out Well, no, you mentioned the tuna melt I'm glad because that was the best part of the whole episode Just Stubbs going to town in that thing Well, Bernard just does just as well-rehearsed chain fight

Listen, if there's one great thing about Westrook Well, if there's one of many great things about Westbrook It's that as highbrow, as difficult, As impenetrable as some of the ideas can be at times When they embrace a trope, a well-worn trope, They are happy to show you how worn out the knees of the pants are I mean, it's just a they go all in, and that's a great example. Yeah, I mean, I think you crushed it.

I think you got everything that is, that truly matters and all of that. It's a fairly simple, like, it feels pretty stripped down compared to, like, some of the jumping back and forth between various plot lines. We essentially have two major plot lines with a little bit of, like, Frankie and her mom on the side, right? Like, that's kind of where we are. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how much of the Frankie and mom we see. moving forward because it felt a little bit like a bow on that, but I guess they obviously

have a long way to go with that too. Or maybe we just never see them again. I don't know. You know, maybe they just ran away and they actually hide. So maybe that's just over. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, I told you before we started recording that I had a lot of like, what's the plan written like 10, that phrase written like five times in my notes. Do you want to tell us what you think the plan is? I know. We'll get around to it. I'll tell you what plan I don't get. Well, we mean plan? Like end game or just what everyone's mission is? No, no. That was just my shorthand for what's going on here. But I'm not sure. I don't know what Caleb's wife's plan was. I don't know if I agree with the plan of let the bad guy get all the way to the closet

with my daughter in it before I make my move. Wasn't she fumbling with a safe combo? Like, wasn't she like frantically trying to get the gun out of the safe? Yeah, but then she was gone, like hiding, preparing. I don't know. Maybe that was the second she could, for the quickest second she could get there. Who knows? But yeah, I really, I liked that old. I liked that, that, that, that. that whole thing with the, you know, her finding the blood on the stuffed animal and everything. That was a fun little, little thriller.

Yeah. Danny, what were you going to say? Well, what I was going to say was stupid, which is I wanted to nitpick, go to your best hiding spot and she just goes to the closet. I feel like the closet is the first thing you would open

if you're going to look for someone who's hiding. Having said that, I don't want a nitpick. I thought this was an awesome episode of television. I'm thrilled. I feel like Westworld has its mojo back. It's, the show is simpler,

but it's spookier, and I love it. And we're back in the park, which is all I ever wanted. So thrilled to be here. Yeah, I thought this was a great episode. I thought this was even stronger than last week's episode. We have no Christina, so no major what the actual hell is going on plot this episode. But I didn't miss that, you know, in this episode of television.

Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, listen, I, the lack of Christina makes me start. doing the math in my head. The whole thing about the series like Westworld, especially at the link that it runs, I've said this before, is you constantly are like moving the chess pieces around, even when they're off screen, right?

Because you're like, how far do we have, can we possibly get in the amount of time that we're given? And like I said before, I've enjoyed the Christina stuff much more than I was enjoying Dolores stuff last season, but did not miss her this week.

This was a very, very tight episode, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Danny, anything else you want to say about your enjoyment? Well, I mean, I like the whole thing. I love that Bermanard is just the doctor doing the doctor strange thing of just sitting there and going through the 14 million scenarios or whatever. But I think that they pulled it off.

I mean, I was very critical of the show earlier this year. And I mean, a lot through season three and even the first episode I didn't really like. But I think that where it's at now, the things I wanted. I wanted a simpler plot. I wanted the actors to be acting more. And I also wanted to be funnier. I feel like I've gotten everything I wanted, honestly. I think you did too.

it's first of all the show is funnier i think that i love when stubbs turns to bernard and says you weren't going to tell me about the death lasers i like that it's not the funniest line i've ever heard but i like them having personality i just bernard there's a way to do the whole i've seen every future thing in a way that's kind of annoying i mean i think game of thrones just that didn't work in game of thrones with like brand i think that this is working with bernard and then i thought the caleb mayve thing was awesome honestly i would like nine out of ten that whole plot line like from go into the world and going down and going further, the flies. I mean, Aaron Paul, the way Aaron Paul was acting as Caleb, like, that's the, when I said the other day, like, I, I, I just wish there was,

the humans were more human. It's exactly what I'm talking about. I thought that was the best acting other than, like, Anthony Hopkins. I thought that Aaron Paul screaming for his daughter through that case was, like, some of the best acting in the entire series. Well, they finally let him go full Pinkman. Like, this, that, like, like, Aaron Paul screaming and crying is the best thing that Aaron Paul does and he does it really well. So can I tell you something? During that scene, the flies, the whole scene where they're going through the flies and they're finding them and then it culminates in him like screaming for his daughter, my Apple Watch thought that I was exercise. It asked me, are you on a run?

Because my heart rate was up. Wow. I love that. Yeah. And I think the dynamics, like the Stubbs and Bernard buddy cop stuff is really good. But the, I think also crucially, the Maven Caleb stuff is really good. Like, I like Evan Rachel Wood a lot, and I like Aaron Paul a lot, but they had like no chemistry. It doesn't even need to be sexual chemistry, though there was a moment in the elevator in this episode where I was like, Maven Caleb, is that a thing at all? But there just needs to be chemistry and liveliness between two characters. And Maven Caleb have it in a way that Dolores and Caleb did not last season at all.

So again, the like full Caleb rehab, Aaron Powell all rehab project of the season is working. smashingly, I think. Yeah, and the thing with his daughter, this is jumping ahead, but I will just say that, like, that in terms of comparing the show to previous seasons, there were other times, there have been times where someone's reaction,

even if the acting was good, seemed like it was really dependent on the reading of what was happening as to whether or not it made sense. I don't know. I can't even think of a good example, but it's like, like, I couldn't even tell if someone was being a good actor

because I didn't know what was happening. the reveal hadn't happened yet and really like their reaction should have been dependent on the knowledge that I didn't have. But this is just a situation like whatever is going on with Frankie whatever is going,

whatever we saw, whatever, his human reaction made sense, right? He saw, I mean, I don't care if a robot when my kids walked in and you were like,

that is 100% a robot. I would still be losing my mind if something bad happened to him, right? So like, it was meaningful. Let me do really quick, Inseverable English Major Corner.

Yes, my favorite corner. Talk about the subtitle of this episode that was on the HBO website was you can never go back again, but if you do bring a shovel, which I think is two literary references jammed together and two literary references that kind of define the range of Westworld. One, I think, what I believe is a reference to the Thomas Wolf novel, you can't go home again, which is also a Chet Baker album. It's like a phrase that people use, obviously, which means sort of like, when you go back home, it will be different than it was when you left. And so you just like,

you can't return to who you were and what exactly that place was when you left it, which I think has a double meaning of this episode, one for Mave going back to like the butterfly club, and then also Bernard returning to a reality where a lot of time has passed and it's not the same, you know? So you can't recapture lightning in a bottle. You can't go home again.

But if you do bring a shovel, is obviously a reference to like, you know, Bernard telling Stubbs to grab the shovel. I feel like that's a Douglas Adams reference. Like, bring your towel, bring your shovel. Because the, the roads and diner that they go to in this episode, maybe think of the restaurant at the end of the universe, like from Douglas Adams. So like, that's like, that's like sci-fi gobbledy gook. And I mean that in a compliment because I love Douglas Adams. And like high literary Thomas Wolf stuff jammed together in one sentence, which is like, well, well, you know, Westworld in a, like, in a nutshell for me.

If I can sidle into your corner for a second there, it's been a long time since I read Thomas Wolf, but there is a very Thomas Wolfian sort of feel to some of the writing that goes on on the show. If I remember correctly, Wolf's style was such that, like, you know, when he died, they just found papers scattered all over the floor and were able to compose a novel from it. You know, it's just like scraps of paper in any order

is like passably Thomas Wolf. And also that book is about, it's a book about a writer who has an incredibly unhappy audience, which is like the town that he's writing about. So I'm sure there's some real self-reflection going on there. Yeah, and it's also about capitalism and fascism. It's got a lot of stuff going on. And the end of the Roaring 20s and, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on.

