It’s the next day (there is a scene with William asking Dolores about her dreams), so Lawrence could have been patched up and sent back in.
Something about how Wyatt has been waiting for Teddy to rejoin him.
Another thing about last week’s episode I haven’t seen commented on yet - when Theresa and Charlotte were having their private meeting about Ford, she specifically mentioned a “blood sacrifice” - the same phrase Ford used on Theresa just before having Bernard kill her. So I guess he’s got the whole place bugged?
Just watched a short Youtube video giving pros and cons on the William=MIB theory. The first part, the pros, almost had me convinced. Then I got to the cons and the last con in particular (6.27) was a stunner.
In Episode 4 William and Dolores are shown together and Dolores is stuck in a loop. Then we see the control room with Ashley in charge sending out a crew to retrieve Dolores to fix the loop. Later we see the MIB about to set off some dynamite. We switch to that same control room (unchanged in 30 years?) with Ashley giving permission for a pyrotechnics effect for the dynamite. Ashley looks exactly the same as in the earlier shot.
Now I’m more confused than ever. Those two scenes seem impossible to reconcile with a multiple timeline but there was some pretty convincing stuff in the first part (different logos, etc). Any thoughts?
At least insofar as he has a bug in all the hosts. Remember Hector was right there on the bed. I don’t remember if the behavior tablet said exactly what she did to him, but I imagine their sensors are still capable of picking up at least sounds around them even if their motor functions are stopped.
Yes. In the “modern” timeline, with MiB, etc. Dolores also appears to have broken out of her loop, and that could be what the control room scene is referencing rather than her incident when she’s with William. If so, it’s certainly deceptive editing. I believe we get flashes of Dolores’ “modern” break from the loop when she has her little seizures and looks around and is suddenly alone (sometimes wearing different clothes; in her William loop she’s wearing the pants and shirt, in the “current” one she’s still wearing the dress). I think she’s been on this same journey before, possibly multiple times, but at least once and probably first with William. I think she’s on it “now,” but it’s replaying in her head with memories of the previous time. Further, on the William journey, she had been to the town with the church before during the R&D phase of the park (where the labcoat people are teaching the hosts to dance and act more naturally), and so even on that visit with William she has flashes to what happened there before and gets confused. So what we’re seeing with Dolores is actually at least three different times. Before the park opened, in the town. The trek with William, the town is buried. Her “current” trek, where I think the town has been unburied again, so the earliest and most recent visions become harder to disambiguate. We’ve seen earlier in the loop where she seemed to be remembering snippets of previous iterations and adjusting (getting shot outside her house), reminiscent of the movie Edge of Tomorrow. Exactly when we’re seeing what’s happening with Dolores is very hard to know, but I think there are at least 3 major timelines/events of importance: the first, before the park opens, and something terrible seems to happen here; the journey with William, also seemingly early in the park’s life, something obviously must happen here, too; and “now”, which I’m guessing is something significant that Ford is either specifically enabling, encouraging, or straight-up orchestrating.
Troub’s post #705 gives some good ideas in answer to this.
But I still believe that most of the workers we see are robots (including the infamous hard-luck duo, Lutz and Sylvester).
There is something very odd about that map room. The first episode (I think) had a spectacular ‘pull-back’ shot, in which we began in a train and came out of the shot in the map room. I suspect I’m not the only one who thought we were watching confirmation that Westworld actually IS the map—that guests were somehow miniaturized, a la Fantastic Voyage, and were physically present on that big oval in that red-walled room.
The red walls seem like a clue, by the way, given that the red is so similar (but not identical) to the walls of the off-ballroom restroom in Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel. It can’t have been easy to get the look so close to that of the quintessential “things are not what they seem” setting. That the Westworld showrunners went to the effort seems telling.
Anyway, there hasn’t been anything else to support the Miniature theory, so I gave that up and attributed the pull-out shot to, well, an attempt to be cool rather than consistent. (Even given that Westworld’s every nook and cranny is being photographed by satellites or such, how could a shot beginning inside a Westworld train end up in the map room?)
But I still think there’s something going on with the map: how does it actually work? We never see the workers doing anything but gazing out at it. What are they seeing? If the satellites (or whatever) are actually beaming their data onto the relief map, could the robot eyes of the workers be capable of doing that zoom-in, so that gazing onto the relief map is, in fact, letting them see the guests and hosts? (And they, not knowing they are robots, assume that ‘anyone’ could see in this way…?)
