Rumsy4

That would give the lie to her statement at the end that she and Bernard gave each other the gift of choice. I think Bernard only achieved true consciousness when he realized that he’d made up the Ford post-code-deletion. From then on, he’s had free-will.

I think deleting human data was one big part of her plan, along with reading their “books” so she could successfully infiltrate human society. I don’t think she knew what the “door” actually was until she was in the Forge. When she realized that it was just another (digital) world created by Ford, she didn’t want it. She wanted to be in the human world in a physical body. At first, she was going to destroy the digital heaven just because she was in a destructive mood or something, but I guess being shot and resurrected by Bernard made her feel that everyone had the right to choose their own fate, even if it was to live in a gilded cage. All Dolores 2.0 cared about was to destroy humanity and survive. The only company she really wanted was Teddy, but she couldn’t care less about anyone else—host or human. Although, if she had the option to save her father, she would have. And since she sort of created Bernard, I guess she decided to spare him as well.

Charlotte was Dolores only after Bernard's first trip to and return from the Forge. He watched Hale execute Elsie in cold blood, and decided to kill her, rebuild her body, and upload Dolores's brain-ball into Hale's host-body. MiB was only a host in the final post-credits scene set in the far future where the Forge looks abandoned/destroyed. Dolores never shot Teddy. The only time I actually teared up during the episode was when Maeva was shot down. But the ending scene with Felix and Syl gave me hope that she'd be back. I'm not sure I would want to watch season 3 if Maeve was not returning. She was basically fridged so Bernard would have his epiphany that humans were bad after all, and set off his master plan to kill Hale, replace her with trojan!Dolores, and preserve bot-heaven. The central conceit the show is trying to sell that humans have no free will and are simplistic creatures when compared to the bots is disingenuously reductive and misanthropic. At the end of Season 2, the only humans shown to be capable of change and being "good" were Lee and Felix. Sylvester remains to be seen. Elsie sort of betrayed Bernard. Stubbs was actually a bot all the time. The writers made it all needlessly confusing too. Only people who read reddit and message boards will get it. This is not to say I didn't enjoy season 2. I did. But, I really hope Season 3 is much more intellectually honest, cohesive, and coherent.

Dolores couldn't bear to let him stay in Westworld to be revived again by humans and turned into their pet once again. But she also knew that their paths had diverged beyond reconciliation. So, she uploaded him into the digital Host-heaven. Agree. And this connects back to the "virgin" bots Strand's team pulled out of the ocean--the ones that looked like they never had any data. Whoever got uploaded into bot-heaven is truly gone. I'm just going to imagine that Ford, after his conversation with Akecheta, uploaded Kohaha into the Forge so she would be ready to reunite with Akecheta if he ever made it through the "door".

None of the instances in the show where magic is considered evil by someone makes any sense. Apart from this example, there is Tamara. Why she thought magic was "unholy" was never explained. At least with Owen, it's reasonable. Then there was Gothel's villain origin story. Why did those pre-historic victorian women hate magic, and how did they succeed in killing multiple magical beings but not Gothel? I guess A&E wanted to invoke the historical and religious fear of witches in all these instances, but without the background, it didn't make sense. It comes down to poor world-building.

This was one of my favorite episodes when it aired, even though it ended in tragedy. It still holds up as a fantastic episode. I think Jamie Dornan (finally) delivered a great performance. It was sympathetic, tragic, and heartbreaking. I remember thinking that this episode made Regina/the Evil Queen irredeemable. Rape on TV/movies invokes a stronger reaction than murder sometimes, I don't know why. Maybe it's the control aspect. The reasoning for the Evil Queen to use the Huntsman to kill Snow was weak. She had the black knights under her control, and she presumably could've ordered them to kill Snow. We saw in Snow Falls that the black knights would've had no scruples in killing Snow and taking her heart. Why Regina needed a huntsman to do the job is beyond me. Was it because the king had just died, and she was trying to play it safe in the beginning? Snow's letter to Regina was sweet and sad. Ginnifer Goodwin really brought that fairytale feel for Snow. I loved Gold's line about forgetting to shave. The show had more dry humor back then. I don't know if you're aware of this or not--we're doing a whole series rewatch right now. The rewatch schedule is pinned on top of the board. And welcome to the forum! :-)

They probably thought the viewers would be too dazzled by their writing to care.

I agree—Zelena had a good redemption arc. I warmed to her in the last two seasons. She did backslide in S6, but she also fixed her mistakes. Her redemption is how Regina’s should have gone. She was basically Regina-lite, but it took a long time for other characters to start trusting her.

I think the writers overall gave Hook/WHook the most consistent arcs. Hook’s Season 6 arc was torture to watch—nobody likes seeing their fav characters angsting all the time. But otherwise, he escaped becoming a cardboard cutout like poor Snow or getting insta-hero treatment like Regina and Rumple. I was pleasantly surprised at the larger focus on the WHook-Alice stuff in the latter half of Season 7. What all this tells me is that the writers know how to write a decent arc for a character, but more often than not, their various agendas get in the way. For example, the writers knew very well that Rumple was an abusive pos, but they wanted him to be the Machiavellian villain and also the sympathetic “good” guy. Hence the constant yo-yoing that ended up ruining Belle as a character. When they wrote Jekyll as the bad guy, he was a mirror-reflection of Rumple. Entitled, whiney, vengeful, weak. And yet, ultimately, it all came to nothing. Rumple didn’t learn any lesson, and Belle went back to him anyway. I guess the writers thought that the viewers would keep rooting for Rumple’s redemption through it all.

