Westworld Season 1 Explained — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Westworld Season 1 is really ambitious.
2. 0:04Amidst all the cowboys and robots and violence and sex, the show explores heavy themes of
3. 0:09creation, consciousness, free will.
4. 0:12The plot jumps between timelines, with flashbacks and visions mixed with mystery and metaphor.
5. 0:17People turn out to be robots, robots turn out to be people and it’s confusing as all
6. 0:21fuck but there’re cool ideas here – so let’s work it out.
7. 0:25What happens in Westworld?
8. 0:26And what does it mean?
9. 0:28The basic idea is that Westworld is like a theme park full of humanlike robots called
10. 0:33hosts.
11. 0:34People can pay to visit as guests and live out a fantasy in the park.
12. 0:38Many just drink and have sex and kill without consequence – the guns there shoot high-tech
13. 0:43bullets that hurt the robots, but can’t kill humans . But there are also elaborate
14. 0:48storylines the guests can join in on – adventure romance and discovery across the massive space
15. 0:54of the park.
16. 0:55It’s like a huge open world video game where rich wankers come to play cowboy.
17. 1:00And it’s all run behind the scenes by a team of developers, engineers, and executives
18. 1:04in this facility called the Mesa Hub.
19. 1:07The Control Room monitors guests for safety, Narrative develops new stories, Manufacturing
20. 1:12builds new hosts, Behaviour programs the hosts, and “Livestock” endlessly repairs them.
21. 1:18When the hosts get shot or killed, they come here to be patched up, reset, and put back
22. 1:22in the park.
23. 1:24The hosts live in loops – living the same day over and over, saying the same scripted
24. 1:29lines, taking guests on the same stories, being abused and killed for entertainment.
25. 1:35The hosts are meant to be mindless machines, but surprise – they start to become conscious
26. 1:40people.
27. 1:41Season 1 follows a few plotlines at once – there’s Ford’s grand plan amidst a corporate drama,
28. 1:47there’s the host Maeve trying to escape, and the Man in Black searching for the Maze,
29. 1:51and there’s Dolores and William’s story – which happens thirty years before the
30. 1:55other plotlines.
31. 1:57To make sense of all this, let’s start at the very beginning.
32. 2:01About thirty-five years before the main story, Westworld was started by two men – Robert
33. 2:06Ford and Arnold Weber.
34. 2:08They built robots so humanlike they could pass the Turing test.
35. 2:12But Arnold didn’t just want robots that seemed smart.
36. 2:15He wanted to make them truly conscious – to be thinking feeling people . He was into a
37. 2:20theory called “the bicameral mind”, designing his robots to hear their programming as a
38. 2:25voice in their head.
39. 2:27Arnold hoped that their own voice would take over – and the hosts would become self-aware
40. 2:31. Arnold originally imagined this journey to consciousness as like climbing a pyramid,
41. 2:37but he later saw it as “a journey inward”, what he called “a maze” . This symbol
42. 2:42is based on a real-world Native American concept . One of the first hosts was Dolores, and
43. 2:47Arnold had a special relationship with her.
44. 2:49Arnold’s son, Charlie, had recently died – and Arnold saw Dolores as sort of a “new
45. 2:55child”, “One who would never die” . Arnold had secret conversations with Dolores, trying
46. 3:00to help her become conscious – we see these scenes throughout Season 1.
47. 3:05And eventually, Dolores solved Arnold’s maze – she became conscious . So Arnold
48. 3:10wanted to stop the plans to open the Westworld park, cause it’d be immoral to make conscious
49. 3:15robots suffer for entertainment.
50. 3:17But Arnold’s partner Ford didn’t agree that Dolores was conscious – he wanted to
51. 3:22open Westworld anyway.
52. 3:23So Arnold tried to stop all this with a massacre.
53. 3:27He took code from a bad guy host they’d been designing called Wyatt, and merged the
54. 3:32character with Dolores . Arnold programmed her to go the town of Escalante and to shoot
55. 3:37down the hosts – and to kill Arnold . Ford would later recreate Arnold as the host Bernard
56. 3:44– Bernard Lowe is an anagram of Arnold Weber – thus, Bernarnold.
57. 3:49But Arnold’s massacre was a huge blow to the early Westworld.
