The Host With The Most: Westworld, Episode 7
Peacocks, Mad Hatters, and blood sacrifices.
The Mad Hatter
We learned a few episodes back about Bernard’s affection for Lewis Carroll’s Alice books when he gives one to Dolores to read. This week we open with him dreaming of reading to his son Charlie, who we know from earlier episodes died years before, and they’re discussing a passage that involves the Mad Hatter and a reality where “everything would be what it isn’t.”
We immediately transition to the usual beginning for a Westworld episode, which is a tech questioning a host about its perception of events. Today’s interviewee is Hector, who has had a disturbing conversation with a guest who suggests that he’d like to carve Hector up and take a piece of him home as a trophy. Hector offers to relieve the guest of one of the guest’s own body parts as an alternative, which doesn’t go over too well with management. “Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” Bernard asks, a familiar refrain at this point. But the conversation is interrupted by another tech, and Bernard’s realization that Elsie is missing, though a colleague notes that she “started leave today.” He later tries to contact her and can’t, but recalls her last communication, wherein she indicated that Theresa was smuggling host data out of the part. He no longer trusts Theresa, but still loves her.
Elsewhere, Theresa is grappling with problems of her own. She goes to visit board member Charlotte Hale, who is in her room, having sex with a host (Hector, as it turns out). We learn that A) Delos is primarily interested in Westworld IP and believes that Ford is the only one who has access to all of it; B) they fear that if they alienate him completely or too abruptly, he will erase the IP (redundancies and multiple backups apparently don’t exist in Westworld); and C) Charlotte is a meanie. “I like you,” she tells Theresa. “Well, not personally, but I like you for this job.” Subtlety is not her strong game. But they do agree on one thing: “we need to demonstrate just how dangerous Ford’s creations can be.” There needs to be “a blood sacrifice.”
New Territory
It would probably be inaccurate to say “meanwhile” at this point — especially if the widely popular theory that we’re looking at two different timelines is to be believed — but elsewhere, Lawrence and William are playing cards on a train bound to… unclear. William admits to Dolores that although Logan dragged him into all this, he has his own motivations for wanting to be in Westworld. But he also feels compelled to tell her about his fiancee. He tells her he will help her find the place she’s looking for, “but I can’t stay.” She is visibly upset and storms off, and we see a sequence that could be clipped from a traditional western epic, with a string-heavy soundtrack. William, immediately regretting the rejection chases her and, and unable to take it any longer, kisses her. Boy chases girlbot, boy gets girlbot.
Then they presumably have sex, but we don’t see it because Westworld is weirdly chaste in some parts and full-frontal everything in others. Maybe this is intentional: the hosts are the most physically exposed in Westworld headquarters.
In the postcoital glow of the sex we didn’t see, William confesses to Dolores that he’s beginning to like it in Westworld — not because it allows guests to appease their lowest selves, but because he thinks it allows them to reveal their deepest selves. I’m not sure it’s an either/or situation, but William needs a way to rationalize around the more unpalatable aspects.
Leveled Up Maeve
Back at the Mariposa, smarter stronger Maeve is not having the player piano’s dumb contemporary covers, and shuts it off. She’s also not having any of this other bullshit and crankily begins her usual dialogue with Clementine until she suddenly realizes that she’s said these things before. So she asks Clementine about her about her nightmares, recalling a previous conversation. Clementine freezes but Maeve does not. Did the techs disable WW HQ’s ability to freeze Maeve along with all of the other hosts? How do they not know that Maeve is going off script? (Maybe Ford knows?)
The techs come in to cart off Clementine, and for the first time Maeve, pretending to be frozen, is fully aware that they’re there.
Clementine reappears shortly in a room with Ford, Bernard, Theresa, Charlotte, and Theresa’s head of security, Stubbs. She is being manipulated by a tech, who then out of nowhere beats her violently. Theresa can’t help but cringe at the violence, but everyone else remains calm. Then the tech and Clementine freeze and we realize the tech is actually a host, “coded to read as human.” The tech resets Clementine and they proceed to have the same conversation, after which Clementine turns on the host tech and beats him even more violently. Theresa and Charlotte point the fingers for this sequence of events at Ford and Bernard, who failed to catch the implications of the reveries in the hosts. They remember some things and respond to grudges, potentially violently. But they primarily blame Bernard. He may not have written the code, but it was his job to catch the problems. So he is fired.