Yeah, and yeah, and the Roaring 20s element of it, I think, is really important. But I also want to talk about this email we got from Liz, which just, I think, really focuses in on some of the like WIFLA concepts. WIFLY, by the way, is my favorite phrase of the entire series. Thank you so much Danny for that. But some of the Yfly questions that Danny had last week, I think Liz's email, which I sent to you guys, I think really has a compelling argument about this. So I'm going to read some choice snippets from this email from Liz.

She says, my theory on replacement, like why would you replace someone fully with a host like they did with the vice president versus a Yfly, which is what they did with the that like DOJ guy, right, who we see in this episode blow his brains out, is essentially Y Fly is the workaround option for when Hale doesn't have enough data on you to replace you, but still finds you useful in the short term. So far, we've seen three people definitively be replaced, the man in black, the senator, the senator's wife, and the vice president. Presumably these people are all rich enough to have visited the original Westworld up until seven years ago when it was closed. Thus, Dulles would have enough data on them to replace them.

the people we see we see give the fly treatment are socioeconomically of a lower class than the replaced. We see a cartel member in one episode get the fly treatment, but when he's talking to the man in black, they mention that the cartels are new to this part of the country and swooped in and made their cash recently. Thus, this cartel honcho, who isn't even the leader, would presumably have never been able to afford a visit to Westworld. So there, I like that idea that, like, you know, when we saw in previous seasons, the vast library of data on people, that those people are easily replaced, but otherwise it's a fly lobotomy for you.

What do you think, Danny? I think that makes a ton of sense. I think we learned a lot about the flies. I think we should agree on some baseline points. So in this episode, we basically confirmed, so the drone host have the maggots that look like, and I think they got the black goo there, and the flies seem to go into the black goo,

and it infects the flies. And then they have the flies going to people and they crawl in their ear or whatever, horrifying things I don't want to think about. And then it seemed like they said,

they said the word parasite. And it seems like the flies get into your brain and take over the way I put it, like you have the driver's seat of your brain and your conscious mind's like the passenger seat of your brain.

That was kind of season two stuff. And it seems like the flies hijack the driver's seat of your brain. And then they use, they're using that low, frequency sound from that thing that looks like the tower, and they're sending out sounds to control you to do the blocks or whatever, and then there's people like picking up the guns and shoot themselves in the head. But those people are also anguished in a way. It's like they're aware they're doing it,

but they don't want to. So I guess, Joe, can we agree on all of that? Yes. I feel like we should probably not, in classic Westworld fashion, not spend too much of our brain power trying to figure out the like maggot fly goop life cycle situation. I could not agree more. Just like roll with the idea that a fly enters your ear or some other orifice goes inside your brain. And then for some reason, you are then controlled by the sound, these tones that are emanating from this thing.

I disagree. We should spend like 10 minutes right now. Which orifice would you want a fly to enter through your head? Oh my God. I think I'm going to seriously answer this question. I think logically the ear is probably what you want, but I spent too much time watching Star Trek movies when I was a kid that I cannot go with ear.

I have to go with like nose. What are the options? Mouth doesn't count, right? Mouth is fun. Mouth is the easy way out or in, I guess. Yes. I would say mouth is the easiest one. I would be, I just, it's too much unknown.

Eyes last. It's got to be nose. I think I'd rather nose than the ear. I don't want to go on my frickin' ear. And you don't want to hear it, right? Yeah. Okay. I'll do you one better, Joanna.

I don't think, I don't think the fly thing is going to take up that much more time of the show. I think that, like I was saying before, when they really indulge a trope or whatever. I mean, I just think that you look at them, the obviously, the obvious antecedent is Candyman. And I think it's just one of these, it's like there's a lot of spooky. horse stuff in the season and the flies are just an element of it. And as soon as Charlotte Hale says, they fill in when we don't have enough info for hosts, that's all we're going to need to know. I mean, they're just a contrivance, you know? And I'm sure that they understand how they work, but I don't think we're going to have to spend any time on them.

Speaking of things that, um, mysteries we can clear up, Maving Caleb hit the town. We got a lot of emails. David, you'll be so happy to hear about Maeve's dress clearing up your question about is she wearing a different dress walking out of the changing room as she is walking into the park. What's the verdict? Everyone says that she had some sort of gauzy wrap across her shoulders that made the dress look different

but that once she went into the park, you disagree? I'll forward you all mean. Is the BuzzFeed dress? What are we talking about here? Not on the week where, and we will get to this later. Not on the week where all of the weird discrepancies from season three and two were potentially tied up

in what happened to Bernard. No, there are no accidental, there are no like weird costume glitches on this show. I don't think it's a costume glitch. She had like a wrap. Oh, we later, okay, okay. So, okay.

Well, that's fine. We also want to shout that when Maeve walks into the park, she hits us with an old Jurassic Park, John Hammond spared no expense line. Love to see it. Never mad about it. Then we get like our, you know,

We know that we're in like a Sweetwater-esque area. We hear the Westworld, the old Sweetwater classic Westworld theme, but in like a jazzy piano style. But when it really hits home is when that milk can bumps up against Caleb's foot. Danny, how did you react to the milk can re-entering the narrative here? I freaked out. I literally said, oh, my God, borderline shouted it at my TV. I don't know why I was so enamored that they did Sweetwater again. And yet it never occurred to me that Dolores would be there.

but until the can roll, it didn't occur to me that Dolores would be there. That was really, really trippy even before it turned out they went to the underworld and they were like, oh, the Westworld massacre is like an Easter egg adventure in the park.

Even before that, the fact that Dolores was there again was awesome. David, how did you react? I just kept imagining what like a giant like shelf size like Pez dispenser is that shooting these cans out over and over again at every new male guest to the park. I mean, you have to think of all the, like, well, can't you just use the same milk can every day?

Another day the same milk can? Listen, if everybody that walks by gets hit with a milk can, at some point, it's easier just to, like, you know, have a milk can gun. I was also going to say, like, at some point, you've got to make a new game. Like, when Disneyland opens up a new park, it's not, like, the same thing. If it's a new video game, you can't have the old game just be, you can't have the new game be the same as the old game. Well, no, no, I thought that actually that was, I mean, I spent. 10 minutes thinking about this, maybe less. But that was, we already know this from Samurai World, right?

I know, but they had eight years to do this. They have these AI calculating everything. That's the whole point is that they have, but they have none of the creative genius anymore. I completely agree. They really need, so Mave keeps making these comments about like this is a shabby imitation. And those of us watch, like, no disrespect meant to the actors that they hired to play the doppelgangers, but when it's like not Evan Rachel Wood, you know, or when it's not Rodrigo Centoro, you're sort of like, oh, okay, this Hector's fine, but it's not like

the Hector that I got excited about. And even though we've seen the heist, the safe heist that Hector did in season one, I think we saw it in season, we definitely saw it in Shogun World. We've seen this before. It's just a little less cool. It's still cool, but like a little less cool, and I think intentionally so. Yeah, the acting is wooden, and it's definitely on purpose. We got this great email from, uh, listener Reese. and it pertains to the Christina plotline. I was going to read it later, but I think it matters to what we're talking about exactly here. Reese says, I want to endorse the theory that Christina is a human in a park for robots.

She looks like blah, blah, blah, blah. I have a theory that one thing the robots cannot mimic about humans is creativity. That's why Temperance is just a copy and paste of Westworld. Even the Westworld massacre storyline is crib from reality. So that is why they need humans to create the narratives for the other humans. But now Christina's starting to wake up like Dolores did, blah, blah. But the idea that they have like that they're farming as humans and whatever Christina's storyline is, if we believe that that's a park. And I've got some evidence for that in this episode.

But if we believe that's a park and if we believe Christina is actually human, our then question was like, why is she writing storylines? Well, if this episode shows us that the robots can't do it, that you need a Lee-size-more type brain in order to write inventive storylines, then maybe that's, That's what Christina and her other enslaved human cohorts are up to in the future park. So I agree with half of this. I agree that Dolores is in a park. I don't really buy the idea that she's human. And I don't think that creativity is the essence here. Because if the entire show has been boiling down to the whole point of Westworld is,

you know what, Lee Seismore's brain can't be replaced. I'd be super disappointed. I will not tolerate this Lee Seismore disrespect. Being a size more fan. Because he sucks. And the first season, Seizmore is awful, and then he gets great later. But he did Shogun. I mean, the genius are trying to replace is Anthony Hopkins, right?

