I agree. It’s a fun theory but it doesn’t really make sense.
The show clearly does things out of order (for example, it’s unclear when Bernard’s chats with Delores are taking place), but over all everything is happening mainly at the same time.
Right, it’s like guys going to Vegas for a bachelor party, and one of them being much more interested in partying and strip clubs and upset that others don’t want to party in the same way.
Unfortunately for those of us who don’t like the “multiple times” theory there really isn’t any indication that it’s NOT happening.
As much sense as it would make that it’s all happening at once, there are annoying little clues that it’s not.
Why didn’t Dolores mention the Hat Brothers when she was telling Bernard her hard time? The sweet disposition of Dolores would think of that sort of thing I would venture. It’s clear that she’s having flashbacks to various parts of her past where she has strayed and/or done bad things…who’s to say that this isn’t one of those times?
I’m really really hoping for a scene with everyone together in the next episode because I want this theory to be false soooo badly.
Yeah, but I thought Dolores going off loop was a result of her talk with Bernard - her quest to be free. They tried to reign her in at the town with Leonard’s daughter in it, but William said she was part of his “experience” so they let it drop. I’m not sure if the Leonard’s Daughter scene was before or after The Man in Black shot up the town, that’s the only time reference missing, but the daughter was still speaking to Dolores in the same tone she did to TMIB at the end of their conversation, like she hadn’t reverted to “hispanic daughter” yet.
For my next trick: How to spot run-on sentences!
…well of course, maybe your understanding of the whole “underlying narrative” might just be incorrect. 
Bernard said there was a critical failure at the park 30 years ago. Maybe that critical failure had something to do with the robots manifesting consciousness way back then. Or maybe not. 
So if we are watching two split timelines: then White Hat’s story is working towards the “critical failure” while Black Hat is working towards maybe “recreating the critical failure.”
Or maybe you are right and I am completely and utterly wrong. 
That has happened before.
Yeah, it can’t just be a society of almost sentient robots. Ultimately it is just a game. So I think it’s a nice touch when other players show up in places like the snake lady’s gang.
I didn’t catch it the first time watching, but when the park staff “shut down” the Sweetwater rampage (which I guess is a regular occurrence…like the Main Street parade in Disney World), they disabled the players guns and had a couple hosts tackle them after which the controller mentioned putting them in lock up and having one of the prostitutes slip them a key.
One thought I had was that at some point, William’s (White Hat’s) defense of Delores might venture into “taking this theme park a bit too seriously”. OTOH, look at how upset people get when their favorite character on Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead gets killed off. Now imagine you actually get to be part of the story.
Every MMO game has tons of MiB and Black Hats though. The guy who tried to reverse engineer every function in the game or the troll who just wants to go around blowing everything up and pissing off the guy who “wants to play it right”.
$40k a day does seem like a lot of money though, unless the economics of their world is different from ours. That’s like paying for an Everest expedition every day or so. At the end of the day, all you really get to do in the park is play cowboys & Indians and fuck robot prostitutes.
If White Hat William’s timeline was 30 years ago, from when the park was new, then it doesn’t explain his interaction with robots that are the advanced models of today. We saw a robot from 30 years ago, Michael Wincott as a grizzled cowboy having a drink with Ford, and it was twitchy and less realistic-behaving.
Oh, sure! I am totally prepared to be wrong here. The thing is, though, I feel like they are establishing certain foundations. I expect them to uproot a couple of them. For instance, someone that we think is human is secretly a robot.
But if you uproot too many of them, then suddenly nothing means anything. Like the suggestions that the whole park is actually VR, for example. If that’s the case, then the whole “robots that we created in order to rape and murder are now getting sentience, is this still morally ok? was it ever?” premise that underlies everything is sort of out the window.
So I guess I’m worried that if I’m just 100% wrong about what’s going on, then will there still be a compelling story going on? Or will it just be Season 3+ of BSG/Lost/other shows that shook things up for the shock value without having a story in mind?
One gets the impression Westworld is partly a “conspicuous consumption” kind of thing*. White Hat/Black Hat are both part of some large corporation, and the MiB has his own charitable foundation or something. And a few of the off-hand comments from the other Guests make it sound like they’re all wealthy as well. Which also explains why the park isn’t that crowded, its priced out of range for most people.
*(I actually thought the show obviously a spoof of this, before I found out it was based on a Crichton book from the 70’s).
…there are many ways that could be explained away though. The robot may have been in storage for over 30 years. Is it any surprise it was acting twitchy and less realistic-behaving? He was the second host that was ever built. But he might not have even seen service.
