# Westworld - premieres Sunday (show spoilers as airs) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 1, 2016, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413 "2016-10-01T21:12:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 41
**Author:** ![Accidental\_Martyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/802 "2016-11-29T06:05:52Z")
> [@Algernon](#): > > Well, I suppose they could’ve un-buried the church and village. Though it seems to me it’d be a whole lot easier to re-build it than un-bury it. Regardless, it would resolve my confusion with an elderly MiB entering an un-buried church. I thought that huge earth moving machine thing we saw a few episodes back was uncovering the town since it was going to be used in Ford’s new narrative. Ford was watching it when Theresa came to meet him before they had the discussion about Theresa coming to the park when she was a child and we see Ford control the hosts waiting on them by waving his finger. ---
**Author:** ![Accidental\_Martyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/803 "2016-11-29T06:16:27Z")
The big earth moving machine is a real thing. (It was shown in episode 4.) > **[Westworld: Dr. Ford's Gigantic World Sculpting Machine Is A Real Thing - /Film](https://www.slashfilm.com/547382/westworld-dr-fords-gigantic-world-sculpting-machine-is-a-real-thing/)** > > In Westworld, we see a gigantic machine that Doctor Ford uses to literally change the landscape of Westworld. This machine actually exists. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/804 "2016-11-29T11:18:33Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > For some reason the Board and the MiB wants to release the hosts/host technology into the real world. Remember that we have no idea what the real world is like. It can be anywhere from a utopia to a wasteland. Given what Ford was saying, probably the latter: [QUOTE=Robert Ford] We destroyed and subjugated our world. And when we eventually ran out of creatures to dominate, we built this beautiful place. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Honey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honey/32/5074_2.png) [@Honey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honey)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/805 "2016-11-29T12:41:25Z")
> [@Accidental\_Martyr](#): > > The big earth moving machine is a real thing. (It was shown in episode 4.) > [Westworld: Dr. Ford's Gigantic World Sculpting Machine Is A Real Thing](http://www.slashfilm.com/westworld-dr-fords-gigantic-world-sculpting-machine-is-a-real-thing/) How do you excavate a town that’s been buried, without damaging the buildings? That Bagger 23 machine would level everything is seems. ---
**Author:** ![JeffB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeffb/32/188_2.png) [@JeffB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeffB)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/806 "2016-11-29T13:55:06Z")
Up until now, I wasn’t convinced that William = MiB, but after this episode I am. My prediction on how this plays out: Logan said that his family’s company was thinking of investing in Westworld and that he and William are there not only as a bachelor party style vacation but to check out the park. When there vacation is over (which Logan may or may not survive), William goes back to the outside world and marries Logan’s sister, gets control of the company, and invests in the park (becoming a board member). He comes back to the park each year for the next 30 years until his wife kills herself and he fully becomes the MiB. Ultimately, he’s trying to “find” Delores again. ---
**Author:** ![Honey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honey/32/5074_2.png) [@Honey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honey)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/807 "2016-11-29T14:24:52Z")
> [@JeffB](#): > > Up until now, I wasn’t convinced that William = MiB, but after this episode I am. My prediction on how this plays out: > > Logan said that his family’s company was thinking of investing in Westworld and that he and William are there not only as a bachelor party style vacation but to check out the park. When there vacation is over (which Logan may or may not survive), William goes back to the outside world and marries Logan’s sister, gets control of the company, and invests in the park (becoming a board member). He comes back to the park each year for the next 30 years until his wife kills herself and he fully becomes the MiB. Ultimately, he’s trying to “find” Delores again. Dolores gets reprogrammed and William comes back over and over hoping to break her out of her loop, but can never successfully get her to break free, like she did 30 years ago. He takes her to that barn over and over to get “reacquainted”, but can’t get through to her. He’s hoping the maze is the secret to this deeper level. ---
**Author:** ![Algernon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a183cd/32.png) [@Algernon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algernon)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/808 "2016-11-29T14:25:32Z")
> [@JeffB](#): > > … (which Logan may or may not survive) … Is this speculation about Logan not surviving something new? What is the evidence for it? I was under the impression that the crisis in the park 30 years ago was the death of Arnold. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/809 "2016-11-29T14:40:07Z")