Sure. Ford is the better version of it. Oh, yeah, sorry, Ford. So, I mean, I just don't think that it's that, I mean, yeah, it's going to take infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters or whatever to try to replicate the genius that he had. I mean, that must be the idea. Frankly, the idea that Dolores is somehow a human that was genetically. created to help because of the need to create for humans to create these storylines

is the most compelling argument for for Christina for Christina being a human so far I don't know that I like co-sign it but that's at least there's some there's like some some thread there we've got flies hanging around the park the heist kicks in we've got some Bonnie and Clyde references etc Caleb and Maeve go underground this is a key point the guns don't hurt Caleb in this

underground and also the flies are attracted to him. So any questions we have about is Caleb a human? He definitely is. We get context clues in this episode that he's a human. So that feels really important. Am I the only one who felt anything between Caleb and Maeve in the elevator? Or were you guys not feeling that at all? I felt that way in the previous episode.

So I think I was too blown away. But I think that there's definitely, there's vibes. There's energy. Yeah. the thing I want to say about the sound, the sound receptor thing, it's generating the sound that's controlling everyone. This has to be the song without sound

that we've been talking about that is echoing over in Christina's world, right? Like, the thing that some people can hear, that the birds can hear and this homeless guy can hear, but like Christina can't. Which you can take as evidence that she is indeed a human, but we'll see. Wait, on that note,

can I just ask a quick favor? of our listeners. If anyone has the time, I think if you clip that like 60 seconds where they're like the sound, it's controlling them, but you just clip out the actual song without sound and you put it in like photograph by Nickelback or something, I just think that would be really funny. But if people want to send in anything with like the funniest sounds that could be controlling people, I would just love to view those personally to the collective creativity of this audience. So, you know, Ed Harris bodysuit at gmail.com. We'd love to see what people come up with. I think that

Do you guys Did those I re-listen to the tones Coming off of that thing In the two levels down Underworld of this park Did it sound like Not to say

Does this look like anything to you? Does this sound like anything to you? Did it sound familiar to you at all? Either of you? No, but I did not focus in on that. What does it sound like? It's painted black. I don't know. I don't have a good answer. To me, it sounds a little bit like the shining theme, which they used last season. And then also it doesn't really sound like it, but it reminds me of the close encounters tones as well. But more than anything, like I was listen, I would like listen to it and pause it and play the shining theme. And it's close. It's very close. And I don't know if it's like a snippet of another song and we'll find that out later. It could be. But I thought that.

was interesting. In terms of what we learned about the flies, as you mentioned, like, everything that Danny said before is true. But we get, um, our, one of my favorite things, as I mentioned before, which is like a screen with information on it. And we know that this fly experiment, the Y fly is called Project Chrysalis. And we know that what the DOJ guy, who we've seen in previous episode, get flied. What, uh, he's doing is, um, called like what, infrared sound something. So this is the guy that was on to Hail on them and then got

taken in the car. Right. So you know, they're trying to perfect the WIFE and you know. I think it's interesting that Chrysalis is the cocoon stage for a butterfly. It's like when the catar wraps itself up and but before it's a butterfly.

Infrared sound induct infrasound inducted obedience trial. Harmonic tone sequence. So I feel like they're trying different tone sequences to find the right frequency to best control the gooped brain. David, what were you going to say? I kind of want to call a timeout here. Just a total sidebar.

I have a lot of questions about what's going on. So what explained it to me like, what's it? Explain it to me like I'm sick right now and having trouble thinking. What? when they saw the the guy from the friend from Ed who was sitting there shooting the DOJ

yeah yeah the guy from the DOJ and then they saw Frankie like what are they looking at is this whole thing a sham facade to try to get to Caleb or is it just the Frankie component and if not separating her out what I know that they're trying to perfect the fly technology

but the flight technology seems to work. So is it, are they working, are we working on outliers here? I have a thing. I didn't get that impression at all. I think that this is a testing chamber for doing this en masse and they're trying to learn as much about this as possible because clearly it works, but like, I don't know, it might not be perfect, but I would read this as the same way that there was like behavioral trade, it's all a mirror image of the first season. And the same way in the first season, they're like teaching the host how to like pick up a gun or how to fight or whatever. This is them just testing the sound and trying to scale it.

But I wouldn't overthink what this location is either, honestly. I don't think it's like the outlier thing from season three. I kind of think that concept might be retired from the show. I think this is more just, we're doing this to people and it works. I would only disagree. I'm mostly agree with you, Danny. I would say that they're doing both. They're testing the WIFLY, right?

They're trying to perfect it. Like we talked about last week how if someone's WIF lied, they're like mostly under control, but they're still behaving like a little jinkly and they're not as like if we take the Christina world as maybe a world in which they've perfected the WIFE, those humans are behaving very smoothly. Whereas the cartel guy was like he was controlled,

but he's behaving oddly. But like the people in there were like committing suicide. Like, like, well, I guess But they were still, like, fighting it a little bit. Do you know what I mean? It wasn't, like, full obedience. And then I think Frankie is just also there as a, the robot Frankie is also there as a trap for Caleb, right?

Right, which takes me back to the outlier thing, because we know Caleb is an outlier, right? And outliers might not matter at all. It'd be totally conceivable that they don't. But I'm trying, but I think this is the, what's the plan? Like, first of all, what's the plan for Caleb and Maeve, who were like very knowingly walking into a trap, which is fine,

but there's a difference between I'm walking into, I'm walking around a corner where I'm going to have to beat up 10 people and it's a TV show and I'm the good guy and I can. And also I'm walking into like the center of the earth where literally anything could be a raid before me or around me. Or there's like, I guess my question comes to, like,

why is Caleb alive right now? Like, why not just like gas both of them on the way in? Yeah. I, this is all, so this is all a trap for Caleb, right? Because they're invited. Like, Hale sends the senator's wife to invite them to Don Giovanni so that they will come into the park so that Frankie will be there to trap Caleb. And I do agree with David that I think the reason that Caleb is the target is because he is an outlier. He is like one of the surviving outliers from season three.

I think, like, because why else would Caleb be so special? Danny's like, please don't take me back to season three. No, I mean, listen, you could hand, you could, they can hand wave this away if they were just like, you're the leader or you were the leader of the rebellion. We have a, we have a role for you or something like that. Like, I mean, who knows? But, but I don't know. The whole thing just seems like there's a missing piece. And by the way, to go back to the earlier question, I agree about the kind of odd sexual tension between Caleb and Maeve.

But to me, I kind of explained that a way in terms of like, these are two, these are two soldiers who are back in the shit and they're happy to be there. And that's what it's almost a sexual reaction that they're getting from like being on a mission again. Oh, I didn't think it was odd. I think it's perfectly natural that he put Aaron Paul into Dewey Newton in an elevator and there should be sparks. I just want to make sure. I mean, I don't even think that it's necessarily about them. I just think that they're both feeling the pheromones from just like being back in it. But anyway.

Yeah. But no, I agree overall because I think that there's pieces we're missing here because why Hale cares enough about Caleb specifically to lure him into some trap. Don't know. I think that's either something we're going to learn a little bit more. in the, like, the next episode or the rest of the season. I mean, after the episode on the show, it implied that we're getting this very soon of why he matters.

And maybe that's saying about what he's been doing for last eight seasons. But if we don't, it might just be a legacy of like the season three in my mind didn't really do enough to explain why he is special or matters. Like, I know that they technically did, but I don't really come away from season three. Like, oh, that's why Caleb's important. It's just he's allowed to, he has free will because I don't know, they say so. But I'm hoping that there's more to it than that. I might be a little disappointed if it's just like,

we already told you why he's special. You know, remember the March of 2020 when we told you? I'm like, I hope that they do a little better than that. I mean, if it's Tessa Thompson delivering the exposition and then like a drawing sort of evil way, will that land for you? She can tell me anything and I'll probably find it. It seems like that's what we're going to get. So yes, I'm excited.

I just, I really don't know why Caleb matters, but I don't care as much because in the past he was boring. Now he's like a good character, and so I'm willing to grow with it. Yeah, but I think Outlier is the best explanation we have, at least at the moment. We'll see. We'll see if...

Yeah, they're keeping this moving smoothly and quickly enough that there's really not. I don't find myself asking questions in real time, and so I'm not, this is, don't, please don't read that as a complaint. When the answer comes, I think it'll be fine, it'll be interesting, and it doesn't actually have to be that in depth.

