What “matters” in ‘Westworld’?
OCTOBER 24TH, 2016 — POST 294
Spoilers for S01E01-S01E04 of Westworld below.
Maeve Millay — the madam of Sweetwater’s brothel — gets the last line of Westworld’s fourth episode ‘Dissonance Theory’. “None of this matters!” Maeve triumphantly exclaims before lip-locking with one of the more notorious bandito hosts in the park Hector Escaton, a man she had only just talked out of ransacking her brothel as he had done the last time we saw this narrative instance pop in the first episode of the season.
Maeve’s nihilistic catch-cry is understandable given her personal revelations in this episode. She remembered being shot, being inspected by a strange being, finding no trace of a wound, and yet was able to find the bullet still inside her. In finding that bullet, Maeve has put part of this Westworld game together: time repeats, hosts have memories wiped, and she can’t ever really die.
In a sense then, none of “this” really does matter once the artifice of Westworld is exposed (albeit in a very narrow sense to Maeve). It’s the same nihilistic attitude that powers probably the most unlikeable character in the whole series so far Logan — the newcomer on a work vacation with a buddy who wants to play “black hat” and be a real Bad Boy™.
In operating on loops of time, the events of Westworld have no material consequences (practically speaking). The same cowboys can be gunned down, the same fair maidens “conquered”, and the same whiskey drunk each and every loop (day? Not sure just yet). Both Logan and Maeve in the final turn — host and newcomer alike — embody the thesis that actions are only rendered permanent when marked with time’s passage. With them both on Westworld’s clock, “none of this matters”.
Most notably, it’s only possible for one to embody this nihilism when Westworld’s clock is understood as opposed to an other time, a real time. For Logan, coming from the real world, that time is that which he is escaping in coming to Westworld. For Maeve, however, she has no conception of real time. Maeve is a robotic host presumably created in the park in much the same form we see her now. Her body doesn’t bear the marks of real time as Logan’s does: she doesn’t grow stubble on her face nor notices deepening crow’s feet around her eyes in the mirror each morning, year on year on year on year. No. Her sense of real time is built exclusively from shards of memory, memories that bolster a conviction that this very moment has been lived before.
As such, it is only those characters that are able to see themselves outside of the linear march of time — whether inherited like Logan’s or constructed like Maeve’s — who may act nihilistic but who also pay the highest price for nihilism. Because once time is identified as circular in opposition to a real linear time, all consequences become internal, marked against each individual’s time. Logan will forever have a week of his life (and presumably weeks given he’s somewhat of a veteran of Westworld) where he fucked and killed a bunch of robots, even if those robots will remain unfucked and unkilled once he leaves. The irony should be clear: things only start mattering once they’re perceived to not.
The more enlightened characters understand this. Episode 4 begins with Dolores remembering the brutal killing of parents. When Bernard asks if she would like him to remove the memories, she refuses. The loss and the pain, she argues, are the only remnants of her parents she has. The Man In Black similarly acts from an understanding that the stacking of temporal loops are in fact marking linear time he can’t help but inhabit. He appears to be gaming these loops from years of learning how they ought to unfold, allowing one loop to get him closer before resetting and continuing on with the unfurling of the next identical loop. In a world where “None of this matters”, those that succeed inherently move in the knowledge that time is always marked permanently and irreparably.
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