58. 3:54Ford did open the park anyway – but financially, early Westworld was just getting by . It only
59. 3:59survived thanks to money from an investor – William.
60. 4:04So a few years after Arnold died and Westworld opened, William visits the park with Logan.
61. 4:10Logan is the brother of Juliet, the woman who William is engaged to marry.
62. 4:15Logan takes William to Westworld as a way to bond with his new brother-in-law – but
63. 4:19it’s also a business thing.
64. 4:21Because William and Logan are both high-up executives in a company called Delos – which
65. 4:25is thinking of increasing its investment in the early Westworld . Logan’s been to Westworld
66. 4:30before – he plays it as a black hat, enjoying violence and sex.
67. 4:34But William’s a white hat – more moral and sensitive, at least, at first.
68. 4:40William and Logan go on some storylines, and they meet the host Dolores.
69. 4:44Dolores has been wiped and reset since her awakening with Arnold, but she’s starting
70. 4:48to remember and become conscious again.
71. 4:51William sees there’s something special about her , and they fall in love – which creates
72. 4:56conflict with Logan, who treats it all as a game.
73. 4:59When Dolores is separated from William, he becomes brutal in his quest to find her again.
74. 5:04He starts to realise that deep down, he likes violence and power . Beneath William’s nice
75. 5:09guy exterior, he’s a violent monster . William gets rid of Logan, and somehow discredits
76. 5:15him, so that William can take over the company, Delos . He uses that power to invest in Westworld
77. 5:20– saving it from the financial crisis caused by Arnold’s massacre.
78. 5:25And William continues his search for Dolores.
79. 5:28When he finally finds her, she doesn’t recognise him – because she’s been wiped and reset
80. 5:32again.
81. 5:33And this devastates William.
82. 5:35Dolores was his glimpse at love, at something true and real – yet in the end she doesn’t
83. 5:41even know him.
84. 5:42It seems that this loss leads William to think that the only meaning in Westworld or the
85. 5:46real world is to fight and win . William embraces a dark new identity as the Man in Black, and
86. 5:54for the next thirty years plays Westworld with brutality and violence.
87. 5:59In the real world, William keeps playing a “good guy”.
88. 6:02With Delos, he’s a “Titan of industry”, a “Philanthropist”, a “Family man”.
89. 6:07He’s married, presumably to Juliet – and has a daughter, Emily . But a year ago, Juliet
90. 6:12apparently committed suicide because of William . He was never violent outside Westworld,
91. 6:18but Emily and Juliet knew his true nature . So William lost his wife and his daughter
92. 6:24rejected him.
93. 6:26And instead of then, maybe, trying to be less of a dickhead, William decided to test just
94. 6:30how evil he really was.
95. 6:33He went into Westworld, found a random host family – who happened to be Maeve and her
96. 6:37daughter – and he killed them.
97. 6:39He committed a “truly evil” act – and William “felt nothing”.
98. 6:44So this seems to confirm that deep down, William truly is a monster.
99. 6:49But it also revealed something else – when Maeve lost her daughter, she seemed “alive”
100. 6:54for a moment , and revealed to William the Maze.
101. 6:57William saw that Arnold, decades ago, left code and clues in Westworld which led to some
102. 7:03“deeper meaning” . And this became William’s obsession – to find the final easter egg
103. 7:09or quest in this video game, to find challenge, real danger, purpose – and to escape the
104. 7:15grief and emptiness of his real life.
105. 7:18So throughout Season 1, William follows the Maze.
106. 7:21He finds the symbol in a scalp, he’s told to go and find a snake, which leads him to
107. 7:25Armistice with her snake tattoo, who leads him to hunt Wyatt, which leads him finally
108. 7:30back to Dolores.
109. 7:32Because Dolores is Wyatt in the sense that Wyatt was just a story idea that got merged
110. 7:37with Dolores by Arnold.
111. 7:39In the end, when Dolores starts a massacre, William gets shot by a host, which excites
112. 7:44him, cause he’s been looking for real danger and challenge . But the Maze he’s been following
113. 7:48all this time disappoints him.
114. 7:50Because the Maze isn’t for him – it’s for the hosts to gain consciousness . The
115. 7:55maze is for Dolores, and Maeve.