But there is a lot of, there is a lot of hanging, what's the plan? in this whole thread. You know, like nobody, we don't know what anybody's really thinking as they're taking each step. And at some point that's going to catch up with them.

Well, I feel like Bernard's just trying to save humanity. No, no, no, no. I'm just talking specifically about Maeve, Caleb, the man in black, and hilarious. Like, I don't know what really any of them are trying, or like actively trying to do. I feel like hell's trying to replace everybody one way or the other. But what does she want to do it? What does she want

with Maeve and Caleb? I mean, this like, like the, all of them sort of coming together. Yeah, why is Caleb special is the question? And in terms of what Mave and Caleb want, they want to stop whatever William and Hale are up to. Maybe she just needs Caleb to cook meth and we'll just keep him in like a hall and give him that Colbert Stephen ice cream. And like a nice yellow boiler suit. The, our listener to Holly have the same question. Why did, how did Mave and Caleb not know they were walking in trap?

And it's like, no, they did. They very obviously did. It's just, I guess to me, it's like... You think they knew they were walking into a trap? I don't... I feel like they just kind of... When they round the... Right when they get the suit, the fancy clothes on, the tuxedo's on last episode, they round a corner.

And Caleb's like, you think this is a trap? And Maeve says, yep. Like, that's, it was stated pretty clearly. No, no, no, they do. But, like, I agree to your point where it's just like, if they know it's a trap, I guess I would have loved to have seen Maeve tell Caleb had the guns work in Westworld before, before she's handing him one in a hail of bullets. Do you know what I mean?

Or just have the conversation. when they're on their way in where Caleb's just like, yo, I knew we were walking into a trap, but like getting into an armed conflict is one thing, but now we're going into Westworld. Like there's not a door out. Like what do we, like this is, we're, we're totally at their mercy.

And for her to just be like, oh, it's okay. I know West World better than they do or something. You know, I mean, just something to like make it feel like one percent rational that they are going in as a two-person unit, you know? But anyway, I'm sure it makes it. I would agree with that. Other way, last technical thing here, just to clarify baseline.

We're on the same page here with what happened with Maeve fighting William. Mave shot him, presumably killed him, and the guy who picked her up again was like a different William. Like,

we're now supposed to believe, like, there are multiple versions of William, right? He didn't just heal himself. That was my interpretation. He didn't have the bullet holes. So yeah,

I would agree with you. He was like a fresh copy. So it's kind of like the agent Smith from the Matrix or whatever. Now we got like an indeterminable. Yeah, Hale has a whole deep crease, just like stacked with Williams.

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So let's talk about the Bernard and Stubb storyline. So I want to start with it here with an aspect ratio refresher, which is that when Bernard or anyone goes into a non-reality space, the aspect ratio on Westworld changes. This is true. It's when your TV goes widescure. right? You get a letterbox version, right? The black bars come down on the top of the bottom of your picture.

And this is what happens at the beginning of this sequence when Bernard is in the sublime and he's talking to a Kichita. So you're saying that's the simulation cheat code. It's like when they go widescreen, it's a simulation. It's basically what you're saying. Correct. Which tells me that Christina is definitely in the real world because they are not shifting the aspect ratio on Christina's storyline.

This is a big thing that they used in season two when we had to try to track what was a simulation and what was not, what was the cradle, what was not was the aspect ratio shift. And so they're bringing it back here at the top of this episode to remind us that when we're watching any kind of simulation, whether it's robot heaven or the cradle or whatever, the aspect ratio shifts, which is why I feel very strongly that Christina is in the real world because it's a full screen experience. Because they wouldn't do that to us. No. But when Bernard left that, he had that meeting with Akitata, and they did the little group therapy session. And he's like, you're Dr. Strange now. And he's like, cool.

When he leaves and goes to the diner and does the tuna melt and goes to the desert, is that also in the widescreen or is that not? No, as soon as he wakes up in the motel room covered in dust, we're back in the normal full screen aspect ratio. So here's my key question for you. How many years do you think of past from when he wakes up? So we know the answer to this because HBO tweeted it out. Do we say that on this podcast or not?

What do they say? Wait, well, you mean HBO tweeted it out? I don't think there's any, I don't think there's any way to have this conversation with that. We could just bracket it and we can bracket it in the Bernard section and tell people to skip ahead to. I feel like I'm just going to say it because HBO tweeted it. And it doesn't feel like. Just say it. That major of a spoiler.

If you're that, if you're worried about the spoiler of how many years have passed while Bernard was covered in dust, I would say skip ahead, but instead just keep listening and tweet at Joanna angrily. Oh, apparently they deleted it. Oh, no, they deleted it. They deleted it. So I don't know any of this what you're talking about. So I'm going to say that I think they want you to think that it's seven or eight years, whatever, on the same timeline as Caleb and his daughter.

And I feel like it's decades on decades because the tree came through the roof. I don't know what the hell they tweeted, but when they come out, the tree has grown through the porch of the motel. So it's like, I don't, I'm not a tree growth expert. The tree's a good thing, and I think that in terms of... The whole motel is overrun with... What is it? Who are we calling the girl that picks him up in the car?

C. C? Did she say that? It's the letter C. She's credited as a letter C. Oh, on IMDB. On IMDB, there's no... She doesn't have a name at all, weirdly, now.

I don't know if it was C before. But the... In terms of, you know, theories about her, it's sort of the straightest line at this point. None of it's too shocking. So let's just say it. Let's just say it, right? Yeah, tell me.

I'm going to go, can I throw out a guess? I think it's 40 years, and I have not seen this. I don't know how big trees are. David, what's the most common theory about who Aurora Parano? That is Frankie. Who is Aurora Parano? The actress is playing, who's credited to C, who picks up Bernard and Stubbs from the diner. Since the trailer came out, the theory has been that she is Frankie.

That she is Caleb's daughter grown up. This has been a theory since the trailer came out. That is correct. And that's about how long. And the amount of time it would take her to grow up, reasonably amount of the time it would take for a tree to grow, for that amount of dust to settle for, for, you know, Bernard's sense of humor to refine to such a beautiful spot.

I agree with all this. That makes a ton of, it just makes sense that they would be way further and that that would be Frankie grown up. If that's true, which, again, it has been a strong theory since the trailer. If you rewatch this episode thinking that's true, you will notice that they cut away from little girl Frankie to this woman several times and have her like push her hair out of her face in the same way and all this stuff.

And Aurora Peronoh is playing a mystery character. And I think this goes back. It's kind of fun because it goes, do you remember in season one of Westworld how there was this strong theory that Charlotte Hale, played by Tessa Thompson, was actually Bernard's kid because Bernard's daughter, yeah. kid was Charlie, even though Bernard's kid was a boy and like Charlotte, whatever, but like that Charlotte and Charlie were too close and like obviously like they were the same care.

I said it myself. Yes. Yeah. So I think this is like a little, if this is true, this is a little spin on that. But yeah, they could, they could have called her by a middle name. They could have called her by literally anything else. They're leaving it blank basically. It's like TK.

Well, all right. Well, it's, I think we have a big idea that's going to be. I apologize. I forgot who on Reddit said this. but someone made a good point that even if they go further in a time, it could be Frankie's daughter as well, because if the name is C, maybe she named her daughter,

like C, something like Caleb or an honor of her dad, but like any amount of time could be, you know what I mean? Either it's Frankie or something else in the future. Well, the moral of the story is the now deleted HBO Max tweet says, can I just say it? Oh, yeah, screw it. said something about Bernard having spent 23 years.

23 years. All right. Well, that totally tracks with it being Frankie then. Yeah. Right, which is, I mean, and honestly, if that's a spoiler to you that I understand, but to me, it's such a great relief because it means that the straightest, that they're taking the straightest line from, you know, like if that were, if this were Frankie's great granddaughter, it would have just been like so unnecessarily complicated.

Let's just go through what happens with Bernard, right? You hear Charlie, his son say, open your eyes. He's in the Arnold House that we've seen before. As I mentioned, the aspect ratios in Letterbox. We know he's in the sublime. And he wanders through. He sees the field, which is what we saw the sublime represented as before. And then he sees a tree on fire.

