In the ‘Westworld’ recap, Maeve starts to remember her past, Logan and William go hunting and the Man in Black reveals a little bit more of his mission…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
One of the biggest lingering questions since ‘Westworld’ began has been where exactly is this massive theme park?
What looks like an Old West set could easily be in some desolate desert in the middle of nowhere Australia, but there have also been a thousand theories that perhaps this massive park is somewhere not on Earth. While that question continues to perplex us — albeit perhaps there was a clue this week, more on that later — the more interesting situation quandary involves the timeline surrounding the events that have been unfolding.
For the past few weeks, each episode begins with a telling conversation between Bernard and Delores.
Time and time again, Bernard appears to be digging deeper into Delores’ psyche, but up until now, whether he’s trying to find the bug that’s been plaguing the park or actually bring about self-awareness inside one of the hosts remained a mystery. That may not be a mystery any longer given his latest dialogue with his favorite host.
This week, Bernard questions Delores about her latest “narrative” where she’s remembering the death of her parents — now remember that is Delores’ loop because her parents die in every scenario — and she feels the pain that is brought on by that memory. When he asks if she would like him to take the feeling of pain away, Delores answers back by saying that the pain is the only thing that makes her know it’s real. It’s echoing the same emotion that Bernard displayed when speaking to his wife a week ago while they were remembering their dead son.
Pain was the only thing left, thus the only way Bernard could remember his boy.
The conversation ends with Delores declaring that something is wrong with this world and she now seeks to be free. That’s definitely going against the programming because if you remember several weeks ago, Delores couldn’t even understand the concept of being free. That’s when Bernard offers her the chance to play a new game called “the maze” and if Delores can find the center, than perhaps she can be free. The maze is the same thing the Man in Black has been searching for all season long.
The Man in Black believes at the center of the maze is the key to unlocking this world from fantasy to reality — perhaps turning the hosts from mere robots into sentient beings, self aware of their surroundings and the consequences of their actions. It would appear Bernard is sending Delores in pursuit of the same thing — to help the hosts “wake up” if you will and go from servant to master.
But when did these conversations take place? That’s the latest question to ponder.
With that said, let’s recap the latest ‘Westworld’ titled ‘Dissonance Theory’…
Damsel in Distress
The morning after Delores wandered into Logan and William’s camp, everybody wakes up to begin pursuit of the bounty that started this whole adventure. Delores is still disoriented from the events the night before where she fought back against the attackers, who normally murder her entire family and then assault her before the loop comes to an end. She wakes up with her gun still in hand — and perhaps this is a clue to her conversations with Bernard.
We’ve assumed up until now that Bernard is having these conversations with Delores in real time, like he’s pulling her out of the game on a day to day basis to find out at what rate she’s evolving. Now it certainly seems like these conversations are in the past and Bernard has set Delores out on a path to find the maze. Considering where this bounty hunting party ends up, it’s tough to argue with that logic.
Delores also has a conversation with William about her time growing up as the daughter of a cattle rancher — a particularly interesting barb about leading the herd and how worried she would get if one would slip away, but then realizing at some point that she was really just leading them all to the slaughter. It’s an interesting tale considering in this story, the hosts could readily be described as the herd always being led to the slaughter and perhaps Delores is the stray.
William decides to take Delores along with him as they go hunting for this outlaw and they end up in the same town where the Man in Black took his hostage Lawrence a couple of weeks ago to look for his wife and daughter to get to the next step in finding the maze. Delores encounters the same little girl — this time she’s drawn the maze in the dirt — and the two have a strange exchange. The words flick a light on in Delores’ head as she flashes to all sorts of scenes in rapid fire fashion — sitting by her own graveside, inside the church that looks suspiciously like the one that Dr. Ford is currently building, and another few moments either from her past or potentially the future.
Either way, Delores snaps out of it as she encounters a sheriff host, who asks if he could escort her back home. It seems hosts are expected to stay on the same loop and when they wander off that track, other hosts will try to help them correct course unless a guest gets involved. In this case, William intervenes and explains that Delores is with him.