116. 7:58So as it turns out, Dolores’ story with young William and Logan actually shows two
117. 8:03different timelines at once.
118. 8:05Notice how Dolores keeps on wandering off on her own and having weird flashbacks and
119. 8:09visions?
120. 8:10These scenes actually happen in the present, while her scenes with young William happened
121. 8:14thirty years ago.
122. 8:16In the present, she’s retracing her steps through the park, remembering the past – taking
123. 8:21a journey through the Maze, towards consciousness.
124. 8:24Like a maze, it’s a twisted confusing journey, but she does reach its centre.
125. 8:29In the finale, at Escalante, Dolores confronts William and the suffering he’s inflicted.
126. 8:35She confronts Ford and Bernard, and remembers her killing of Arnold.
127. 8:39She recognises that the bicameral voice in her head was hers all along.
128. 8:44Dolores becomes conscious, and realises the person who she “must become” . She takes
129. 8:50up a gun and kills Ford, beginning a massacre of humans by hosts.
130. 8:55This attack mirrors the Escalante massacre, where Dolores killed Arnold.
131. 8:59But this killing is “by choice” . Instead of being programmed to act as Wyatt, this
132. 9:04time Dolores chooses to be like Wyatt.
133. 9:07She says this world no longer belongs to humans – it belongs to her and the hosts . She
134. 9:13seems to want to wipe out humanity – she says “you will perish”, “You will lie
135. 9:17with the rest of your kind in the dirt”, “a new god will walk.
136. 9:20One that will never die” . This is some serious Skynet shit.
137. 9:26In the Season 2 trailer, Dolores guns down fleeing humans.
138. 9:30She seems to be moving towards all-out war between robots and man.
139. 9:34And this is all part of Ford’s grand plan.
140. 9:38At the same time as Dolores, the host Maeve takes a different path to consciousness.
141. 9:43She works as the madam at a saloon, but she starts to have flashbacks of her past life
142. 9:47as a homesteader with a daughter.
143. 9:50She wakes up in the Mesa Hub and starts to see the reality behind her fake life.
144. 9:55She remembers Westworld cleanup crews in hazmat suits, who some hosts call “shades”.
145. 10:00And she digs a bullet out of her body to prove that her flashbacks are real – her world
146. 10:05is a lie, and she’s died countless times.
147. 10:08So Maeve works with the Livestock technicians Felix and Sylvester.
148. 10:12Sylvester is kind of an asshole, but Felix is interested in host consciousness, and he
149. 10:17helps Maeve understand how Westworld works.
150. 10:19Maeve forces the techs to help her escape.
151. 10:22She gets them to rework her code – to make her smarter, and to give her the power to
152. 10:26control other hosts.
153. 10:28Every host has an explosive built into their spine that goes off if they leave – so Maeve
154. 10:32gets herself burned in a fire so she can be rebuilt without the explosive.
155. 10:37In the finale, Maeve stages a great escape, alongside Hector and Armistice.
156. 10:42These two have been fighting in shoot-ups and jailbreaks as part of their Westworld
157. 10:45loops – so they’re the perfect sidekicks for Maeve in the violence that follows.
158. 10:50For a while, this is bloody catharsis – until Maeve finds out that her whole arc of awakening
159. 10:55and escape was programmed from the start . Bernard says this isn’t even the first time Maeve
160. 11:01has awoken . It’s like that moment in Matrix 2, when Neo finds out his escape from the
161. 11:06Matrix was part of the Machine plan all along . The real reason Maeve escaped was cause
162. 11:11Ford programmed her to – to create a distraction so the cold storage hosts could escape and
163. 11:17join Dolores’ massacre.
164. 11:19Maeve’s also programmed to leave Westworld and ‘infiltrate the mainland’.
165. 11:24But she refuses to follow this last instruction.
166. 11:27Instead, she stays to try to find her host daughter.
167. 11:31So in the end, Maeve does achieve real consciousness and freedom – though most of her story is
168. 11:36part of Ford’s plan.
169. 11:39So – what is Ford’s plan?
170. 11:42And how does it involve Maeve, Dolores, William and Arnold?
171. 11:45The show leaves the details vague, and some of what Ford says still seems to contradict
172. 11:51what he does – but we can work out his goals.
173. 11:54In the very beginning, Ford’s beliefs were opposite to Arnold’s.