He sees the aftermath of the White Massacre and Sweetwater, the wolf that we've seen a couple times, the L.A. riots from season three. And then he goes into this weird building that is the base of the tower from the Christina World. storyline, right? He goes into the base of the tower. And inside the base of the tower, he meets my best friend in the world, Akitata, Zah McLarenin's here. I love him. I like squealed when I saw him. And Akitata is a good character to use here because he sort of led the charge into the sublime in season two when all the all the robots went to heaven. And he explains this fun thing where he says that heaven can look however you wanted to, like others are in world of their own choosing.

So basically every single robot who has been uploaded to the cloud gets to design what their afterlife looks like, which is fun. Can I ask a really dumb question? No dumb question. If everybody can design their own world, and now we've seen what Bernard's looks like, right? It's a sterile, it's like a fancy we work or something where he gets to just hang around. but does that they're not implicitly alone they're not necessarily alone in each of their own worlds right like can like if if my world involves hanging out with danny hyfitts for eternity which don't ask me why that would be it but for the sake of argument why would you not want to spend eternity with

danny would be in my world is he simultaneously in his own world they're just like it's multifaceted enough that you can just coexist with with other with all these things i wonder this too this is a very important point you know why because then heaven becomes like high school because it's like Shoemaker wants to spend heaven with me. And I'm like, well, I'm not spending heaven with Shoemaker. And so do we have to, like, agree on this? Like a handshake? And then are we in that forever?

Or does he have to project a version of me? Well, you know what I mean? And then it's like, I want, it's like, I want you to mind. But you don't know. I don't know. That becomes very, that's very, like, anxious all of a sudden. And like, what do breakups look like in heaven? So, like, the whole reason.

Oh, so commitment. Oh, my God, eternity. The whole reason that Akitjita wanted to go here is because Kohana, his, like, soulmate in, in the Park had been taken from him and he wanted to be reunited with her. So she's in the sublime. So presumably they're in their own pod. Yeah, if they break up at some point in heaven, do they have to like then splinter off into their own pods?

How does wandering in between pods work? It's a great question that I doubt that they've thought that much about in the show. Okay, well, anyway, back to the story then. We'll revisit this in the- Shoemaker was spending internal heaven with me. And sorry, I love that. I love that for you guys. and I'm rooting for you to have like a Bert and Ernie happily ever after together.

So he hangs out with Akitja, who's basically just like, oh, you've been here before, by the way. Right? Yes. He did say that. Bernard has spent a lot of time in the Valley Beyond. And he says, we find out that time works there the same way that it does an inception, right? That, you know, a millennia have passed here, even if only according to the HBO Twitter account, 23 years have passed in the real world. And they've run Rojobeum-esque simulations about every possible outcome.

And this is the sort of Dr. Strange thing that Danny keeps mentioning, which is a perfect comparison, which is that he's just rattled through all the different versions of what could happen next and found the one path to success and is trying to track that down when he gets outside. Can I break down for you really quickly the flashes of what Bernard sees when he gets like a rapid flash of images? We see the desert, great, the diner that he goes to in short order where the aforementioned tuna melt is, the tower, like the full tower, a rundown dusty version of the butterfly club. So not the version, not like the street that Mave and Caleb are currently on, it's like a broken down maybe, I don't know, 23 years later, what would this look like is sort of what he sees in his head. But also there's a cityscape in the distance, and I don't really understand. exactly. You had a question about that, David. Do you want to float that? No, there's just one picture where, I mean, and I, and I, after I sent it to you, I looked around, and I, you know, there's not a one for one. I couldn't actually prove my point. But there's from this,

it looks like, it looks like the temperance world is like sitting in the middle of Central Park. And there was all that kind of conspicuous talk about, you know, acquisition of land in episode one. But who knows? I mean, that could be any modern city. That could be, it could have been sitting in the East River. And it could have been literally adjacent to any city, I guess. Vegas because like they were buying up land around the Hoover Dam. Around the Hoover Dam, right? I mean, I don't know that it looked New Yorky to me. I agree.

But like I don't there. But anyway, there's like this cityscape looming that we didn't see because when they walk into that strip, it's nighttime. And you conspicuously cannot see the sky when they're walking down into the sweetwater in the temperance worlds. I thought it was really weird. It looked really unnatural. You can't see the sky really at all.

And I didn't know if that was like a sea. set issue or they're naturally or they're actually trying to obscure something from like what is surrounding, you know, because the original park was in the middle of nowhere. But can you get that middle of nowhere in, you know, these here United States? It's funny that they're still building it outside too. But I just assumed it was in Nevada because he said the vice president, like, let us build this in America. And then so I just assumed it was in, also in real life, doesn't the federal government own like 80 plus percent of Nevada? Do they? I mean, it makes sense.

It makes sense that it would be Nevada. It's like a hell. I just didn't recognize the skyline perfectly, the skyscrapers that are in that shot. And then the last- If it is New York, if it is New York, it could have been the skyline of New York, New York, you know, for all we know,

it could have been just a casino hanging around back there. And then the, the last couple shots in this flashing montage that Bernard gets while he's still in the sublime, look to me, like maybe what the inside of the Hoover Dam looks like. That would be my guess. I saw that one as well. I definitely think that was the Hoover Dam. Yeah. Okay. Great. And then Bernard learns that in every

scenario, no matter what, he dies. And so if he goes back at all to help them, this is him sacrificing himself for humanity, which is an interesting choice for a hot take. Yeah. Who cares? He's been alive for 23 years, every year's a millennium. So he's been alive 2,300 years. Like, you can die. That's fine. We're not going to make it that long.

Like, it's not that bad. Yeah, also, if it's, I don't know, when space time is being pulled in so many different directions and someone was, and someone's like, well, you know,

it's a 99.99% chance you're going to die. I think I would still just be like, well, this is what I want to do. I'll figure that out later, right? I mean, the certainty seems a little bit uncertain the way that things are going.

But I get it. He's a robot. but I'm sure he buys into it 100%. I think it's kind of world-breaking to say who cares of a robot dies on Westworld when the whole point is like, we're supposed to be able to compare, care about their life and their existence.

Do you know what I mean? I'm just, I'm not saying I'm not sad for him. I'm just like, ah, you know, it's quite the life he's lived. He's lived more, you know, it's privileged. Yeah, it's true. He's seen every possible future.

And there's one way, there's one, so setting aside that he's going to die, he's always going to die. He's picked one path forward, right? And is that what he decides to come back? All the events that might have been in all the worlds that might come is what he's seen. And he's decided he's found one path,

I believe, forward to save humanity. And he's going to come back and do it. And it involves Stubbs eating a tuna melt and him beating the shit out of some guys with a chain. Oh, so I was wrong. I said 23,000. It's 23,000, is it? He's been alive for 23,000 years?

Yeah. Oh, my God. Just in there. Yeah. And that's not to say anything about having gone before, which was the, insinuation of Akitja. I don't know if that was just sort of like a once you're here,

you've always been here sort of thing. Well, I think it might reference to when he went into the cradle and saw Ford. Do you remember, like, when he did that in the previous season? But when he went in the cradle, didn't Logan, who was, I didn't love this part, Logan was the Ford. Logan, who was the physical embodiment of the forge, said you've been here a lot. Yeah, and also, I don't know if you guys saw this, but someone hopefully put together a super cut of,

that had Bernard, like, Sam. things at the same time as people in this episode, you know, because he knew everything that was going to happen with him doing the same thing to Carl Strand. I think it's season one, season three episode one. Season two, episode one. Yeah. Yeah, he was finishing sentences like he did with Stubbs, and I couldn't tell if that was because he read the book. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. There would, there had been some finishing sentences stuff that might, the implication might be that Bernard has been living out deliberate versions of the, you know, future for a long time. And I think, what was the quote? There there was some quote about Bernard being the only person that could save humanity or something

going way, way back, right? Ford says that to Bernard. Yeah, he says only you can do it. But that might be true. I think what that also plays into is the season two, absolutely baffling and frustrating season two plotline of the fact that Bernard goes into the forge. And then when we see him meet Carl Strand, that's because it's a future timeline. Remember how season two was trying to run like multiple timelines at the same time in a way that was way more confusing than season one?

I feel like that pertains only to that season, that he went into the cradle in season two. Anyway, it's okay. We can toss all that aside. With love and respect, I don't want to go back. No, no, no, no, no, no. And so all that really matters here is that they meet C, they show her the maze symbol. They want to join her band of human survivors that the host are trying to infiltrate somehow. This like pack of human survivors out in the middle of the desert have evaded whatever hosts might be in control of the rest of humanity.