You are correct: if it turned out that the park was actually “VR”, then “nothing could mean anything.” But in the case of dual storylines (if true) then there are more than enough planted “seeds” that they I wouldn’t see it as being a “cheat.” From White Hat and Black Hat never meeting, to Maeve and Teddy not being around when White Hat arrives, to the place White Hat arrived bearing strong similarities to the place where the “retired” hosts are stored in the first episode, to scenes of the MIB with knife prompting both Maeve and Dolores to remember. That isn’t “uprooting” expectations. That is setting expectations. If they leave a lot of clues and those clues lead to something: that isn’t “nothing could mean anything.” That is “something meaning something”.
Compare that to “someone that we think is human is secretly a robot.” There has been no “set up” for that at all. And it would be much more of a “cheat” than dual storylines.
Well I enjoyed BSG and the Lost endings. And I loved how Lost finished. And Nolan finished Person of Interest exactly as it should have ended, and they followed their story through to a logical and beautiful conclusion, so I’m not too worried about where he and Joy will take Westworld. Even if that means there isn’t dual timelines going on (after all the show runners have said that they have left some things to be intentionally ambiguous). I’m just enjoying the ride.
Inflation. $40K is probably a weeks wages for a middle class person by then. A hundred years ago, you could buy a pretty good house for $1000 or so. So if this is 100 years in the future, I wouldn’t doubt that $40K will buy you a lot less than it does in 2016.
Ford (Hopkins) mentioned that the park is much older than 30 years, it’s only that the “incident” happened 30 years ago. The creaky-cranky robot from Ford’s office was an original model, but it could have been from 40 or 50 years ago (he never says).
It’s entirely possible that the robots are as uber realistic “then” as they are “now”
No. You are inventing a story that isn’t there. There is no reason to believe that there are split timelines. And the fact that MiB found Teddy tied to a tree after his encounter with Wyatt proves it as the Wyatt story line is new.
From a storytelling perspective, it doesn’t make sense to have MiB working on something 30 years before the other storylines as a setup for some big secret reveal.
I don’t doubt it.
I would estimate a trip to Westworld costs around as much in current USD as chartering a high-end yacht.
It does seem that anyone could easily cause way over 40k worth of damage in a day if given free reign.
We haven’t been told what year this is taking place and we haven’t seen anything of the outside world. So it’s reasonable for us to assume that when the characters say that this vacation is costing them $40,000 per day, that they’re speaking of real-world dollars. That we understand that this is an extremely expensive luxury and that only the richest can afford it.
Regarding the theory that William White Hat is the same person as the Man in Black, only 30 years earlier.
There are some of us who think this theory is false, and there are some viewers who think it is true. Or at least plausible.
I think the evidence leans towards false. I seem to recall that the theory arose amongst viewers as a direct consequence of the Westworld logo being different in the episode where William arrives into town on the train. True?
There is a lot intentional ambiguity, but other than the logo is there any strong evidence supporting the WWH= MIB theory?
Snake Tattoo Lady (Armistice) tells MiB that Wyatt killed her family when she was 7. So 20 years or so, but that’s probably 20 years in a made up back story - surely hosts don’t actually age. I’m trying to remember if she had the face tattoo in the first episode.
Still…$40k buys a lot of prostitutes IRL.
For all we know, she was repurposed 2 years ago from being a saloon girl. I’m sure the hosts don’t age. They are “made” at whatever age they are expected to be.
I know the whole field of “emerging AI consciousness” is purely hypothetical. But I wonder if it makes more sense, rather than programming the hosts so that they think they are real people in the Olde West, programming them so they are self-aware that they are actors in a theme park pretending to be Olde West folk. It seems like it would be a lot less traumatizing than all of a sudden finding out that your reality is false and your whole purpose is to be raped and murdered daily by rich assholes.
Why do the techs wear biohazard suits with gas masks when handling the dead hosts? I would think painters coveralls should be sufficient.
Who patches all the bullet holes and broken glass after the fake shootouts?
Well, if one is married and hiring a human prostitute is considered cheating and using a robot prostitute is not, I can see the appeal, assuming humans of the future still have many of the same hang-ups and moral relativism of humans today.
The new introduction of Wyatt is surely happening in the now, as we see Bernard and Ford talking about adding him in the context of the current timeline. William is learning about Wyatt in the park. Strong evidence that is it happening in the now as well.
Further, while MiB and William have not shared a screen, it sure looks like they will soon. They are definitely both converging on the same place. If they keep dancing around each other but not quite meeting, well, I guess that will leave a lot of ambiguity in place. If that happens, then maybe the hosts aren’t the only ones repeating actions.
(And I too am greatly enjoying this!)