Westworld Season 1 Episode 4 Walkthrough and Explanation
Dolores: “My parents, they hurt them.”
Bernard: “Limit your emotional affect please.”
Dolores: “Then they killed them. Everyone I cared about is gone. And it hurts, so badly.”
Bernard: “I can make that feeling go away if you’d like.”
Dolores: “Why would I want that? Pain? Their loss? It’s all I have left of them. You think the grief will make you smaller inside, like your heart will collapse in on itself, but it doesn’t. I feel spaces opening up inside of me. Like a building with rooms I’ve never explored.”
Bernard: “That’s very beautiful…” then
Dolores: “Can you help me?”
Bernard: “What is it you want?
Dolores: “I don’t know, but this world? I think there maybe something wrong with this world. Something hiding underneath. Either that, or there is something wrong with me… and I may be losing my mind.”
And with that you have just been slipped a Philosophy 300 level concept and idea and you didn’t even know it. Voltaire. John Stuart Mill. Heck… even some Kant, Locke, Nietzsche, Hobbes, … everyone really. All the philosophers that ever set pen to paper considered some permutation of this thought.
John Stuart Mill, said once, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.” And that my friends… that is why I adore the world of Westworld.
Episode 4 Revelations
The big revelations of episode 4 all had to do with the maze at the center of Westworld and it deals with everyone’s ‘deep unsettling feeling something is calling me, telling me there is a place for me, somewhere beyond all this…’ as Dolores tells William half way through the episode.
Dolores is set towards the Maze by Bernard – so that she might just be free at last. The man in black continues his journey onward towards the maze entrance and discovers a woman with a snake tattoo who is on her way to break Hector out of prison. The Man in Black frees Hector from jail and gets the story out the snake tattoo woman about how the tattoo came to be and we find out that it was a man named Wyatt that killed her family and all of her town. And seeing as though the actor that plays Wyatt is only in two episodes the entire first season, I’m guessing this Wyatt guy is going to be pretty important… once we meet him. Maeve, is also starting to come to terms with the fact that her memory is beginning to work and that this virus that Dolores gave her is really impacting her.
Dr. Ford – ‘I imagined it would always be balanced. Arnold preferred the hosts. He begged to keep the money away. In here we were gods. And you? Merely our guests.’
Theresa Cullen – ‘And how did that work out for Arnold?’
Dr. Ford – ‘Sadly he went mad.’
And with that we learn that Ford believes that his partner went insane in his pursuit of the perfect world, a perfect artificial world. Also, interestingly enough, we learned that the hosts in the park call the technicians Shades. Maeve was remembering the Shades from her AWOL night at the Delos headquarters. Shades are a part of Native American lore –
Hector: “Shades walk between worlds, they were sent from hell to oversee our world.”
Maeve: “I thought I was crazy. But I got shot here. And this Shade was standing over me.”
Hector, after pulling the bullet from Maeve: “What does this mean?”
Maeve: “That I’m not crazy after all, and that none of this matters.”
Which means that we have an Artificial Reckoning coming. I’ll talk more about that below.
New Things We Learned in Westworld Episode 4
The first three episodes seemed like each one was a wagon train of information. Just torrents of new revelations. With episode 4 though, things have slowed down a bit. But the show continues to go back to that one central question that we as humans should be grappling with day after day:
IS BLISSFUL IGNORANCE BETTER THAN THE TRUTH?
But we did learn that Dr. Ford’s plans for his new storyline are completely and totally out of control. Something on the scale that Westworld has never seen before. And if you think back to the original movie (which I discuss at length in the very first episode discussion) you will realize that there are several different parks or themes in the original park portrayed in the movie. Right? They were sort of like Disneyland areas of Tomorrowland, etc. Well, I personally believe that maybe next season (not this season, because I’ve checked all the shooting locations on record and there is no mention of this) we won’t be in Westworld, but rather we’ll be in tomorrowland… but I’ll detail that out below in the theories area. I’m getting ahead of myself.
And even more importantly we are learning the Dr. Ford may not be the friendly and benevolent creator we originally assumed he was. I think talked last week that we actually probably have Bernard and Ford backwards. Bernard is possibly the friendly creator and Ford the evil dictator at war with Bernard.
Current Westworld Theories
Oh I have so many theories at this point as to what is really going on. I’ve been wondering when I should drop a few of them on you… and I figure the doldrums of Episode 4 is as good a place as any.
Theory #1 – Westworld in Space Theory
Oh yeah, why go small right out of the gate? This theory states that like Signal, or Dark City, (um, spoiler material here folks, but if you haven’t seen Dark City or Signal already you never will.) the world of Westworld isn’t even on planet earth. It’s actually a space facility. Or maybe it’s out on the dark side of the moon? Regardless, this isn’t a earth bound park… and while we are at it, who’s to say that the creators are even humans? Remember that awesome movie Circle?!? That did presuppose human involvement at all.
Theory #2 – The Man In Black Wrote The Virus
When Rachel Wood was asked about the way that her character (Dolores) was treated by the Man in Black she said,
“It’s absolutely very rough, I don’t like gratuitous violence against women at all, but I would wait for the context in which it’s being used.”
So, if the Man in Black wasn’t raping Dolores in the shed (which was so obvious from day one, no? I mean… really?) then what was he doing? What if he was using the oldest host in the park as the longest running test of weakness of the androids? What if he has been reprogramming them systematically, looking for weaknesses and ways to get past their defenses? What if the Man in Black is actually a hacker – an Android Hacker – hellbent on getting to the inner workings of how things really are working in Westworld.
Theory #3 – Many Theme Park Theory
In the original movie we had Westworld (the west), Pompeii World (Rome), and Medieval World (Europe). What if we were to find out that similarly, there are two other park worlds we have never seen before? Maybe Nolan will direct us to the West for season one, Medieval Europe for season two, Rome for season three? I do think we could be seeing Dr. Ford building a new world with his enormous dirt movers in episode 4. Could be. But as I mentioned above there doesn’t seem to have been any filming done any other zone or archetype. But we shall see.
Westworld Season 1 Episode 4 Conclusions
Episode 4 was a good refresher of what we have been seeing so far. There really wasn’t anything enormous this week. Sure, sure… I ADORED the scene between Dr. Ford and Theresa Cullen, wherein Ford stops time – by forcing the Androids all around them to freeze. And then the enormous dirt mover coming over the mountain? Oh man, great scene. It was like something directly out of Inception. Well played Jonathan for your homage to your brother! Anyway, maybe next week we will get a little bit more about the inner workings of the park and the maze. But, I doubt it. This question about the maze and then, “WHY ARE WE PUSHING THIS BUTTON SO OFTEN” is going to be our season 1 hatch equivalence. We will be wondering what this maze is all about for some time to come. But I can’t wait to see what Dr. Ford has in store for us. See you next week.
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