Head-Full-Of-Thi

Ok so the two things I loved about this finale: 1) Dolores's farewell (not that she died because I'll really miss her but how) I always loved season 1 Dolores. Then in season 2 I just couldn't relate to MurderBot Dolores or even like her. But once in a while we would get these little bits that brought back the Dolores we used to know. I don't know if anyone remembers the second trailer for s2? Dolores had this voiceover about how the world can be beautiful and she'll tear down this one to bring a beautiful world for her kind. And in that moment even though she was saying murder-y things I remembered why I love her so much. Now last week's episode and this one really brought the Dolores I love back and I'm happy for it. The fact that I'm this devastated that she's gone, even though during the season I didn't care much about her scenes, is testimony in itself. Mainly to Evan Rachel Wood's amazing acting, but also to the writing. I also think it was the perfect way to send her off, as she completed her character journey. In s2 once she gained consciousness she rejected the innocent and good personality that was imposed on her in favor of her desire for revenge against the humans. Except she had attachments that weren't that easy to cut off, like her father and Teddy, and she struggled but eventually did shed them. But now, in this finale, she finally chooses this side of hers. Like in this episode's opening-in the park, she always said she chose to see the beauty in this world, but it wasn't a choice. It was a lie, she couldn't see the ugly parts as they were hidden from her. Now she saw everything, the beautiful and the ugly of the world, and she chooses to see the beauty. This is just... Really beautiful (excuse me for running down this word...). Also, in the s2 finale the message seemed to be that humans are incapable of free will, which pissed me off, so I'm glad it eveloped into a more positive one this season. 2) The Searc reveal. His words and actions weren't his own, since he gave away his free will to Rehoboam. But the cool thing is, Rehoboam isn't even a sentient being that enslaved Searc, it's just a conputer algorithm. We can see that with how easy it is to shut it down for good. It doesn't have any will to run it's strategies, it just performs the task that is asked from it as long as the asker has the right permissions. Serac talked a lot about how he gave a god to humanity (if these words can even be attributed to him), but it seems like he mainly wanted to make one for himself- after he and his brother were left alone as kids, he needed guidance, someone that will tell him what to do. He tried to turn to god, but his brother insisted god doesn't exist. So he made himself one, a fake god made of metal, and that way he gave himself the belief that as long as he'll do and say the right things, everything will be alright. Tragic, in a way. The only thing I would've changed in this scene is I would have Rehoboam transfer his permissions to Caleb without outside intervention. It doesn't call an ambulance for Serac because it already calculated that the chances he'll make it out of this are slim, so it gives access to Caleb since he has a better chance of making its predictions come true. And not because Caleb is special or even wants to let Rehoboam do it's strategies, because he doesn't, but he's the only human in the room who's alive and well so that's the best chance. It would've been a sweet punishment for what Serac did to humanity. As for what I didn't like about the episode, it was... Everything else. As much as I didn't like the Simulation theory, it did explain some inconsistencies and plot holes that seemed too big to not be on purpose. But it isn't true so we're left with a story that was... Not very well written. I can't believe Lisa and Nolan who wrote the masterpiece that was s1 could write this season as well. And that's all I'm gonna say.

My favorite thing was realizing how Dolores manipulated Caleb. His decision to go to this war was only possible because he learned the truth about his life and felt thus much rage just before he was asked to make the decision. Who does this remind you of? Season 1 Dolores! But it's not just a cinematic parallel. In the first season Ford arranged things so that Dolores had a meet with William right before he asked her to kill him. Dolores learned from him and now did the same with Caleb. And another thing- before this episode I thought the plot was Dolores wanting to destroy humanity until she meets the one SPECIAL guy who reminds her that humanity can be good, too. Now I realize Dolores wanted to destroy the world but she was afraid she'll change her mind like that, so she created a more ambitious plan that involved making a human want to destroy the world even more so than her. Ford manipulated and controlled Dolores in order to free her and the rest of her race, because he knew only a host can fight for the hosts. Dolores manipulated and controlled Caleb to free him and his race because only a human can fight for the humans.

Now I'm just imagining the giant computer roling down the streets crushing everyone XD You bought me with this theory Wait... But last week he interacted physically with Hale and cast a shadow and all

Agree with most of your points, seems like the writers didn't think stuff through, especially the part with why would the brothers need Dempsey for. Except that maybe they wanted a face for the company while they remained in the shadows... About these two points: The no children allowed thing - there's no outright permit of having children, it's that the computer decided someone is unfit for having them so it will do whatever it can to prevent it, aka never show their picture on future!tinder, etc... And I was under the impression that the dramatic music in that scene was for when Caleb saw that Dolores can take bullets to her chest and don't die. Which btw I'm not sure why it's such a big deal, are there no bulletproof vests in the future?

Interesting. I hope that was the case, although I'm not so sure Nolan&Joy thought about this plot yet when they wrote season 2 *shrug*. Your entire post is gold btw.