> [@Algernon](#): > > Is this speculation about Logan not surviving something new? What is the evidence for it? > > I was under the impression that the crisis in the park 30 years ago was the death of Arnold. Maybe not though. Logan is aware of rumors of Arnold’s death which presumably happens before the place is open to the public. Logan dying as a guest from a prominent family would be big news. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/810 "2016-11-29T15:38:58Z")
> [@Algernon](#): > > Is this speculation about Logan not surviving something new? What is the evidence for it? > > I was under the impression that the crisis in the park 30 years ago was the death of Arnold. I was under the impression it was some sort of wider “critical system error”. Unless the death of Arnold at Dolores’s hands is what they are talking about. Here’s a question: Greeter Angela, seemed pretty self-aware of her role as a “host”. Although I suppose if they can program them to be Olde West prostitutes, they can program them to be slutty robot concierges. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/811 "2016-11-29T15:41:21Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I was under the impression it was some sort of wider “critical system error”. Unless the death of Arnold at Dolores’s hands is what they are talking about Yeah, I used to think that Logan’s death, by possibly Dolores, was the 30 years ago critical system error, but now I feel that it may be Arnold’s death that is the system error and that they’ve covered that up so that the entire park wouldn’t have been shut down. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/812 "2016-11-29T15:54:32Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > I agree with these, but I’m unclear on what’s going on in the current day. She was assaulted by MiB and then…what exactly? > > Is she alone? The scene in the control room about a host wandering off that seemed to be contemporary with William and Logan–didn’t they say that she was with a guest? We thought they meant William, but that was obviously deceptive editing, cutting from her reverie/flashback to the present. What was she really doing then? I think she’s alone, but she’s basically recreating what happened with William and Logan. We saw with Maeve that sometimes when the hosts remember they end up doing the same thing (slashing the throat). So she really did wander off again, which is why security mentioned it. > [@msmith537](#): > > I was under the impression it was some sort of wider “critical system error”. Unless the death of Arnold at Dolores’s hands is what they are talking about. It had to be something big, because why did they abandoned so many old levels of the park? I’m thinking it will be covered in Season 2. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/813 "2016-11-29T16:11:24Z")
> [@Sir\_T-Cups](#): > > Then she rejects him and he spends the next 30 years being pissed about it and messing with her at any point he can She musta made fun of his tiny hands. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/814 "2016-11-29T16:14:40Z")
The three critical points that I keep returning to are: 1. the original conflict between Arnold and Robert, where Arnold wants the hosts to be sentient, and Robert wants them to be puppets he can control completely. This somehow results in the death of Arnold, possibly due to the machinations of Robert. 2. Dolores’ first encounter with William 30 years ago, where he senses some sort of sentience still within Dolores. 3. MiB (aka William) encounters Maeve and her daughter, kills them, but senses that Maeve also has that spark of sentience. This leads to the present timeline, with MiB somehow seeking the source of sentience, or how to awaken the hosts. Or at least some of them. For what reason? Damfino. Meanwhile, Robert is playing God all over the place. As usual. Anyway, that’s my take on this tangled web. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/815 "2016-11-29T16:15:56Z")
That’s good! ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/816 "2016-11-29T16:48:16Z")
My biggest problem right now (besides the unlikelihood of this all making sense at the end) is that William/MiB is a complete idiot. _We_ know that he’s right about Dolores and Maev, but he’s acting without any real justification whatsoever. He’s been told over and over again that the park is _designed_ to suck people in by playing to their fantasies and desires. Dolores was _made_ to be the love interest for someone like William, and I think he’d have fallen for her just as hard and be just as convinced that she’s conscious if she’d never gone off script. So she makes occasional vague statements or reactions that seem to indicate slightly more awareness of her host-status than the other bots (but less than that shown by the greeter-host when he first arrived). So what? It’s nothing that couldn’t be part of her script. Siri drops hints that she’s a self-aware robot when I ask her about herself, but she’s not; those are just jokes and easter eggs written by humans for her to say. But William “knows.” He can tell that her love is real. He can tell that Maev was really grieving when he killed her kid. Yeah, right. I saw exactly the same emotions that he did on my screen, but I don’t think that means the pixels in my iPad are sentient. Hosts are just a more sophisticated display mechanism. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/817 "2016-11-29T17:01:56Z")