…I’m content to wait a couple of weeks for the answers. 
I’m still convinced that we are seeing three timeframes (the present, 30 years ago, and longer than 30 years ago) but I’m not necessarily convinced now of the identity of the MIB. But as I said before I’m not invested in his identity: I’m just enjoying the ride. 
Oh I like the three-timelines idea. That does fit with what we have seen!
I did think that the MIB saying he had been married for 30 years was a tip-off to… something. I’m not entirely convinced he is William (the actors don’t look anything alike, 30 years wouldn’t completely change how a person looks), but there has got to be a connection between several characters describing different events that happened “30 years ago.”
While I know some of the more intense show watchers like the idea of simultaneous time periods and will be happy if something like that turns out, the vast majority of casual watchers, who don’t want to take notes and rewatch multiple scenes, would be mucho turned off by it. IMHO, it’s complicated enough as one timeline. Seriously doubt and rather hope that’s not the showrunners’ plan.
The Maveve story is starting to throw me off for the showbe because it feels unrealistic in the show universe.
The hosts are super supervised and nobody noticed her behavioural change or that she gets new code or that hosts around her are changing their narrative??
They noticed as soon as she killed the new whore. Speaking of which, so glad Lili Simmons is back on TV after Banshee.
I agree with this. I’m not interested in a show that requires me to follow outside sites to understand the plot. Game of Thrones is already complicated enough.
Exactly, like Lost with the Darma website etc. I don’t want to have to play detective to figure out what’s going on. I just want to relax, and enjoy my weekly escape.
It’s possible that when things are more revealed it’ll more come together. Outside sites are necessary to understand the theories before the answers are definitively given, but if the reveals are done well, I would think that just the show alone should be enough to follow what’s been happening. But I don’t know any casual watchers to ask. It would be interesting to hear from someone who’s been watching and not doing any outside reading about the show, but obviously no one like that would be reading a thread about the show.
They have been piling up a lot of mysteries, and been frustratingly ambiguous at a lot of places just in order to deepen mysteries, but I’m enjoying the show enough to just let it all wash over me. I really wish we knew more about the outside world, I think it would make some of the characters’ motivations make more sense. How much of the Westworld technology is used in the outside world? Have they truly eradicated diseases like someone mentioned offhandedly in one episode? Are jobs at Westworld enviable enough that techs would risk so much to protect their jobs?
So… robots programming robots? Robots programming themselves?
This show is going to be about the technological singularity, isn’t it?
One thought that just came to me … putting whatever huge amount of sensitive special project IP into a host that was becoming buggy, infected with whatever the self-awareness/Arnold thing was, in the context of what seems to be an upcoming uprising of the robots led by General Maeve … may have impacts.
As Sam Lowry said, I imagine that for uninitiated casual watchers the reveal(s) will pull it together in a “whoa” moment that will inspire re-watching…and the clues are there. I tend to look for these sorts of things, so I’ve noticed a lot of the clues on watching before I visit the fan sites (where I usually see even more things I did miss). I think it works for everybody. And they’re doing a really great job, in my opinion, of still maintaining some ambiguity and uncertainty; I can still see how almost any of the theories could work.
As for casual viewers: I was watching the new episode with my wife the other night, and when MiB stumbled on the old welcome-room host and recognized, and then mentioned being married 30 years ago, I let out a little “hmmm” noise. She asked me “what?” and I said “I really think for sure now that William and the Man in Black are probably the same person.” Her response: “Who’s the Man in Black?”
This week episode puts the theory William=MIB to rest because if I recall correctly Maeve was at the saloon when William arrived at the park and he refuse their services and came outside and met Dolores.
Or we know that MIB kiled Maeve and her daughter at some point before Maeve became the madame of the saloon.
We also see maeve in the Dolores flashback dancing in her town.
Thats another hit in the theory because Dolores is having flashbacks about the town. Shes with Wiliam so if we assume that was at the beginning of the park she would not have flashbacks and she has mentioned Arnold a couple times too.
So I think that theory is now dead with last episode.
Elsie already revealed that offline hosts are still recording even while “entertaining” the pervy staff in the Mesa’s sublevels.
“Robots building robots. Now that’s just stupid.” - Det. Del Spooner
Agreed. The reveal - when it comes, if it comes - could be awesome.
Well, that’s easy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX1BPItDcDo
Hmm. I’ll have to watch Ep 2 again to confirm that Maeve was at the brothel when William came in. He may have only met that other girl, the one who got decommissioned last week.