Looking back, this scene in season 3 has got to take place after the events of season 4.
Posted Feb 19, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC
14032
Very interesting theory, and would have been an awesome connection given some of the dialogue could be interpreted as Sublime Dolores talking to Sublime William
However I think the opening line "I guess there is some justice after all" is what makes me doubt it's a post-S4 scene. It feels very much a response to human William paying for his sins. We see William have hallucinations in his own house as well, punishing him for these very sins, hence why I never took it as out of place
My guess is that you're close to the mark: perhaps there was supposed to be an S5 scene that parallels this, but with real Dolores being a tad more encouraging than this hallucination (which is more a product of William's confusion and guilt)
21
Yes. This is a Season 5 scene, it also happens to be the EXACT midpoint of the series (had S5 happened), so it is literally the center of the maze if you subscribe to the theory that the show itself is structured like the Maze and is designed to raise human consciousness through narrative aka Dolores’ dangerous game.
Welcome to the end of the game.
17
How? This was human MIB, who is dead after season 4.
16
Well I think this would be taking place in the sublime. Similar to what others has mentioned with the scene from season 2 found here.
Within season 3 the main Dolores never interacted with William besides this one scene. Seems a bit strange that she would change into the blue dress and just visit William I guess to fuck with him. The scene just seems so out of place otherwise and tracks with the theories others have had.
16
I believe William was put in the AR Therapy chair the moment he was home in S3. Dolores would never have cut him loose and let him be on his own..
So the hallucinations were never real. They are also part of the fidelity test...
And the so called self therapy he has is also an attempt by the System to tell him who he is. But it fails.
6
Did you guys even watch this show? She had him involuntarily committed.
7
That's what he thinks. But he was always strapped in the chair ^
She played him a few scenarios and hence the hallucinations. Nothing prior in the show was lending credence to William being delusional.
Except for believing he had become a host without noticing it. And Dolores enhanced his paranoia.
I mean.. he came out of the AR therapy thinking he was gonna save the world. Now that is delusional xD
And he headed straight to Halores. And she expected him to. "Right on time William". And she gave him a complete mindfuck by showing him a copy of a copy.
0
She didn't change this is a hallucination caused by Halores injecting him with some nanite thing when he was commited.
2
This is a hallucination, ya fucking can opener
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I always wanted William to get redemption somehow.
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The closest we'll get to a _for sure_ s4 ending, is the post-credits. There may well be parts of the rest of the show that were supposed to be afterwards, but it's pretty hard to tell for sure, or to draw much meaning from them.
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I really like this insight. Thank you for sharing.
Here's to eternally hoping we get some more clarity on the story soon, haha!
3
Guys the problem that got Westworld canceled is really this kind of never knowing when is when and who is who. It’s great that you stress out understanding and making theories but most of the audience just gets confused and not everybody has time to catch up.
2
Under that viewpoint, Lost would've been cancelled 2-3 seasons in..
2
I actually think it's a scene near the beginning of this episode:
It appears to be Arnold and Dolores in Arnold's home, like the scene in S2E2. However, it's daylight and we realize that it is actually Bernard, not Arnold. This is another kind of virtual reality test that Dolores is conducting on Bernard. Suddenly they're both sat down, facing each other, and Bernard is very confused. Dolores says this:
"You taught me that anything was possible. We could be whoever we want, live however we want. Isn't that what you believe?"
Then the scene ends. And it never comes up again, as far as I can remember.
Now you could just take this as a flashback to when Dolores was trying to recreate Arnold, leading to Bernard, and view that as foreshadowing for the Dolores copies reveal that comes up later in that episode. But I see it more as foreshadowing what the whole Dolores-copying-humans-thing was going to eventually lead to: the recreation of humans and hosts.
2
Dolores did not try to re-create Arnold. She did it. A faithful copy that had Dolores kill itself. This is shown for only a few seconds when Bernard, Dolores and William meet outside The Forge in S2.
So you can imagine all the talks Dolores has had with Arnold when she re-builds Bernard.
We would have seen Arnold again in S5. The Faithful Copy.
1
Yeah, but the point of that -- further illustrated by what Dolores and Bernard discover in the Forge -- was that a 100% faithful copy of a human being is doomed to fail. Because that perfectly copied human will, inevitably, manifest the same destructive flaws as their original counterpart.
Our genetic code limits us in subtle ways. And, for the sake of fidelity, the copies are beholden to those limitations. This is true of both Dolores and William's experiments in resurrecting the dead/achieving immortality.
Dolores realized she had to change her Arnold copy in order for him to continue functioning without wanting to kill himself, like Arnold did. Thus we get Bernard, a slightly altered version of Arnold.
1
What happened in the Forge was not the same as Dolores building Bernard.
Bernard was unique, made by Dolores' memories.
The A.I in The Forge used human flawed memories to build Delos.
This is why Bernard was free to roam for 20+ years among the humans. Bernard was a true hybrid. His pearl was even a mix of chrome and red. Always had a bit of Arnold in him.
1
Not the same, no, but very clearly similar. Both are attempts at using host tech to "resurrect" dead humans.
I had thought the problem for the Forge AI was not necessarily the minds or the memories, it was anything beyond mind and memory. The hybrids can't just casually pick up from where their human self left off because they're subconsciously aware of their static existence, causing them to malfunction as their sense of reality breaks.
I see the host replacements as being distinct from the hybrids, despite their comparisons.
- A hybrid is a digital copy of a human mind which is then uploaded into a host version of that human's body.
- A replacement is just a host that's been carefully programmed to imitate a human identity as faithfully as possible.
Bernard is a replacement. And he works so well because he is not 100% faithful to Arnold, but just faithful enough while still leaving room for individual growth.
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Because it’s not real. He’s hallucinating
Host William yea ^