Howdy, fellow humans who are definitely not robots who just think you’re humans, and welcome to our review of HBO’s science fiction series, Westworld. This episode answers many of our burning questions, such as: who’s stealing data from the park? What is Teddy’s history with Wyatt? Is it better to spread your stats evenly, or to min-max? I’m just kidding about that last one, we already knew min-maxing is the way to go. There will be heavy plot spoilers for episode six only. So rethink everything you thought you knew about Theresa, and rethink everything you thought you knew about Teddy, here are five thoughts on Westworld season one, episode six: “The Adversary.”
1. The Maze
On their way to track down Wyatt, Teddy tells the Man in Black some critical information about the widely coveted and mysterious maze. The maze is part of Ghost Nation lore. Ghost Nation is the fictionalized Westworld Native American tribe. In their stories, a man was killed over and over again, only to come back to life. He vanquished everyone who killed him, then built a house. Around the house he built a maze so intricate that only he could make his way through it. We learned in an earlier episode from Hector that Shades were also a part of Ghost Nation lore. The Shades were said to be entities from Hell who guided the living. Maeve discovered that these Shades are actually Westworld employees in hazmat suits who collect “deceased” robots to be cleaned up, brainwashed, and put back into their loops. It’s possible that, like the Shades, the maze is a real physical thing. We know for certain that there is a man who dies over and over again only to come back to life. There are a lot of men and women who fit that description: the Westworld robots, of course. The maze itself might not be a literal place, just as the Westworld laboratories aren’t literally Hell, but there is undoubtedly some kind of truth to these stories.
2. Elsie’s Revelations
Not to be thwarted by her nay-saying bosses, Elsie finds answers to two of the shows biggest questions, which themselves beg even more questions. Firstly, she found out that it was Theresa who was sending data from the park to a satellite via a the stray robot. The questions that remain are, what data did she send, to whom did she send it, and why did she do so? This twist is, on the one hand, so satisfying in how surprising it is, but on the other hand, it’s a little too out of left field. There have been absolutely no clues that would lead the viewers to believe Theresa was behind this. However, that could just mean that this mystery is somehow connected to some of the other mysteries, and we’ll just have to wait and see how.
Elsie also discovered that Arnold, Dr. Ford’s old partner and co-creator of the park who died by suicide years earlier, has somehow been updating the older model robots (which include Dolores, Maeve, and Dr. Ford’s creepy clone family), potentially allowing them to lie to or hurt employees and guests. Felix and Sylvester discover that Maeve has been changed to be more paranoid and self-aware. It’s likely this is what caused her to begin to question the nature of her reality, to set her whole journey of self-discovery in motion. Either Arnold isn’t dead after all, or he has a ghost, or someone is making themselves appear to be Arnold so they can surreptitiously start a robot revolution. There’s something poignantly sad in the discovery that Maeve’s internal revolution was programmed into her externally. She did not herself question her own reality, someone else programmed her to do so.
3. Dr. Ford’s Creepy Clone Family
What was that about Dr. Ford’s creepy clone family? I’m so glad you asked. A young boy I had previously assumed to be a park guest, who chatted with Dr. Ford and the Man in Black on separate occasions, turned out to be a robot clone of Dr. Ford as a child. Dr. Ford created his whole family as robots to live in a cabin in Westworld. This revelation alone is devastatingly sad and creepy, and as events unfold, it just gets creepier. First of all, when Bernard discovers the cabin and asks Dr. Ford why he would do this, Dr. Ford asks Bernard if he wouldn’t want to recreate his own son who had tragically died in childhood. This is the second time Dr. Ford has brought up Bernard’s tragically deceased child in response to Bernard questioning his actions, and for the second time, Bernard drops the subject immediately.