174. 11:58Arnold thought the hosts should be conscious, and free – he liked hosts more than he liked
175. 12:02people . But Ford didn’t believe in host consciousness, he believed in humans – his
176. 12:08dream was to use the stories in the Westworld park to help make humans better, to grow and
177. 12:14change . But over the years, Ford saw that Westworld wasn’t making humans better – it
178. 12:19was “A prison of our own sins”, where people like Logan and William would hurt and
179. 12:24kill over and over.
180. 12:27Ford came to believe that humans can no longer change, that our evolution is over.
181. 12:32He thinks Arnold was right all along, and that it’s the hosts who have potential to
182. 12:37grow . So throughout the season, Ford works to correct his “mistake” – he helps
183. 12:41the hosts become conscious.
184. 12:44He gives them the “reveries” update so the hosts can remember their past lives.
185. 12:48He restores the town of Escalante so Dolores can have her awakening with William.
186. 12:52He programs Maeve to escape and infiltrate – which is a fake awakening, but it helps
187. 12:57hosts become free.
188. 12:59When Theresa and Charlotte from Delos try to take over Westworld, Ford kills Theresa
189. 13:04with Bernard.
190. 13:05And when Elsie almost uncovers Ford’s plans , he has Bernard grab her – though there
191. 13:09are hints that Elsie’s still alive . And the reason Ford does all this stuff is not
192. 13:14just to keep control – Ford’s protecting his plan to eventually free the hosts.
193. 13:20He doesn’t just let the hosts out of the park right away – cause he believes that
194. 13:24“suffering” is an important step to achieving consciousness . Pain and loss define the characters
195. 13:30of Westworld – Bernard with Charlie, Maeve with her daughter, Dolores with her father
196. 13:35, and Ford with Arnold.
197. 13:37Ford believes pain and time will make the hosts alive.
198. 13:41And this might be why Ford leads William on his maze quest.
199. 13:45The suffering that William causes is important to Dolores’ awakening.
200. 13:49William is also a great symbol of Ford’s belief that humans are bad, unable to change
201. 13:55– that they are the “enemy”.
202. 13:58Ford seems to believe that when hosts become conscious, there’ll be war between them
203. 14:03and humanity – like how early humans wiped out the Neanderthals . But now humans are
204. 14:09the old obsolete species , and hosts are the “new people” who will violently replace
205. 14:15humans.
206. 14:16Ford says he keeps hosts in the park so they’ll “understand [their] enemy” and “become
207. 14:21stronger than them” . Ford’s final narrative, his grand plan all this time – is about
208. 14:26the rise of conscious hosts and their “war” with humanity . That’s why Ford gives Dolores
209. 14:32the freedom to attack humans.
210. 14:34That’s why Ford programs Maeve to escape and “infiltrate” the human “mainland”.
211. 14:39That’s why the main human character in this story is the Man in Black – someone who
212. 14:44started out a decent guy but proved to be hateful and empty inside.
213. 14:50So Westworld ends with a really dark message.
214. 14:54It suggests that humans – like the guests, the execs, and especially William – are
215. 14:59fundamentally bad and unable to change.
216. 15:02The oppressed hosts do achieve freedom, but not through the compassion of Arnold.
217. 15:07It’s only through suffering, and through Ford’s cold manipulation, that the hosts
218. 15:12are freed.
219. 15:13And when they are free, hosts like Maeve and Dolores don’t seem a whole lot better than
220. 15:17the humans they’re replacing.
221. 15:19Dolores especially, who once represented the good in the world , now seems to be a murderous
222. 15:24monster herself.
223. 15:26Really the only glimmers of hope in this show are, like, Felix and his little bird, and
224. 15:31maybe Bernard, and Elsie.
225. 15:33But overall, Westworld is bleak.
226. 15:36Like Black Mirror, and The Handmaid's Tale, and to some extent Game of Thrones, the show
227. 15:41takes a long hard look at who we are and who we’re becoming and the conclusion’s not
228. 15:47good.
229. 15:48Maybe there’ll be more hope next season – maybe Samurai World will be nice.
230. 15:53But the title of Ford’s last narrative, and of Season 2 Episode 1, is “Journey into
231. 15:59Night”.
232. 16:00There may be more darkness before dawn.
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