Step into Westworld

Recently a new HBO show has premiered on TV. The show, Westworld, had a total of 8 million viewers on its first episode.

Westworld is a science fiction thriller TV series created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. According to IMDb, it's a drama, sci-fi, and western show and it's rated TV-MA. It’s rated 9.2/10 by IMDb, 9.1/10 by TV.com, and 90% by Rotten Tomatoes.

The first episode, titled The Original, premiered on October 2nd. Episodes air on Sundays at 8 PM. The episodes are one hour long and have no commercials.

Westworld is a futuristic old west themed amusement park intended for rich vacationers. The park is run by robots called “hosts”. The hosts allow the guests to live out their fantasies without consequences. All the hosts can be harmed and die but the guests can only be harmed. Guests can never be killed or aren't supposed to be able to be killed. A lot of the characters in the show are robots. Not only are most of the people robots but the animals are as well. Even the birds are robots.

The show has quite a few characters. The show focuses on the hosts, their creators, and the guests. The ones that are most important in my opinion are Dolores Abernathy who's the oldest host in the park, Maeve Millay who plays a host madam, the man in black who is a long time guest, and Dr. Robert Ford who is the creative director of Westworld. The guests William and Logan also seem somewhat important because of their effect on the hosts.

The main conflict of the show is that the robots are starting to become aware. Not only that but they are starting to override commands given by the programmers. Dolores started to question her reality after her father showed her a picture one of the guests left behind and said: “These violent delights have violent ends”. The words her father said to her seemed to do more than the picture. Dolores said this phrase to Maeve who then soon after started to become more aware and question things. Dolores has started to keep information from the programmers which isn't supposed to happen.

Maeve can even override the shutoff command and has started to wake up during repairs. Even though they aren't supposed to remember the interactions with the programmers and the clean up crew she did. She also remembered a few of the times she was previously hurt even though the past events aren't supposed to be remembered unless the programmers access the past memories. Maeve even woke up to question one of the people who is in charge of repairing the damaged robots.

There are a lot of questions that are raised in the show. Nothing is really known for sure about anyone so questions come up easily when characters say or think certain things. One of the big questions concerns who the man in black is. He is supposedly a long time guest of the park that's been going there for 30 years and after all those years he’s now trying to find a deeper level of Westworld. He has found a maze that could lead to it but doesn't know how to find where it goes. Other people have found the maze map as well. Even some hosts are aware of it. Another question is who is Arnold.

Some of the hosts have had conversations with what seem to be themselves but they all address Arnold. Dolores seems to be the most connected to Arnold. She hears voices in her head a lot that are most likely from him. In an analysis session, Dolores told Dr. Ford that Arnold conscripted her to help him destroy Westworld. Once Dr. Ford left the room Dolores addressed the voice in her head and said “he doesn't know” and she “didn't tell him anything”.

There are a lot of theories about Westworld. My favorites include theories about the maze and the man in black. A theory about the maze is that it's not an actual maze, rather it's a way of achieving consciousness for the robots. Getting to the “center” of the maze would mean the robots would become self-aware and break past the coding. This could be possible because Arnold was trying to create that for the robots. According to Dr. Ford “He wasn’t interested in the appearance of intellect or wit. He wanted the real thing. He wanted to create consciousness. He imagined it as a pyramid. See? Memory, improvisation, self-interest - and at the top? Never got there. But he had a notion of what it might be. He based it on a theory of consciousness called the Bicameral Mind.” So maybe the maze is the part he couldn't quite figure out previously. Maybe it's the key to consciousness.

There are some other possible clues like when one of the hosts told the man in black the maze wasn't for him meaning it was meant for the hosts or when Bernard told Dolores the maze might set her free. My other favorite theory is that the man in black is actually William. This would mean there are actually two settings in the show. The past and the present. There are things that prove this theory wrong and right. For example, when Logan and William are in Westworld the logo is different than when the man in black is there. In Dr. Ford's flashback to 30 years ago, it showed the same logo that Logan and William saw. It could be just because their paths never cross or that they are in different time periods. The man in black and William are a lot different but they could still be the same person. William is seen as a somewhat innocent guest who tries to help the hosts and doesn't like to kill them.

The man in black kills whoever he wants and does whatever he pleases and has no want to help anyone but himself. William does finally break and goes against his best friend in episode 5. William even kills some hosts. The man in black also says “Arnold almost took this place with him. Almost, but not quite, thanks to me”. This means the man in black played an important role in the past. Maybe William did something to save the park. If so it most likely has something to do with Dolores and the maze. Logan and William also never interact with the man in black. These are just a few of the theories that are on Reddit.

Westworld is set sometime in the future. They don't say exactly when but it seems decently far into the future. They are able to make life like robots so it has to be. The robots are almost indistinguishable from the humans. They can think for themselves somewhat but a lot of it is extremely detailed programming. The robots even bleed and think that they're experiencing pain, both mental and physical.

The show is actually based on a movie from 1973 with the same title. In the movie the robots malfunction and start to kill off the guests. It's basically the same premise but the show goes more in depth and looks a lot better. The show will most likely follow the same type of plot and start killing off the guests and possibly even the people who work at the park. Nothing is known for sure because it's still early on in the show.