The ‘Westworld’ Finale: Surprising Revelations About Ford, Arnold, And Delores
The Westworld finale aired Sunday night, and… well, all I can say is wow. Just wow. Questions were answered, theories were proven, surprises were sprung, and new questions were raised. Viewers are still sorting through it all, trying to figure out what it all means, but some pieces are starting to fall into place.
One big fan theory that was proven to be true in Westworld‘s Season 1 finale was that the Man in Black (MIB) is the older version of William. He explained to Delores that he had gone a search for her all those years ago and ended up not finding her (until very recently) but finding himself. He learned that he was more of a black hat guy than a white hat guy. And he became so intrigued by Westworld that he convinced his company to save the park by investing heavily in it. His search for Delores became a search for the maze, something that ended up being something much different from what he had expected.
Like William’s discovery that the maze was metaphorical and intended for the hosts, we learned some unexpected things about a couple of other Westworld characters, chief among them was Anthony Hopkins’ character – Robert Ford.
Throughout Westworld‘s debut season, we’ve been trying to figure out if Ford is a hero or a villain. Does he have good intentions but somehow went off-track and is trying to fix his mistakes? Or does he have a God complex and takes joy in the ability to control the park’s hosts and force them to suffer great pain and tragedy? Well, it turns out it’s somewhere in between. At one point in Sunday’s finale, Ford said to Bernard and Delores, “Wasn’t it Oppenheimer who said that any man whose mistakes take 10 years to correct is quite a man? Mine have taken 35.” The full timeline of Westworld at this point has spanned 35 years because it was 35 years ago that Ford made some mistake that began the series of events we’ve been watching this season. What was that mistake?
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Arnold believed that the hosts were capable of sentience. This is something we have known for a while, nothing new. We have also known that Ford didn’t agree with him. (Like the difference of opinion between William and Logan — makes you think, doesn’t it?) As noted by BusinessInsider, it was this conflict that drove Arnold to reprogram Delores, a host whose purpose Robert described like this.
“Arnold had watched his son come into this world and then he had watched that light extinguished. What he had lost in his son he tried to rekindle in you. He created a test of empathy, imagination. A maze. He had gotten the idea from one of his son’s toys. Eventually you solved his maze, Dolores. The key was a simple update that he made to you called the reveries. He insisted that we couldn’t open the park. We argued. In you, Arnold found a new child — one who would never die. The thought gave him solace until he realized that same immortality would destine you to suffer with no escape, forever.”
This realization led Arnold to reprogram Delores so she could kill him and the other hosts inWestworld. Ford’s refusal to seriously consider Arnold’s theory was his mistake.
The unexpected fact about Robert Ford in the finale? It was him, not Arnold, who gave the hosts their memories. Ford believed that it was pain and suffering that made humans fully conscious, so he reprogrammed the hosts to remember the violence committed against them and in front of them. He believed it would make them stronger and wiser and, ultimately, able to escape the tortuous loop of Westworld and live in the real world. He began with Delores. He explained his choice like this.
“I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves, to fix what was broken in us and to help us become the people we dreamed of being. Lies that told a deeper truth. I always thought I could play some small part in that grand tradition. And for my pains I got this — a prison of our own sins — because you don’t want to change, or cannot change. Because you’re only human after all. But then I realized someone was paying attention, someone who could change. So I began to compose a new story for them. It begins with the birth of a new people and the choices they will have to make and the people they will decide to become. And we’ll have all those things that you have always enjoyed — surprises and violence. It begins in a time of war, with a villain named Wyatt and a killing. This time by choice.”
Westworld is “a prison of our sins.” The “someone [who] was paying attention, who could change” was Delores. She is Wyatt. And the new story for her and the other hosts in Westworld began with her killing Robert by choice.
The Westworld Season 1 finale was jam-packed with action and new developments. It had lots of twists and turns. This article touches on just a few of the important elements. If you watched it straight through upon your first sitting like I did, there were many times that you knew a statement, a shot, or an event meant more than you were catching at the moment, but you were too caught up in it to pause and watch it again. Westworld sure knows how to leave its viewers anxious for the next installments.
Unfortunately, creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy told Vanity Fair that the show wouldn’t be returning to HBO until 2018. That’s totally understandable given the intricacy of the story, but that’s an awfully long wait! However, that does give us plenty of time to watch the finale and the rest of Season 1 of Westworld over and over again to piece together all the timelines and all the nuances we may have missed the first time through.
[Featured Image by HBO]
