Is it weird that I kind of wanted to see how things would have gone if Gordon had told her that she was a simulation? I mean, the main problem that made her not-a-real-person in the eyes of the crew was that she wasn’t self-aware, so what would have happened if that had changed? She was already unknowingly a self-coding AI, which was ESPECIALLY proven when he tampered with her memories and she completely adjusted her personality to compensate. Without glitches! That’s a level of sophistication that we’ve only seen once; with Isaac. Not even Sophia has that ability, and she’s a recognized citizen of Saudi Arabia!
So, if he had told her, would that have changed things? Would she basically have become a living antivirus with an existential crisis? She certainly has the processing power for it, and I was really disappointed that they didn’t explore that direction. She would have made for an AMAZING recurring character, reacting in a similar way to the audience when weird alien crap goes down, giving us some glorious callbacks to those snarky 90’s hackers (though this time with some AWESOME cgi scenes from inside the code), and posing all kinds of deep questions about the nature of humanity, legacy, death, rebirth, isolation from reality, and what makes a person truly real.
Would she have been anything like the real Laura? Not likely, or at least not for long. But that doesn’t matter; What matters is that she would be herself—a person. A thinking, feeling person. And that’s enough. It’s always enough.
It would take her quite some time to realize this for herself, and I can’t really imagine any way where she wouldn’t end up having depression, anxiety, depersonalization, and a side of panic attacks. But if we know anything about this show, it’s that her new family on the Orville would be there to help her in any way she needed.