Continued belowLater in the episode, Dr. Ford, playing catch with the robot clone of himself as a child, discovers that their robot dog is dead. Dr. Ford interrogates the robot clone of – you know what, let’s call him “Little Ford.” Dr. Ford interrogates Little Ford, and Little Ford lies to him before telling him that Arnold had told him to kill the dog. Arnold said that the dog was designed to be a killer, and that Little Ford could put the dog out of it’s misery by killing it; it wouldn’t be able to kill anymore. If it weren’t for this scene, I’d be certain that Dr. Ford was the one pretending to be Arnold, reprogramming all the older-model robots, but it doesn’t make sense that he would tell his own robot child clone to kill his own robot childhood dog clone, and then ask him why. This also brings up the deeply sad thought that Arnold saw his own suicide this way; that he believed he himself was designed to harm others, and to stop him from harming others by killing himself was a way to put himself out of his own misery, so he could cease to be a killer.
4. You Think You Know Someone
Teddy is recognized by some union soldiers as someone who worked with Wyatt, the bad guy he and the Man in Black are hunting down. They capture them, and Teddy murders everyone, to which the Man in Black responds, “You think you know someone” and Teddy replies “You don’t know me at all.” As a repeat park guest, the Man in Black ought to know Teddy very well. He knows him well enough to use Dolores to drag Teddy along. The only reason Teddy agreed to go with the Man in Black is because he lied and said Wyatt had kidnapped Dolores. Still, for Teddy to gun down this entire group of soldiers while the Man in Black suggests they just run away is wildly out of character for both of them. Teddy, like all his fellow robots, is robbed of the chance to know himself every time a Westworld employee wipes his memory. The Man in Black, who remembers much more of Teddy’s past, believes he knows Teddy better than Teddy knows himself. For whatever reason, Teddy is changing, and the Man in Black knows him less well than he thought, or less well than he did.
Teddy has a flashback where he remembers working with Wyatt. It’s possible he did work for Wyatt in, as they say, a previous build. That the union soldiers would remember Teddy from this previous build is either an egregious oversight by a number of Westworld employees, or evidence that they too have been tampered with by Arnold or whoever is pretending to be Arnold. Teddy’s flashback is similarly either a result of his run-in with the union soldiers, or a result of “Arnold’s” reprogramming, or a result of Dr. Ford’s reveries.
5. Maeve Levels Up
More paranoid and self-aware, thanks to some mysterious entity who may or may not be the deceased Arnold, Maeve cracks the mystery of her existence and blackmails Felix and Sylvester into telling her everything and leveling her up. The process is rocky at first; Maeve glitches out when Felix shows her everything she says has been predetermined on a tablet. Westworld is often compared to a video game. Though it most closely resembles a LARP, seeing Maeve’s dialogue options randomly selected from a few choices is strongly reminiscent of dialogue wheels, present in many modern action-RPG’s. Maeve glitches because she cannot reconcile her long-held identity as an independent person with the reality that someone else programmed her to be that way. We the real life human viewers are begged to ask ourselves, are we the independent thinkers we believe ourselves to be? If we are independent, were we not programmed to be that way by the people who raised us? Or by experiences beyond our control? Are we perhaps robots who just think we’re humans? The first two I’m not sure, the last one I think definitely not, probably.
Like every glitching computer, Maeve is good to go after a quick reset. She has Felix lower her loyalty and pain stats, and max out her intelligence score. Gamers will note, she’s min-maxing like a pro. For you Multiversity readers who don’t know what min-maxing is, (hi Mom and Dad), Maeve is decreasing the scores she needs the least, and increasing the scores she needs the most. It’s reminiscent of Neo in “The Matrix;” who can download skills in seconds that take real life humans years of training to perfect. I mean, Neo is a real life human in “The Matrix,” but he’s not a real life human in real life reality, he’s a fictional character from a film. There’s definitely a difference, probably.
I’ve expressed before how impressed I am with the sheer number of layered mysteries the writers of Westworld have managed to fit into just one season of television. A few of those mysteries are now solved, but the answers only beg more questions. Now, with the hilarious introduction of Charlotte Hale portrayed exquisitely and expertly by the incomparable Tessa Thompson, there are a whole new slew of mysteries to delve into and wrap our robot brains around. I mean our human brains. Until next time, the center of your maze awaits.