* Ok so first of all I would like to give a proper farewell to the true BAMF Liam Dempsey Jr. He proved this episode he's more than a spoiled rich kid. He's very intelligent, he knows how Rehoboam works and he fully supports it and believes it helps humanity. And even when he went out, instead of begging for his life he used his last seconds to throw one last shade at all of his kidnappers. It's a shame that Serac didn't let him get more involved with Rehoboam. In the scene with him as a kid you could see the fascination in his eyes. In a way his story is similar to Caleb's, he has the capability and desire to do something great but Serac and Rehoboam boxed him into being nothing more than the pretty face of Insight. Kinda tragic. * Kodus to anyone who guessed there's more to Caleb. I really can't wait to read theories from people who will watch all those half second clips we got there and try to piece out the truth. * Also kodus to anyone who called eugenics. Tbh Serac seems to me as a bit of a hypocrite there. He says the final straw that made him lock up his brother was that he planned to kill Dempsey, but then later he killed him himself. Maybe the reason that the brother's behaviour was unpredicted was because he reached the right conclusion before Serac or even the supercomputer did? And could it be that concern for the human race wasn't the only reason Serac wanted to remove him from the equation? After all he was shown to be smarter than him and the true brain behind the invention. * The Genre drug thing was... I never thought Westworld would do something this cringy. We were this close to get a musical episode (which if we're already going to this territory than I'm kinda upset we didn't). The one good thing about it was Amused Guy's comment about how the fifth genre is a bitch, and I was on edge during the entire episode until it was revealed that it's just reality... * Not sure about how neatly things were solved this episode... It's only the 5th ep and Dolores already has a huge win. It makes me think it might be the simulation. * The thing I'm most excited about is the trailer for next episode. It seems like all the seemingly unrelated things that happened this season are finally coming together and I can't wait to see how!

If you really didn't hear, he said something like "Get away from me, I know who you are. You caused all of this!" which is... Intriguing to say the least!

Not a fan of this episode. The Dolores reveal would've been a wow moment if people hadn't already guessed it last week, and even so it doesn't have any emotional effect. I wish we got more inside Dolores's head. We never know what she's planning and it's hard to root for her like that. I guess that's why they gave us Caleb, to be the confused foil for Dolores to explain stuff to, but even then she does something badass out of nowhere first then explains to him later and that trick gets old fast. Sidenote about Halores - it must be a real suckish feeling to have the memories of deciding to clone yourself and then wake up and find out you're the clone. I really want this to happen. And I also got the feeling from last ep that things are going to this direction

Everybody says that the real host should be aggressive because of the pedophile scene and it really confuses me because I'm pretty sure it was meant to be the real Charlotte? She says 'you're not the only predator here' and in the beginning of the episode Dolores called the real Charlotte a predator. Also during the episode Host Charlotte says she feels the Real Charlotte trying to take control. Then seeing the pedophile preying on Charlotte's son like that, Real Charlotte's maternal instincts kicked in and Host Charlotte says she finally remembers who she is, aka Real Charlotte. Not sure if it means she just understands Charlotte beter, how everything she did was for her son, or if it's really that Host Charlotte is changing to be more like Real Charlotte. So Host Charlotte would actually be someone not aggressive, but I still don't think it's Teddy. They say 'is it you Teddy' in the trailer so unfortunately it's probably just to throw us off. I miss Teddy so much man 😞 Damn I'm really interested to know now. I'm gonna go with yes, and perhaps she has in her head all the data that was collected about Charlotte in the Forge. Aka all the data that Delos knows about her. Not her love for her son or that she's the mole. Prehaps a simulated version of Charlotte was created from the dada, like how Lee was created in the simulation. Host Charlotte could access the data but didn't allow herself to fully acknowledge this Charlotte version and integrate her into her personality, and more than that she couldn't understand Charlotte's motivation for being such a terrible person in the park. That's until the moment with the pedophile, then the host found the missing component in the data, the love for her son. She was able to understand Charlotte, and the two personalities fully combined. Yes that's it you're a genius! Wow that is very interesting. Probably a reason why we shouldn't let AI rule over us. But of course like you said westworld humans never agreed to let AI rule over them, they just consult it but Serac secretly let Rehoboam do more than just predict but actually effect the world through its advices...