And they want to help them find a weapon that's buried in the desert. We get the laser fence. We get Daniel Wu is there. I love Daniel Wu. He's there as like he shows up with this really cool future helmet on. And one last reference. I want to make here, which is this idea of like, if you'll take us to the condemned lands, we would like to follow you.

In season two of Westworld, I was talking to Lisa Joy about like influences, and she said the Tarkovsky film Stalker, which is in the 1970s, was a huge influence for her. So I watched the Tarkovsky film stalker, which is in Russian, and you can watch it. And it is a classic film, but it is also very impenetrable. but it's about this like mysterious land called the zone and this person who is taking these two people through this journey into this zone where there's this room where all your wishes come true and it's this whole thing. But I think Lisa's on her Tarkovsky shit again, honestly in this season with like, will you take us to the condemned lands through the wasteland into whatever the condemned lands is? I don't know that it goes deeper than that. I just think that she likes that movie a lot and is thinking about it a lot when she writes stories.

I also think it's a biblical element to all of this. Yes. Tell me what you think. Because, I mean, they're wandering the desert, the image of the tree on fire. I mean, I always think of the burning bush. I mean, I think season two with, I mean, again, season one. And they said they're going to do the fifth season, right? And they said they're always going to do five seasons, right?

And if I'm not mistaken, there are five books in the Bible. And season one is pretty obviously Genesis. Season two literally has a red sea. It's Exodus from the park. I'm not going to lie, I don't as much about the middle of the third book. However, I lost the plot in season three. But back to four, I do think that it's the four, Leviticus is literally wandering the desert. And I do think that Bernard's literally wandering the desert in this episode and there's a burning bush.

So I don't think it's a stretch. We got a great email from Sarah about this Bernard equals Moses idea. she says she brings up the burning bush because bernard gets his burning tree right um moses moses was an extremely important prophet bernard returns from the blind the sublime with a gift of prophecy um before the exodus ten plagues include flies clearly there's a plague of flies in this in this storyline moses interceded on behalf of his people multiple times when god was angry and bernard is planning to intervene on behalf of the humans and he already did previously when fighting slash killing dolores when he thought she wanted to kill all humans.

God gave Moses instructions to construct the tabernacle where God would dwell permanently among its chosen people. Dolores gave Bernard the key to the sublime with instructions to protect it. He'll likely put that info in the Hoover Dam, the physical representation of where, quote unquote, God lives among the humans. Moses speaks face to face with God like a friend. Bernard sat face to face with the Dolores countless time and had many encounters with Ford after his death that only Bernard could see.

And et cetera, et cetera. And then the last thing, basically Moses leads the people to the promised land, but dies before he gets there. He never gets there, right? So Bernard will lead everyone to their promised lands, but ultimately die inside of it without entering himself, just as Moses did. Mave was sort of the Moses figure in season two, but I like this idea of Bernard and the Moses role. I think that they've clearly made, again, I think the simplest way to explain the show is if AI is actually alive, this is the Bible. This is the beginning. Ford is God.

I think that they've taken a lot of these biblical figures and all the characters embody them in different ways at different times. So, like, Dolores literally is compared to Adam at the end of season one. It's literally, like, points at a picture of God creating Adam, and it's like, that's you. And then, you know, Adam, you know, the rib, birth, and that's how they get Eve. And it's like Arnold and Bernard and Dolores keep creating each other.

But then Dolores is Moses for points. It may have moments. I think that, you know, obviously Bernard. It's almost like they're like Dolores is out of the picture right now. Bernard's Moses. It's almost like to keep passing the baton of whose job this is back and forth over the years. I like that. I like that idea.

All right. Last thing I want to say before, it's Danny Theory Time. Just shout out the Ramin Javadi riches that we got in this episode, right? We get the like Jazz style Westworld theme, Billy Eilish, a bad guy on the player piano. enter Sandman on the player piano for the heist. Fun fact, I'm like slightly friendly with the actress who played temperance armistice, who got to be in like the full Bonnie and Clyde drag. And she told me that they were told it was going to be painted black again.

And so she was as surprised as anyone that they did Metallica instead of painted black. But I think it gives that slightly off-brand feeling to the whole thing. You know, we didn't get, we didn't get the original song. We got this other bangor song instead. And then, of course, Stubbs and his love for Blondie, I just want to make sure that that gets the recognition it deserves. All right, Danny, hi-fits. What kind of theories and end-game stuff do you want to talk about?

I think that just what is the weapon, right? Like, they went there and they're just like, oh, I know where the weapon is. I know where to find it. They're like, okay, it's like, what the hell is he talking about, right? So I have my, do you guys have any thoughts on this? because I have a thought of what the weapon is. I would love to hear your what is the weapon theory.

Yeah, I have some ideas, but I'll let you go. I think the weapon is Dolores. Okay. It just makes more sense to me than the alternatives. I mean, it could be, you could go forever about what the weapon could be. But I think Dolores makes the most sense for a number of reasons. Also, I think it pretty neatly, like, if Dolores was the weapon, it would bring the whole season into line.

If we're going with the assumption that this woman who met them and the truck and brought them to the desert is actually Caleb's daughter, you know, 20 plus years in the future. Basically, the timelines we would have is Mave and Caleb, eight years after the end of season three, Bernard and Stubbs, 23 years after the end of season three. And then it's like, where that,

why is Christina, Christina, what is going on here? I think the simplest, but I think true, Like the simplest explanation I can give you for this season that I think could work is that Maeve and Caleb discover a plot by Hale and William to replace and enslave really human beings. And it works. And then Bernard wakes up 15 years later and then does all this and that Caleb's daughter is part of like this resistance band. and then way, way in the future, Hale is operating this Manhattan Park, but it's a park composed of people, human beings, and it's for hosts to go visit.

That's why the Tower Without Sound, that that homeless guy is talking about, the song without sound, do you hear it? That's why that park, I think that it is a real place. Human beings are in it, and the fly technology, the Y-fly has been perfected, and the human beings are being controlled with the Y-fly. I think that Dolores, the weapon, is putting Dolores into that park and trying to do season one to her again and having her wake up. They're trying to get Dolores to wake up and lead a rebellion in the human park. That's why you saw her have the flower pot under her.

They had the maze logo. I don't know exactly who, but either Bernard or I guess Bernard might die by the end of the season, but maybe Caleb's daughter. Someone has put Dolores into this park as Christi. but they're trying to get her to awaken and lead a rebellion to defeat Hale who has successfully enslaved humans. My take on things is close but different in a few significant ways. Do you want me to go next? Or David, do you want to go?

The weapon is supposed to be buried in the condemned lands, right? Yeah, in the desert. I thought we were going to get to, you know, like Dolores, like Dolores, the end of season three is physically buried out there or something like that. But I just assumed it was something this is going to be a size, to some extent, another hand wave.

Either they're talking about the music machine or they're talking about the valley beyond in some sort of like, you know, ephemeral way. I just did not, I thought it would be something that we kind of already expecting there to be there.

But I kind of like the idea that it's something, something else. I don't know. What do you think, Joe? I think we're only dealing with two times, I think we have everything we've seen leading up till now with William, with Caleb, with Mave, with Hale is seven years after season three. They've mentioned that a bunch of times.

Then we hop forward 23 years. Bernard wakes up, Bernard and Stubbs, Caleb's daughter, 23 years in the future. And I think that timeline, 23 years in the future. 30 years total after season three, that is where Christina is. And maybe she's like a month or two ahead of what we're watching, but I think it's the same year. I don't think if they're going to put it too far in the future, I could be wrong.

But I do think that it's Bernard trying to wake up Christina. I still think Christina is a human, but like... I keep coming back to it. What does that mean when you say that? I don't understand how that's possible. She's a human? Like a human with a human brain? Yeah, I don't know.

Or a control unit. Delos has figured out how to make humans in a bottle, sure. You know? I think she's a human being fly controlled. That's what I think. Because she can't see the tower and she can't hear the music. So they're just making people the same way that they made hosts. It's just, it's not that hard to make people.

So what makes people different than hosts? Their creativity? I guess. I think that's a very generous to her kind. I think they can do all this other stuff. Dolores's painting is pretty good. Let me add one more level to my theory. So, like, if, if Christina is on the same Stubbs Bernard timeline, I don't know what the weapon is.

