This post contains frank discussion of Westworld Season 1, Episode 5 “Contrapasso.” If you’re not caught up, now is the time to leave.
Ever since Episode 2 of HBO’s twisty, sci-fi Western Westworld, those both familiar with the previous work of Jonathan Nolan (The Prestige, Memento, Interstellar) and fond of fan theories have been pondering the idea that we’re actually seeing multiple timelines play out concurrently. It’s easy to fool an audience when half your cast of characters are robots who never age. This week’s episode seemed to confirm, once and for all, that Westworld Season 1 is operating on two timelines. But since that reveal came so early in the season, I have to wonder if there’s still another layer of this mystery to peel back. Let’s explore.
If you’re unfamiliar with the two timeline theory, the basics are these. William (Jimmi Simpson) and Logan (Ben Barnes) have entered the park at some point in the past. Let’s say around thirty years ago. Fans have pointed out that the Westworld logos are different when William and Logan enter the park vs. what we see in the “modern” storyline. In fact the only other time we see that older-looking logo is, you guessed it, during Dr. Ford’s (Anthony Hopkins) 30 plus year-old flashback on a lab coat. If you re-watch the episodes with the two timelines in mind, it does mostly track. William and Logan don’t interact directly with anything happening now with Ed Harris’s Man in Black and the older Anthony Hopkins. Going hand-in-hand with this theory is the notion that white hat William—due to some trauma in the park—will turn into the black-hatted Ed Harris. There has to be a reason we don’t know his character’s name yet, right?
Though there has been some back and forth debate among Westworld fans about this theory, Episode 5, “Contrapasso,” seemed to confirm at least two timelines when Clifton Collins Jr.’s character, Lawrence, exited the Man in Black’s timeline (in a rather gruesome fashion) only to show up immediately looking fresh as a daisy as “El Lazo” in William’s timeline.
Does this conclusively prove that there are two timelines? I think it does. Though I’m sure there are plenty who will argue that there could be multiple Lawrences running around the park (unlikely) or the techs turned his repairs around in record time (equally unlikely). But El Lazo was already an established character (by reputation) in the William and Logan story. To have him played by Lawrence proves, to me at least, that when the Man in Black told Lawrence they had met before he was talking about exactly this: the time they knew each other as William and El Lazo.
So is that it? Are there just two timelines that will, at one point, meet up to form a larger, unsettling story about how a white hat can become a black hat? Probably, but it may not be that simple. A few weeks ago I posited that Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) was not only an android, but an android with the consciousness of Ford’s old partner, Arnold. Ford said that Arnold was driven by personal tragedy—such as, perhaps, a dead son? And while the androids keep talking to an “Arnold” as they malfunction, we, the audience, hear Jeffrey Wright’s voice in Dolores’s head as she goes off programming. But does Bernard just have the consciousness of Arnold, or is he an exact replica?
Most Westworld close watchers presume that the young British boy we’ve met a few times in the park is actually a clone of Ford’s younger self. And then there’s the Delos terms of service that HBO put up on the Westworld website:
Sound like posthumous (?) cloning will play a part in some future aspect of the series. But are we already there? Is Bernard a clone of Arnold? The thing, I admit, that was hanging me up was the photo Ford showed Bernard of his old partner. Something about it just looked off.
And then I remembered that the androids in the park only see what they’re supposed to see. When Dolores looks at the photo of Times Square she says, “It looks like nothing to me.” And it just seems so odd that Bernard, who has been with the company so long, seems to know nothing about Arnold when, as we learn in Episode 5, Arnold’s death was common knowledge to even an outsider like Logan. Was Bernard just programmed to ignore information about Arnold? When he was looking at this photo, was he only seeing what he was programmed to? The Nolans said it was “likely” we would see Arnold in some form or another on the show, but why cast the person pictured above in such a pivotal role? Doesn’t it seem more likely that when we see Arnold, he will be played by Jeffrey Wright?
And with that possibility in mind, go re-watch the Episode 1 scene where the glitching robot Abernathy says his goal is to meet his maker. Ford responds, “uh hunh,” glances at Bernard, and then says, “you’re in luck.” Then this happens:
It may all seems like a bit of a stretch, but bear with me. If Bernard looks identical to Arnold then, as is the case with all the scenes featuring the ageless Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve (Thandie Newton), we have to wonder when any scene with Bernard/Arnold are taking place. Was the scene where he was Skyping his wife (Gina Torres) actually taking place in the distant past? And, more crucially, are those intimate interviews with Evan Rachel Wood and Jeffrey Wright actually very early conversations between Dolores and Arnold? We know from Episode 5 that Arnold’s death pre-dates William and Logan. Is this, in fact, a third timeline?
Since Dolores is clothed when talking to Bernard/Arnold and nude when talking to Ford, are we seeing a flashback to Arnold’s dangerous dalliance with over-humanizing his creations? The maze seems to have been Arnold’s idea, so it would make sense that we see Wright as Arnold tell Dolores about it. It doesn’t really make sense to have Wright as Bernard bring it up. Lawrence’s daughter tells the Man in Black the maze is not for him. Is that because it’s just for androids? Just Arnold’s little test for his favorite robot (the one who he kind of sees as a replacement for his dead son) Dolores? To help him, as Dolores tells Ford in Episode 5, “to destroy this place”?
But why would Ford ever make a replica of his partner? Oh, loneliness, probably. Nostalgia.
Recently, HBO president Casey Bloys said Westworld fan theories are getting “close.” Alright you think it’s two timelines? Close, it’s actually three. You think Bernard is an android? Close, he’s an android and an Arnold clone. This may all be off the mark but with five more episodes to go, one thing is for certain. We haven’t seen the last twist in the road yet.