Rationally ‘knowing’ that they are merely computers with programming and also being confused as to their own sentience or reality is not mutually exclusive. In fact, it’s the core question at the heart of the show - what is sentience? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/818 "2016-11-29T18:36:04Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Rationally ‘knowing’ that they are merely computers with programming and also being confused as to their own sentience or reality is not mutually exclusive. In fact, it’s the core question at the heart of the show - what is sentience? It’s a \*boring \*core question. I want to see tension and drama and robots-gone-wild mayhem. I couldn’t care less about the navel-gazing deeeeeep philosophy on the nature of consciousness. ---
**Author:** ![oft\_wears\_hats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7993a0/32.png) [@oft\_wears\_hats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oft_wears_hats)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/819 "2016-11-29T18:48:42Z")
Fantastic episode. I kind of want Bernard to be alive; perhaps he got a guest-safe gun and coded himself as a guest so he couldn’t be killed by it. I like the idea that Bernard has finally outsmarted Ford. But a fakeout would still be cheesy, and the show looks poised to shift from Bernard into “cloud Arnold”, which is a better narrative turn than Bernard’s death being faked. William is looking like he’s the MiB, but there’s some oddness to it. He starts carrying himself like the MiB after he slaughters the camp. But in the final scene, Dolores breathes “William?” when she exits the lab, and is then unnerved to see the MiB instead. So the MiB is either not William, or Dolores was immersed in a fond memory of William only to be jarred back into the present by seeing him as the MiB. Or perhaps she doesn’t know that William is the MiB, which is supported by him noting that she doesn’t remember him in 101. > [@hajario](#): > > For some reason the Board and the MiB wants to release the hosts/host technology into the real world. Remember that we have no idea what the real world is like. It can be anywhere from a utopia to a wasteland. > [@MrDibble](#): > > Given what Ford was saying, probably the latter: A few episodes ago, the MiB tells Teddy about the world outside Westworld. He makes it sound more like a utopia of sorts, or at least a post-scarcity society. Something about everyone getting everything they need (“a fat teat for everyone to suckle from” or something). I take Ford’s statement more as an acknowledgement that there are no more threats to human primacy, not that all animals are extinct. > [@Algernon](#): > > Is this speculation about Logan not surviving something new? What is the evidence for it? > > I was under the impression that the crisis in the park 30 years ago was the death of Arnold. I think the crisis was a combination of Arnold’s death and a bloody host revolt. Remember how Ford tells Dolores how she tried to “destroy this place.” Not to mention the bodies strewn about the abandoned lab under the church. I think Dolores and/or other hosts got violent in the lab, probably as a consequence of Arnold’s experiments, then Ford or Delos had the town buried to cover it up. That, or the burial was actually Arnold’s doing and that’s why Ford has excavated it. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/820 "2016-11-29T18:59:00Z")
But come on! Would it not bother any of the MiB=William people that young Anthony Hopkins is actually Anthony Hopkins with computer youthening but young MiB is a completely different actor? It would be like a magic act that uses camera cuts. ---
**Author:** ![oft\_wears\_hats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7993a0/32.png) [@oft\_wears\_hats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oft_wears_hats)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413/821 "2016-11-29T19:02:50Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > But come on! Would it not bother any of the MiB=William people that young Anthony Hopkins is actually Anthony Hopkins with computer youthening but young MiB is a completely different actor? It would be like a magic act that uses camera cuts. I get the feeling that you’re kidding, but younger Anthony Hopkins only appears in brief moments, whereas William has tons of screen time. Something tells me that multiple scenes of CGI-youthened anybody would look strange, unconvincing, and offputting. Also, I’m pretty sure that kid-Ford isn’t a CGI’d Anthony Hopkins. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413.md?page=40) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/westworld-premieres-sunday-show-spoilers-as-airs/767413.md?page=42)