Some thoughts about Rehoboam's grip on society, excuse me if they're a bit scattered. I have to admit that in episode 1 I didn't fully understand what exactly was so sinister with what it was doing, but now I have a much better understanding. Kodus to the show for this really good example they gave with Caleb. It's not that the employers' made a choice not to hire Caleb based on the prediction that the algorithm provided them. Notice that Caleb still has 10-12 years left before his predicted suicide, more than the timespan people usually spend in a job today. A person looking to hire might still decide he's a good fit for the job at that point in time even if he'll kill himself in the far future. However it's the software, Rehoboam, that decides that because he won't live for long he is not worthy of society's resources, so it will never recommend him as a candidate for any job even if he might be a good fit. Aka he might still be a good worker per the prediction, but the system decided that someone else will have more use with the money or the work experience than him. Which is something much darker. It's a little bit like what is happening nowdays with Waze. There's this urban legend that they're offering people a longer route to their destination in order to balance the traffic between streets. And the self-driving car paradox, which goes pretty much like this: a self-driving car drives its owner, when another car just lost control and is driving towards it to collision. The opposite car has five people. If our self-driving car continue foward and hit the other car all five people die, but the passenger in our car will live. If our car turn and hit a wall, the person in our car will die. What should the car do in this situation? We have a rare chance here to program a car to behave without that selfishness that we humans have and save more people. But then what reason will there be for a person to let the car drive for him? With all of its advancements over the human brain, it doesn't have the most important thing that you have and that is your best interest. It brings me back to the first season. With the hosts Ford wanted to make something devine, better than humans, without their selfishness. Very similar to what Serac is doing this season. But our strength might be precisely that our decisions are not comeplelty ruled by reason. We have selfishness but we also have compassion. About the human angle of it all, like you all said the idea that some people are not worth society's resources can be found in many dark regimes of our past. And it also happens now with the Coronavirus crisis - some people argue that we shouldn't go through this much trouble for the elderly who will die anyway (I won't talk here about how wrong it is because then this post would be even longer). Westworld might be now even more revant with this message than Nolan&Lisa originally thought.

My full impression of the ep: * I did like the episode very much. The part when Bernard and Stubbs were looking for Maeve in the warehouse, while Maeve realised she's in a simulation, is truly classic Westworld. But I just realised this is it when it comes to Westworld the park, we won't see it anymore. The parks, the labs, this was probably the last time we saw them. I don't know how I feel about that. * I'm happy we got to see the characters we love like Hector and Lee, while having it still make sense. All of our questions were answered. How is Lee alive? He isn't. Why would they have a WWII park? They don't. Why would they still open parks after what happened? They didn't. I must admit that at some point I thought to myself 'it doesn't make any sense that Lee is alive but I'm here for it if it means we get to see him', and I'm happy that the show didn't listen to me. It found a way to not compromise on the logic, and managed to bring us Lee and Hector and Warworld while still keeping its high level of writing. Altough I must say I'll really miss Lee, and I'm upset we couldn't spend more time in Warworld as it was absolutely stunning. * Wasn't a fan of the appearance of the letterbox format only when the truth was revealed. They changed the rules that they established last season just to trick us again. And as I said in the previous post I don't like how it opens every scene the the possibility of it being a simulation. * One small thing I would change in the forge scene - I would cancel the glitch that makes Maeve understand that it's a simulation. It would be much better if nothing glitched, but Maeve still started suspecting something's not right. We as the audience wouldn't be sure if she's right or not until she'd do the square root of -1 thing, then we'd have a mindblow moment. * Stubbs - it was great seeing him again. I love the character since season 1, and also he holds a special place in my heart since I totally called him being a host in the beginning of season 2. It was my little theory that I came to completely on my own! And I had proof and everything. It was so fun in last season's final when I saw that I was right. * It was interesting to see a third approach to the whole finding out you're a robot thing. We had 'become badass and do what you want' (Dolores and Maeve), and 'get all broody and philosophical' (Bernard), so it was nice seeing Stubbs being 'fuck alright I'm a robot, let's do what I'm supposed to do'. But on the other hand looks like he didn't achieve consciousness yet (as Bernard was easily able to change his core drive), so it would be interesting to see if that's where that plot will go. He spared his coworker so that might be the start. * The Got cameo was cute, I remember Lisa and Nolan talking about it last season so it was nice to see they really did it. I don't really understand why everyone is so upset with it. * What I really enjoyed in that scene was seeing the parks being dismantled. It really reminded me of the time I worked at a startup that got closed, and in the last month everybody just lied there with nothing to do and tried to convince the CEO to sell them the office computers for a discount. It brought me back to season 1, and how seeing all the bickering of the park employees made me think about my own job then. Speaking of which, Serac's simulation really needed QA. Square root of -1 should've been invalid input lmao. I miss Theresa head of QA from season 1. * On a more shallow note - Hector's new haircut with the white in his beard... Luke Hemsworth's shoulder muscles... Oh my god.

Totally agree. I always enjoy it when westworld pulls the rug under my feet so this was no exception, but the entire ep could be shortened to 'Maeve wakes up in Serac's house and they have a 5 minute conversation'. A filler episode in an 8 episodes season is concerning. The only way I could see this episode being relevant is that breaking of the letterbox rule, which shows us that scenes can be in simulation even if they're in a normal frame. And I like that idea even less.

Speaking for myself (not the user you quoted), I know that bringing Teddy back to work with Dolores erases all his character development from season 2 but... I really miss him... I want him back. Even if it's while helping Dolores, at this point I'll take it lol

You got a point. They said only those who deserve it are rich now, but Liam and his stoner friend clearly don't deserve it. Also another thing, something that hasn't really been talked about it that Maeve didn't know where she is or what she was doing. She was on a programmed loop, probably as a resistance fighter, and then at one moment she woke up but she doesn't remember what she's been doing up until that moment. Why did she wake up at that specific moment? And why did she lose her memory?

Oh and I almost forgot The messanger woman that had a meeting with Liam told him that Rehoboam was hacked from the inside. But Dolores didn't hack it yet, she's trying to access it So who hacked it?