Finally after a long hunt, Logan, William and the other bounty hunter track down the outlaw they’ve been searching for and they quickly get into a gun battle inside a small saloon while trying to apprehend him. William tells Delores to stay outside for her own safety because he can’t get hurt in there but she can. Like all hosts, when something comes up that’s part of “reality” like someone calling them a robot, they all just get a glassy eyed stare like nothing was said at all.
Regardless, inside Logan tackles the final few outlaws and captures the person they’ve been looking for before tying him up and tossing him over a horse for transfer back to Sweetwater. Along the path, the outlaw mentions that he’s actually part of another gang and if they let him go, the leader of the gang will pay them a much bigger ransom than what the bounty on his head will earn them.
Out of nowhere, Logan shoots the other bounty hunter and tells William that they are going to join this game now instead. It seems this particular outlaw has a connection to a bigger gang that will lead them on a whole new kind of adventure. When William protests, Logan threatens to shoot Delores, which then forces William to threaten to shoot the outlaw they just captured.
Logan is so proud because William is finally playing the game and now they are about to take a walk on the dark side.
One other note, Logan mentions how “the company” that he works for alongside William has an investment in Westworld and he hopes they increase that stake based on this trip. It’s an interesting mention considering something Dr. Ford says later in the episode.
The Next Clue
Things pick back up with the Man in Black this week as he continues to hunt for the maze that will lead him to the one story he’s never been told about this park. He even invokes the name of Arnold — the wayward creator of Westworld who was obsessed with making the hosts conscious and ended up dying inside the park instead — because the Man in Black believes he held the key to what he’s looking to find.
It seems the Man in Black not only wants to stay in the park forever, but he mentions how no matter how realistic things may seem on the surface, the fact that he can walk through bullets with no consequence still make this nothing more than a game. The Man in Black doesn’t want to play games — he wants this world for real and the only way to do that is the lift the veil between the hosts and the guests. In other words, the Man in Black wants the hosts to be on an even playing field with him (or so it seems).
The next clue that the Man in Black has to tackle to find the maze is where “the snake lays its eggs” and that leads him to a bandit named Armistice, who just happens to have an intricate snake tattoo wrapped all over her body.
It seems Armistice is on the hunt to break out her gang leader Hector and the Man in Black volunteers for the job. He makes a bargain with her — he will break Hector out of jail and return him unharmed and in exchange she will tell him the origins of the tattoo.
To accomplish his goal, the Man in Black takes his old pal Lawrence and they get busted for stealing horses right in front of the local Marshal. They are taken to jail where the Man in Black finally encounters Hector, currently rotting away inside one of the cells.
It’s there that the Man in Black hatches his plan courtesy of a match and some exploding cigars he had tucked away in his pocket. He blows the lock off the door, watches one of the Marshals blow up thanks to one of the cigars he took and then rescues Lawrence from a firing squad while killing all the other deputies.
The Man in Black returns Hector to Armistice and his gang and she finally tells him the origins of the tattoo. It seems when she was just a child, a gang of outlaws dressed in devil’s masks murdered everyone in her town including her mother. Armistice escaped by covering herself in her mother’s blood to fake that she was dead. From that day forward, Armistice has hunted down every member of that gang except the head of the snake — a man named Wyatt.
If you remember, Wyatt was the cult leader who was involved with Teddy’s back story that was just recently created by Dr. Ford. When the Man in Black gives chase to find Wyatt, he discovers Teddy tied to a tree, near death. Now the Man in Black is in pursuit of Wyatt because he holds the key to the next stage of finding the maze. It seemed until just recently that Wyatt didn’t even exist in this narrative so once again we are left asking, when exactly did Dr. Ford create this antagonist and place him in the park as part of Teddy’s back story?
Something to ponder as we move forward.
We also learn this week that the Man in Black may not be all bad when another guest approaches him and says how his foundation saved his sister’s life. Of course, the Man in Black threatens to cut his throat because this is his vacation. It’s clear the Man in Black is an important man outside of Westworld but judging by his actions, he doesn’t want to go home again.
Something Is Awry
Following last week’s harrowing encounter with the Axe Man host who bludgeoned himself to death with a giant rock, Elsie the programmer is very concerned about the behavior she’s witnessed in several robots throughout the park. She raises her concerns to Bernard, but he quickly dissuades her from digging any deeper. He assures Elsie that there’s no real problem with the hosts and instead suggests that she’s finding problems where they don’t actually exist.