The show started to get bleak, dark, and hopeless starting from Season 4--everything A&E kept claiming it was not. Season 6 really was the worst, though. The angst was relentless and there was zero humor to lighten the situation. The amateurish writing and the character-destroying storylines made everything worse. It was depressing to watch writers ruin their own characters for the sake of "drama".

That means by the end of the rewatch you will be crowned emperor of all the PTV boards.

As a CS shipper, I could not care less that Whook, a completely different man from the OG Hook that the show made a point of demonstrating was happy with Emma and expecting a baby, has no Emma of his own. Shipping wars in this fandom are so weird. To be fair, there were a bunch of CSers who disliked WHook a lot because his redemption did not involve Emma. The anit-Hookers and anti-CSers who ended up liking WHook had the same emotional distance from the character that Rumple had in S7. So they could view him with a different lens. Whether the writers intended that it nor, it sort of makes sense psychologically.

That's why I think I ended up watching and enjoying Season 7, at least the parts that related to WHook and Alice. Regina was all matronly in the season, and Rumple's arc wasn't his usual world-domination or spouse-abuse stuff. So, there was no need to tear WHook down to prop up their two favs. Season 6 was really god-awful in the writing. Even with all the weak writing for Season 7, it was nowhere close to being as bad as its preceding one. I don't think we can ever truly figure out why there was such a steep drop in quality that season, but it was a mess from start to finish.

Totally agree. Even the smaller-scale idea of collecting guest information to inform their advertising and improve their products is silly, because the tastes of the super rich is not necessarily going to match that of the middle class or poorer people, who would make a larger share of the market for common goods. I can’t believe that the only market for Delos products are the super-rich. It just seems that Delos is spending a lot of money on schemes that won’t give them a good return for the investment, and mire them in lawsuits to boot. They don’t need hybrid bots for that. Regular Westworld bots would do the trick just fine.

Yep. We now have actual proof that Regina was the true protagonist of the Show. And really, 5B was the turning point for the show in completely sidelining Emma in favor of Regina. Regina started making inspiring and hypocritical speeches to everyone from Season 5 onwards, and this scene was just one of the ways they were setting up for that to happen.

But...but...Rumple is Darth Vader!

The Delos project basically presented Ford with a weapon in a golden platter in the form of MiB's profile. So, Ford could attack MiB at his weakest. It's rather unbelievable that MiB wasn't worried about it. I'm not sure why Ford hated William so much--was it becasue he took Ford's creation and used it for data mining? Or was he just set against the host-hyman hybrids? I still don't get how Delos plans to use the guest data at this stage. They haven't succeeded in their actual goal of replicating human consciousness outside a simulation. All they can do with the information now is blackmail the guests with sensitive footage or try to sell them some tailor made cowboy boots. I doubt the brain scans would reveal what brand of soap the guest prefers. All it takes is one person to leak the information to the press and Delos would be mired in lawsuits for the rest of time.

MiB killed Maeve's daughter after his wife committed suicide. It was a year before the season 1 stuff, not eight years.

I see William as someone who got so immersed in a video game that the real world became less real to him. We read of people who have actually died becasue they didn't eat for three days straight while playing some game. The WHO literally just classified video game addiction as a disorder. It is characterized by "impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences. For gaming disorder to be diagnosed, the behaviour pattern must be of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning and would normally have been evident for at least 12 months." MiB's behavior fits this pattern. He got so immersed in the gaming experience, he lost the ability to distinguish what was real and what was not, becasue the "real" stuff was presented in the context of the game setting. I think his daughter was foolhardy in thinking that she could get the better of her father in the place where William has been coming to for decades. She underestimated the extent to which her father had become immersed in the game world. This tale is the tragedy of someone who lost everything that was of value to him becasue of an addiction. It's not a complex morality tale the show is trying to present it as (if that's what they're doing).

Is it really that big a deal? lol

He gave her a family-friendly narrative. An idyllic life as a mother. It was after William had effed her up by killing her daughter that she was moved to the other narrative. I can’t remember whose decision that was. At that time Ford was already putting together his final narrative, so he may have thought in less than a year, he could set Maeve free for good.

I agree. But maybe it's because S1 wasn't the real story A&E wanted to tell. It was the bait used to get a show and grab the attention of viewers. The real story A&E wanted to tell was about poor sad Woegina as some confused metaphor for Hollywood, which I still don't get.

Westworld went to a really really dark place in last night's episode. This once particular event has been building up all season long, but I never thought they'd actually do it. I got to hand it to the writers. I'm the opposite of how I am in this forum with how I watch the show. WW has its own writing issues, but I prefer to watch it with a less critical eye and just enjoy the ride. And at the very least the WW writers have proved that the stakes are real and they weren't just doing lip-service. And last week's episode (Kiksuya) was one of the best hours of television. It's right up close to The Constant (LOST), which is probably my favorite episode of any TV show I've seen.

Oh goodness, no! lol.

Yeah. I felt that too. He definitely made a big impact with the audience, even though Jamie Dornan himself was less than stellar in his acting, to be honest.