The blood, sex and robots show is back for another season, folks, where everyone tries to guess every possible plot point before it’s eventually revealed to us. That is half the fun. If you do not think this is fun, this might not be the show for you.
For everyone who devoured the Westworld season two premiere yesterday, here’s a large but by no means exhaustive list of everything you might have possibly missed.
SPOILERS ARE BACK ONLINE.
1. Yes, that the hithero unknown third Skarsgård brother we’re seeing.
Let’s get this one out of the way real quick. Newcomer Gustaf Skarsgård, who plays Delos‘ Head of Operations Karl Strand, is the brother of Alexander Skarsgård (a.k.a. Eric from True Blood / Perry from Big Little Lies) and Bill Skarsgård (a.k.a. the disturbing/ly hot clown from It). At 37, he’s the middle child (Alexander is 41 and Bill is 27) and has been acting since he was six years old. Guess Westworld truly is the platform for the third brother of more famous brothers to shine.
2. We’re operating in at least two different timelines here.
The Bernard [Jeffrey Wright] you see waking up on the beach is at least two weeks older than the Bernard feeling the bloodshed with Charlotte Hale [Tessa Thompson]. There’s also the scenes with Bernard (or possibly Arnold, the human he’s modelled off) and Dolores [Evan Rachel Wood] chatting away, a throwback to their lil’ chinwags in season one, which in and of themselves include a split-second image of Bernard walking with Dolores in a very modern dress.
We know this show plays fast and loose with things like “linear storytelling”, so uh, good luck following along.
I counted six potential timelines. 1. Arnold/Delores
2.Bernard on the beach
3.Delores/Teddy
4.Bernard/Charlotte
5.William
6.Maeve/Sizemore
I am so confused#Westworld pic.twitter.com/tiNGyluVJA— Jamie Lee (@frenchfknkiss) April 23, 2018
3. The roles are ~totally~ reversed here.
In the Bernard / Dolores chats in season one, he was asking her about her dreams. In these chats, it Dolores talking about Bernard’s dreams. Do hosts dream of electric sheep? No, apparently it’s “distant shores” and probable bloodbath.
There’s also theories that perhaps Dolores is trying to wake Bernard up in the same why she was woken up – by talking about his dreams – and TBH, it sounds extremely plausible.
4. Some people think we’re actually operating with multiple different Bernards.
Ah, the first major theory of the season! Several Redditors reckon we’re not just operating with several different timelines here, but also several different Bernards. We’ve seen with the whole Arnold / Bernard thing that hosts can virtually replace humans, and the first episode showed Bernard – a host – pass Charlotte’s DNA test to enter the secret bunker.
We’re also seeing three different Bernards here, which shall be referred to as Black Shirt Bernard (running around with Charlotte), White Shirt Bernard (washed up on the beach), and Zipper Jacket Bernard (having a chin-wag to Delores) . Old mate Black Shirt has a scar on his right temple, presumably from when he shot himself in the head during the last season. White Shirt and Zipper Jacket have no such scars
Then you have this image from the trailer, which shows several different Bernard hosts.
Oh god, it’s a huge complicated theory okay? And these Redditors (HERE and HERE) have done a very good job of laying out the clues for you to fill in. Go read that.
5. Bernard (at least, one of them) is suffering from Prosopagnosia.
When Bernard self-diagnosed himself in the bunker (while Charlotte was getting changed), he discovered that he’s suffering from Prosopagnosia, a.k.a. face blindness. It means that everything we’re seeing from his point of view isn’t trustworthy, with more than one person suggesting it could mean Charlotte isn’t even Charlotte, but rather… someone else. (Dolores?) It’s a minor detail, but a probably significant one.
6. Looks like Westworld scooped that Game of Thrones / HBO budget for a CGI wolf.
Mystery solved.
Ghost left Westeros for #WestWorld pic.twitter.com/Bh3L3L7XjJ
— Winter is Coming (@WiCnet) April 23, 2018
Wow, rude.
7. There were one million references to “beyond the valley”.
Slight exaggeration. But first, Dolores tells the host she’s in the middle of murdering that “not all of us deserve to make it to the valley beyond”, and then later, the stableboy who unluckily wanders into the barn the Delos board members are hiding in asks them if they’re travelling to “the valley beyond”. Potentially it’s a reference to the Uncanny Valley – the hypothesis often referred to in robotics that relates an object’s humanness and our sense of creepiness towards it – but I’m probably not smart enough to understand whatever Westworld is cooking up.
8. Delos is up to its nefarious tricks with the guests’ DNA.
We’d basically had confirmation already that Delos was getting real shady with the guests’ DNA – specifically, their shit – after the fake website HBO set up contained this lil’ tidbit in its terms and conditions.
“By entering the Delos Destinations Port of Entry, you acknowledge that Delos, Inc. controls the rights to and remains the sole owner of, in perpetuity: all skin cells, bodily fluids, secretions, excretions, hair samples, saliva, sweat, blood, and any other bodily functions not listed here. Delos, Inc. reserves the right to use this property in any way, shape, or form in which the entity sees fit.”
And since Charlotte all-but-confirmed to Bernard that they *were* storing the guests’ DNA (and the guests are obviously the richest people in the Westworld universe), plenty of people reckon the company is aiming to replace a powerful figure in the outside world with a controlled host.
9. There’s at least six parks.
A lot has been made about Shogunworld, the ultra-violent world modelled off ancient Japan. Towards the end of the episode, a Delos employee mentioned that the Bengal Tiger may have escaped from “park six”, a theory confirmed by the Delos Destinations website. (Parks one through four all say “reservations closed to the public”.)
10. Robert Ford is dead as doornail – and a maggot-eaten one at that.
Yes, after 18 months of speculation that the Ford [Anthony Hopkins] who was shot at the end of season one was actually a host, we got a very graphic confirmation that Ford’s body was dead. Of course, we’ve probably not seen the last of him, even after the Man in Black [Ed Harris] – now openly called William – shot the host version of Ford’s boy self dead.
So now that we’ve barely scratched the surface of references and Easter eggs from the first episode, prepare to have it all proven wrong by episode five. Looking forward to it.