Of course, Elsie might be one of the few people who realizes that the “glitches” happening throughout the park are symptomatic of a much bigger problem evolving in Westworld.
Meanwhile, Cullen and Bernard have their latest tryst before she’s set to meet with Dr. Ford over some of the growing problems inside the park as well as the latest narrative that he’s developing. It seems the mysterious board has concerns and as the head of quality assurance, Cullen is in charge of making sure no issues prevent growth and expansion of Westworld.
At the meeting with Dr. Ford, Cullen tries to play a strong hand by questioning his intent with this latest massive undertaking for a new narrative while more or less hinting that she could shut him down. Soon, Cullen finds out how little she actually controls when Dr. Ford wags a single finger and every host surrounding them freezes in time.
He then begins to reveal a few secrets to Cullen that will certainly keep her in line. It seems Dr. Ford set up the location for this meeting and Cullen is sitting in the exact same seat where she once visited the park as a child with her family. Dr. Ford is sitting across from her — the same place where her father sat. He then reveals that he knows about Cullen’s relationship with Bernard, which puts her in a very compromising position. Finally after Cullen mentions that a representative of the board would be coming to inspect the park, Ford trumps that by telling her that the person is already there.
Judging by the revelation earlier in the episode, it certainly would appear that Logan is that representative.
In the end, Cullen nervously lights a cigarette — an action Bernard noted that she only does when nervous — and Dr. Ford shows her just how much power he still exerts over the park that he helped to create.
None of This Matters
Over the past few weeks, Maeve (the proprietor of the brothel) had continue to have more and more flashes of her past and the occurrences where she’s “died” or watched other die around her. This week, Maeve starts flashing to scenes where she witnesses her own death alongside her friend Clementine, who also works in the brothel.
With each flash, Maeve sees the technicians clad in medical gear, cleaning her up and repairing what’s wrong after she’s been shot to death or mangled in some horrific way by any of the guests visiting the park over the years. In one particular memory, Maeve even remembers the technicians saying that they had to rush her back into the narrative and didn’t have time to remove a bullet slug that was still lodged in her abdomen.
Maeve is disturbed by the images she keeps seeing and she eventually runs to her room where she makes a crude drawing of the men in the masks who are hovering over her after each time she dies. After drawing the image, Maeve lifts up a board in her room to hide the piece of paper and that’s where she finds similar drawings from the past. Each one looks similar to the other.
Maeve then runs into that same image when she witnesses a Native American tribe marching through town and a little girl drops a toy that looks just like the men in masks that she sees in her dreams.
Later that day, Hector and his gang (the people who just left the Man in Black) arrive in town, destined for a shootout with law enforcement and to rob the safe inside Maeve’s brothel.
Rather than put up a struggle, Maeve confronts Hector and asks for answers about this image she keeps seeing. He explains that it’s called “the shade” — a symbol worshipped by this Native American tribe as “the man that walks between worlds — they were sent from hell to oversee our world”.
A striking explanation because Maeve is seeing the men in Hazmat suits who come in and clean up the scenes after a particular narrative is finished or those who repairs the hosts after they’ve been murdered. The “devils” in this case would seemingly be the human overlords that rule Westworld and treat the hosts as their puppets, meant to react to them purely out of their own enjoyment.
Meanwhile, Maeve also asks Hector to help her discover one more thing before they are both cut down in a hail of gunfire from the local authorities who have arrived to stifle the gang from robbing the place. Maeve shoves his knife into her belly — the same spot where she remembers being shot yet there is no scar. Hector digs into her bell with his fingers and when he retracts them, he’s got a slug in his hand. The same slug those “devils” failed to pull out when she got shot the last time.
Maeve ends up kissing Hector just before gun shots ring out, killing them both to reset the loop.
It seems Maeve is retaining more and more information and like she’s stuck in a “Memento” loop where she can only remember what she reminds herself about, she’s taking notes for the next time this narrative starts up. Eventually you have to believe, Maeve will remember it all.
As Elsie warned several episodes ago — could you imagine what would happen if these assholes ever remembered what the guests did to them? Given the current trajectory, it won’t be long until we find out.
‘Westworld’ returns next Sunday night at 9pm ET on AMC