Did the techs disable WW HQ’s ability to freeze Maeve along with all of the other hosts? How do they not know that Maeve is going off script?
The hosts are being reset to an earlier version of their software as a result of their findings and Clementine is carted off for a lobotomy, which inexplicably happens the old fashioned way — with a drill up her nose and into her skull. (You’d think this would just be a code deployment, but no.)
Maeve, having landed herself back in surgery, has demanded Felix take her to see Clementine and watches from the background. The surgeon performing the lobotomy is the loathsome tech who is aware that Maeve is more or less autonomous now and he know that there will be consequences. Later, he explains shakily to Maeve that he had no choice. Maeve doesn’t buy it and informs him that she is getting out of Westworld and he and Felix are going to help her. He says she’ll never survive outside. “You think I’m scared of death,” she replies. “I’ve done it a million times. How many times have you died?” Then, not to put too fine a point on it: “If you don’t help me, I’ll kill you.”
And Now for the Big Twist…
We knew that Bernard and Theresa were going to have to talk this out at some point, and he initiates it. He confronts her with the knowledge that she’s been smuggling data out of the park and seems sort of inexplicably okay with it. It seems that he cares more about preserving their relationship than preserving appearances. He also explains Ford’s history with Arnold and why memory is so dangerous for the hosts: when the hosts remember, they improvise.
Bernard takes Theresa to Ford’s cabin in the woods to show her what he thinks Ford is doing and we learn a bit more about Delos’s motives, which go beyond “tourists playing cowboy.” Under Ford’s cabin they discover a hidden diagnostic facility where Ford is apparently assembling new hosts, prototyped from existing hosts. One blueprint has a plan for a new Dolores model, and then Theresa spots another one: it looks like Bernard. Bernard goes blank. “This doesn’t look like anything to me” — the same line Dolores’s father used when shown a photo of a woman in contemporary Times Square. If you don’t already know where this is going, your fears are confirmed when Ford appears and talks about him as a host as if he’s not there. Bernard falters for a minute as he realizes that he is host and not human, and before he short-circuits, Ford puts him in sleep mode. Now we know why Ford knew about their relationship. “You’re a fucking monster” she says, as Ford goes into full sociopath mode. (Maybe because it’s Anthony Hopkins: I half expect him to croon, “What became of your lamb, Clarice?”)
Ford explains away his lack of empathy with a general dismissal of the superiority of human intellect, which he compares to the feathers of a peacock — beautiful, but largely useless except for mating purposes. He then corners Theresa, who realizes she has nowhere to run and tells her that he’s dealt with the board before and sometimes they test him, but they generally understand each other. Other people have tried to stop him before, too, and it didn’t end well for them. Theresa realizes he’s talking about Arnold.
But her ultimate horror comes next. “A blood sacrifice” is required, says Ford, echoing Charlotte Hale. And it’s going to be Theresa, at the hands of Bernard. Bernard calmly removes his tie, approaches Theresa as if she were a stranger, and bashes her head into the wall.
Because the writers made it clear from the beginning that part of the game is guessing who’s host and who’s human, I kind of thought something like this might happen a few episodes back. But I got it backwards. From my Episode 3 recap:
I thought maybe that was the case because Bernard’s character was more developed than Ford’s. Bernard had a backstory and family and empathy, and Ford seemed to spend most of his time talking to decommissioned hosts, not having friends, and metaphorically at least, rubbing his hands together and intoning MUAHAHAHAHA! But I was wrong. The writerly misdirection worked on me.
Or maybe Ford is a host too, and Arnold is still alive somewhere, conducting the whole sympathy. Maybe Elon Musk is right and we all live in a simulation. One where a player/entity has unlocked an Easter Egg planted by Satan where a reality show contestant is president. Who knows?
Previously:
Follow the Forward Chain: Westworld, Episode 6
Modest Little Loops and Whatever Devices: Westworld, Episode 5
Exploding Cigars! Westworld, Episode 4
The Voice of God: Westworld, Episode 3