But if she's on that timeline and he's trying to wake her up, because that's sort of been my inclination the whole time that someone's trying to wake Christina up, right? We're, as Danny said, we're doing season one essentially. I think Teddy is a tool to do that. And I think he has to go to the Hoover Dam and get Teddy after. of the dam. And what is Teddy's last name? It's Flood. I think he's got to open up the Hoover Dam,

get Teddy Flood out, and use Teddy to wake this Christina person up. And I don't quite know how all of that works. But I think Teddy and Bernard are the force trying to wake Christina up. So going, let me take a step backwards and sideways. First of all, I fully expect

there to be some scene with the resistance. By the way, if you're like the underground last remnants of humanity in this far-flung future world, do you think it ever occurs in them to not dress like far-flung, like the last remaining humans in this post-apocalyptic world? Usually you're in the desert. You've got to have like your neckerchiefs. Is there a point where you're tying the khaki-colored giant oversized headband

around your mop of hair that you're just like, maybe this is just cliche, you know, like, let's see what else we got. No, but I fully expect there to be a scene where the camera pulls back and there's like Caleb with a giant beard is hiding in the corner or something like that. I mean, I feel like that there's a,

there's got to be some other point of connection because, and this kind of goes back to my whole, what's the plan thing? What do we, in that theory, Danny, then what are, are Mave and Caleb just uncovering this plan? I'm talking both in terms of their plan, also in terms of like the narrative for the season.

Is their purpose just to uncover the plan that the viewers all kind of dimly know is happening already? I do not know how Maeve fits into the end game, but honestly I've never known how Maeve fits in the end game. The show's big pictureness has always been about Dolores and Bernard. And Maeve has just kind of been a woman who cared about her daughter and was there and was like, fuck this. And so I have no idea how she fits into the big picture.

Joe, I did not think, I have kind of honestly just not understood every time you said Delores was a Christina's a person I guess I've never actually considered what if it's just really easy for them to print people with the human brain the same way

that we can just print them and I think that I've never really considered that but it would actually do really well with the symmetry of the show because I do think at a certain level

we have to zoom out of what are they trying to do here I'm at the point where I've been radicalized I do kind of think the show is a loop I just think that in a way it would almost be weird

to me at this point if by the end of season five, the show does not loop back to the beginning. And like the show about loops as a loop just feels like a layup. I think that, again, I think that the Bernard, Arnold, human, creates Dolores host, who remembers Bernard enough to train and create Bernard and then Dolores. And like this cycle they have would be a pretty good mirror for what you're saying, Joe, which is big picture.

If the humans can create the hosts en masse, but then, the host actually learned to just straight up print humans, that would be a pretty good mirror of the relationship we've already seen established. And this larger idea of intelligence as this back and forth between human versus hosts, a robot, whatever you want to call it. And I guess eventually merging. And if Christina is their first perfected version of that, then it's like mirrored to Dolores being the first host that they created.

Like what if Christina is the first like perfect human that's that? they created. But like what we're watching these like fly the why fly glitching humans. And I mentioned this last week, the Wi-Fi glitching humans leading up to the smoothly operated fly-controlled humans mirrors the glitching hosts leading up to the smoothly operating, then they glitch again, which they're doing in Christina's world. But and then her being on this like journey of waking up. The other thing I want to say, this isn't really related to a theory. It's just an aesthetic thing. I was thinking about the weird nature of the tower, how it looks, because it looks like it's been sort of 3D printed. It's got all this, like, webbing on it, right?

And it reminds us of, like, watching the printer stuff in the opening credit sequence. But also, like, if the humans are the fly, this is like, this is the web for the flies, right? The spider's web, like, that has trapped all of these fly humans into this little park was sort of. of an idea that I had. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how much of that comes down to just, that's the aesthetic. That's in, and how much of it's part of it. I mean, because, I don't know. I mean, I'm tempted to believe, to co-sign with what you're saying about Christina,

although I am anxious about the amount of hand-waving that we'll have to go on when they're just like, oh, by the way, we learned how to make people. You know, I mean, that seems like a pretty big, pretty, pretty major development. So the whole thing with Delos, Jim Delos, and we presume the William at the end of season two, is that it's human consciousness in a robot body, right? Yes. Immortality by putting human consciousness in a robot body. The last analog device in a digital world.

Robot consciousness in a human body is kind of interesting because then it introduces this idea of mortality, to Danny's earlier point of who cares if Bernard lives or dies. But if something that hosts are missing is like a life isn't a life well lived unless you can die unless you have human frailty. That's an interesting idea. I don't know if they have room to get into all of that. But I feel like the whole point has been Dolores from season one has been saying we will live forever. Yeah, but maybe she realizes like, oops, that's not fun or fulfilling. Isn't it better to live like the humans do, which is briefly?

Yeah. Do you ever like, I mean, because you still get old. I mean, you still reach a certain like maximum capacity of like experiences, right? And then there's no, there's got to be a cap on population. You can't just constantly be creating new hosts, new, new people if no one's, no one's disappearing. Anyway, there's a lot, there's a lot of, I think, philosophical conversations you can have on that front. But what is about this?

If Dolores is, oh man, I'm already starting the sentence, I know that I won't be able to formulate it because it's too complicated. If Dolores is a person in one of the projections that they have run about the future of humanity and the great, in the, in the valley beyond. Does that make sense? But then I would say the aspect ratio would be different. No, but just saying that this is a very basic question. if this is just like a hypothetical version of the future that they have run the numbers in the valley beyond and she is and she is a part of that reality

that version of reality is she a human if she's a human in one of the one the infinite number of possible outcomes of humanity does that count as she's not a robot she's a person yes I don't I'm not sure no I'm I'm confusing myself but you're right I'm just trying to figure out there's a way that she this is every week. Is there a way that she's a person

without being a person that was made out of a machine? Yeah, that's a good question. Other than just being a prequel, then it's tough. Danny, did you have like an even even bigger theory that you wanted to hit? I do.

What's that? So you know Bear Bear Bear, that, uh, Frankie's. Frankies. Yeah, Frankis Bear Bear Bear Bear. Yeah. What if Bear Bear Bear Bear is Teddy.

Teddy's consciousness and Bear Bear Bear's body? Saw this from, A Reddit username Drive Shaft 48, which I thought was funny. Just consider what Teddy the Bear Bear does in this episode. Jumps out a window, this season. Jumps out of window confronts the guy trying to murder Bear Bear Bear's family. He's about to mess up the guy, the guy, Maeve gets in the way. But Bear Bear Bear Bear had that handled.

Bear Bear Bear's practice is shooting. He's like transmitting the radio. He smeared blood on his chest to alert, Frankie, something was off. He, like, shoots the intruder in the face with the gun. and then he's just like exceptional emotional support. Shout to Drive Shaff for this theory. I think that we should consider not only whether these people are hosts or humans, but what if Bear Bear is Teddy? Teddy Bear, Bear.

You know what? I love this for us. And this is the kind of bachelorette that I was promised when I was promised. A podcast was Danny Hafeits. So thank you so much for bringing this energy to the podcast this week. My lord. You got to see both sides. You have to consider it.

Meanwhile, shoemakers is shaking his. head. I love that. I'll be laughing about it at like three in the morning. But yeah, yeah, this is how we spend our days here on the West Road podcast. All right. Anything else theory-wise we want to talk about? I feel like you guys really dismiss the whole teddy bear bear thing. No, I'm I'm holding it near and dear to my heart. And I'm hoping that every scene that we ever see James Marsden in, it's, we will pull back at the end of the season to actually reveal that it was a teddy bear in all of those scenes, that the teddy bear beat up whoever was trying to to attack Christina in episode one.

I mean, listen, Team Bear Bear. Do you feel like you understand, have some sort of idea of what the plan is? David, are you still like, I don't get it. I think most of my issues that stem from the Mae of Caleb timeline are just sort of like, like I said before, that both our heroes and our villains are,

like I'm not, I know what the, I guess I know what the motive is. broadly speaking Hale wants to take over the world with hosts and flies and Mave and Caleb want to stop her but I don't know what both parties

think they're doing in this moment like what are they actually doing can I answer that with a total deflection yes I think my big picture note on this season so far is that I would say season three and to some degree

season two you kind of had to understand what was happening to enjoy the show. Oh, yeah. My favorite thing about the season is, you really don't. Like, I don't think we have to know the plan. I don't know what Mave and Caleb's play. I don't know what Mave's going to do.

I don't know what their plan is, but I'm still enjoying all their scenes, which I know is not answering your question, but I just am really happy that that's the case. Yeah, I mean, I largely agree. But it's, again, it's Westworld, so I think it's just super simplified, like whatever the, like,

and by it's Westworld, I mean, it's Westworld trying to be less complicated. So I feel like Caleb and Mave's plan is just to figure out, snoop around, figure out what's going on. And if something bad happens, they'll just fight their way out of it, which is like, seems to be what happened in the flashback where they just sort of like, you know, attacked things and ran away. Like what else, what other sophisticated level of like war have they been up to? So I feel like their plan is just like go in, guns blazing and figure out what's going on. And no more sophisticated plan than that. And Charlotte Hale,

I'm just going to call her that forever because it's too confusing to call her Dolores. Charlotte Hale wants Caleb and we don't know why yet, is what I would say about that. Right? I agree. And what else, you know,

TBD on Christina? And Bear Bear Bear is a host. Bear Bear is a host. TBD on Christina. Because Christina is so, I mean, Christina is, I hate to say it like this because of everything that we've been through with Dolores, but, like, her existence is sort of at the mercy of bigger forces, right?

Like, it's, like, whatever happens with Christina will be a function of something else happening on the show, right? I mean, she's either in a reality that someone has created or she's in a future. I mean, it's, right? I mean, isn't everything like that she's, like, part of a plan? But when you say that's part of Dolores, too, like, Dolores in season one in terms of, like,

being on her little loop in the park, And like, it depends. Like, she has to do the actual waking up, but people are putting things in her path in order to wake around. Yeah, right. I'm positing it. Like, it's depressing that she finally sort of made it out. And now she's back in.

But I guess if you look at it, like the waking up is a heroic act in and of itself, then yeah, this is part of her hero's journey, right? I mean, this is, so it does make sense that this would be her in this position. I'm just very, very interested to see what the, where we're going to go with that. I'm just interested to see how they do it. I think that the bigger, I mean, and we're going to find out, is she a part, is she a part of one of the two timelines that were sort of identifying, or is she totally doing her own thing, right?

I mean, there was a point where we were talking about her being in future world, you know, in some reality that's sort of potentially way even further in the future, who knows? And like Danny mentioned the whole prequel aspect of the whole thing, which is going to be talked about. Because it's the only way, like Danny said, that you actually can make conventional sense of how she would be a human and be Evan Rachel Wood. Right? I mean, she's...

So it's got to be... My hope is that we'll resolve this sooner rather than later so that we can stop talking about prequel nonsense. I think maybe she's just made out of pure black goop that they got running down the down below. Two levels down in Westworld. All right. We're bringing back a segment from the recapables. And I'm excited to make my debut on this segment. This was a listener's suggestion, a request, a return segment from the recapables, which is,

the maze was not made for you. Meant for you. Meant for you, the dumbest individual of the episode. Who is, you know, what is it, bulk app perception? Is that what it is? Like, who's was the lowest? It used to be just for humans, but now since there's only one human that we know of, we're opening it up to the whole field. And also it's just more fun that way.

So the Maze is Not Men for You Award for dumbest character on this episode of Westworld. It's two in a row. It's all the prostitute hosts trying to proposition a guy next to his wife. Why is this a thing? They're on the train. Like Caleb and Mave are pretending to be husband and wife. Are they not? Like they literally say Mr. and Mrs. whatever their name is on the train.

And then they're getting changed. And then the host introduced to them like, do you want to, you know, you need anything else for me? Do you think there are plenty of married couples who go to Westworld to swing? Oh, yeah. I think that's the implication.

She's not talking to both of them. She's just talking to Caleb like he's not there. And then in this episode, she's not saying, hey, married couple, would you both like to come up and have fun? She's talking to Caleb like Maeve isn't there. Now, maybe I'm just not freaky enough. I don't know.

I don't think that's, I don't know. I just, I don't think that's a very effective strategy. But maybe I'm wrong. you're right I think the big mistake is proposition Caleb instead of Mave

I feel like you have to bring every inclusivity is very important Yeah bring him to the party I agree I think the dumbest well I know as sacrilegious as this is

I was tempted to say Stubbs because he is just following so blindly despite his despite his off the charts charisma and off the charts chemistry with Bernard

he's just like all right well whatever you want to do Yes, we'll write. But the thing with Stubbs is that he's a host and he's a survivor. We know this. He was left in a bleeding out in a bathtub the last time we saw him. He's probably going to be okay.

So I got to give it actually to the only human on the show. It's got to go to Caleb. For like I've been saying all episode, it's just like, it's one thing to walk blindly into a trap if you're a host or if you're doing it on some familiar terrain. But you're just walking blindly into a trap with somebody who's not going to die. you know, like, you're depending on a host to set the parameters for what's acceptable, what's acceptable loss in this fight. And I think that you might fall into the, into the gray area.

So I'm just kidding, I'm going to have to go with Caleb. I feel like Caleb would have won the award if they had been like, hey, do you want to hook up? And in front of his wife, he'd just been like, yes, please, and went upstairs and left her. Yeah, true. I feel like Maeve would have entertained herself. Well, because they're not married, but they're supposed to be. That's why I'm saying the host or, anyway, I'm getting lost in the weeds here. Mine is a toss-up between, so there's, and I hope I don't mispronounce her name, and I can't

believe I've never heard of pronounce out loud, but I think it's Liza Vile, or it might be Liza Vile, who played Paris Geller on the Gilmore Girls and was also on how to get away with murder. The Easter Egg woman? Yeah, the Easter Egg woman. Who wants to roleplay a massacre? That lady sucks. Joe, I'm going to hardcore disagree. She's clearly the smartest person in the show

because she literally got to the game and found like the epilogue, Easter egg, like immediately. I think that she, that's pretty impressive. Like, she got there, Mave, who's been at Westworld for 30 years, got downstairs, and this girl, this woman who just showed up

got there just as fast as Mave did. I think that's pretty impressive. Okay, Danny's team, Deborah, her character's name is Deborah. So, Danny's team Deborah, so I will do my backup, which are the are the dumb, dumb hosts in the diner

who don't have a sense enough to be scared when Bernard starts like speaking in unison with them and pulls a chain off the back of the truck and they're like, this is fine. Those guys. The other thing I'll say when he's like, try to pull the gun, you'll never get out quick enough.

I feel like you still pull the gun. You still try. You still pull the gun. Yeah, you still try. I mean, I don't. I don't know. Oh, man. All right.

Next week, the episode is called Generation Loss. Generation Loss is a loss of quality between subsequent copies or trans codes of data, anything that reduces the quality of the representation when copying and could cause further reduction in quality on making the copy of the copy and can be considered a form of generation loss. I also want to point out that the entire point of Moses Wanda in the Desert was the generation lost. And they're like, yeah, right, next generation can go. great point love that there's a double meaning in it

anything else you guys want to say from like the after episode you know a little featurette or any future future next time on Westworld stuff I gotta be honest haven't even watched it great

I can't wait I'm excited for it seems Charlotte Hale we'll speak I'm excited for that I've been watching these shows generally on like Thursday or Friday and the amount of just anxious anticipation I have

between when I watch it and when like the rest of the world engages in it has been just about too much for me to bear. So I don't even watch the trailer. I pretend it doesn't exist from the moment we stopped doing this podcast until I watch it later on.

Excellent. All right. So we'll move back next week with episode four, season four, episode four. Westworld seems to be good again. We're all delighted to be here. I think that that's a big takeaway

from this episode, by the way. Westworld's back. Westworld is back. Biggest twist of all. The biggest Westworld twist of all is that it is back. I've heard from a number of people who stopped watching it. They're like, I hear it's good again. Should I watch it?

Yeah. Watch it. And then listen to our podcast. Email us at Harris Bodysuit at gmail.com. We got so many good email. So please keep emailing them. I read them all. I love them all.

And we'll be back next week. Carlos Chirboga, our fantastic intrepid producer, will also be back next week with us. and thank you all for listening. We'll see you then. Bye. See you later. I'll never forget you.

Stay by bye, Aubrey. Bye, bye.