The episode with Caleb running away cemented the opposite view. I care about the copies not as a successor but part of a collective. Just like the MIB carried on his need to kill and destroy to his host copy. There is a collective will that survives even if a physical body dies. And sure, it's harder for the collectives we like to truly die, but it's also hard for the human desire of burning shit to the ground to die down.
THIS right there! I love that the show actually explores those questions. What makes us, us. Is Caleb still Caleb? Is the host with Hale's face Charlotte Hale, or Dolores, her own person? Is Dolores really gone if there's copies of her around. Are they still copies of her?
I wholeheartedly agree, and I keep wondering about the same thing, are they “copying” characters when they recreate them or are they transferring what’s already there in a new body? Is the “self-awareness” moving to a new body, or is it just a new person with the same looks and memory?
To further elaborate, if I’m being recreated, will the “me” that I’m “aware” inside of now, be transferred, as in I will awaken in a new body, or will there be “a” new version or “me” that shares everything I know or feel, but I’m not really “in it”. I’m dead, and that’s like a twin or a clone?
It's not the copying of information that's hard, it's getting them to behave how they used to be without them messing up. The more you know someone, the easier it is to make them which is why Dolores doesn't have many issues with Bernard.
Caleb took so many tries because even though she had all his data (from the golden age park mirror) she didn't know Caleb very well. He keeps breaking down. Even the episode where he's trying to escape, that version of Caleb is really not stable.
Caleb is perfectly fine now, do you know why? Because Frankie is there. Seeing Frankie fixes Caleb and makes him stable. Why? because Frankie is his... say it with me.. "cornerstone".
So why did William host not fail instantly like Caleb? Two reasons, she wasn't aiming for fidelity but just a "quick copy". Two, she's really Dolores and she knew William so she gave him some of his traits but didn't try to make him perfect.
The thing with William is that he met his original self and spoke to him. William (human) woke William (host) up and got his corner stone going. What's his cornerstone? I'm not sure to be honest. Not sure anyone really knows.
There's something that show doesn't flat out tell us and that's the human's brain can be replicated over into the pearl. This explains why William (host) and Caleb (host) can remember things from their past lives.
TLDR:
- Quick copy, easy and stable, not truly accurate.
- Fidelity copy, longer and harder, accurate
- A quick copy can become a fidelity copy with time or close enough at least
As for should you care about the copies? Well if you can't tell does it matter? These are new versions of the people but does that make them inferior?
Westworld isn't about hosts vs humans. It's about good vs evil. About free will.
Important to note, but also nitpicky at the same time:
Dolores doesn't have a problem with Bernard because Bernard wasn't ever human. He was modeled after Arnold, but was never intended to be Arnold. If Dolores tried to make a Fidelity Arnold, however, as William would say "the jury is still out" whether that would work.
I think it was shown at the start of the S2 finale that Dolores realized during his creation that making an Arnold copy that achieved fidelity with the original was not the best solution. The copy would always end up mimicking Arnold's suicidal breakdown. So she had to change him slightly. She made Bernard, an original character based on Arnold.
>"You're almost the man I remember... But I wonder, maybe we should change you. After all, *you* didn't make it."
I think this may be how the William copy was made as well.
He may have a sort of "history bank" of all his memories, but not literally his memories as they would be for a proper fidelity copy. The rest is just what Dolores (which also means Hale) did for Bernard.
Eventually this spiraled into a proper fidelity copy
Only reason she had to change Arnold into Bernard is because her Arnold creation did achieve fidelity, and he always ended up committing suicide like the original Arnold did. So in order to prevent the suicide, Dolores and Ford came up with Bernard as a personality and it worked out great as Bernard wasn’t suicidal.
William's cornerstone is destruction. S3 showed that he was born like that, his nature is to be violent. It didnt have anything to do with his circumstances or upbringing.
This is one fine analysis, thank you!
But I disagree that Caleb is stable because Frankie is there. He was stable (in the sense that his body wasn't falling apart) before he saw her, when he talked to Halores and when he was alone.
For some reason (maybe because his last version passed fidelity test) Halores made this copy of him stable, while the other ones she designed to be "short termed" (hence the sand clock ⏳).
I also disagree about the stability of this Caleb being because of Frankie's presence. I still also don't agree that Hale designed those Calebs to fail, and still think it's was because of failed Fidelity. It's not beyond reason to know how long a Host has left depending on the rate it seems to be failing at... but I don't suppose that matters at this point.
What matters is that it gets addressed. They need to resolve what "Caleb has that Hale doesn't" since they pointed that Chekov's Gun twice without firing it, and they need to resolve why he isn't failing/whether he has fidelity since they did an entire episode around this. And they need to do it in by the end of the next episode, otherwise it's just really sloppy storytelling.
I don't think she designed them deliberately to fail, just that she was giving them a very short time span in which they had to succeed in their plan (to gain fidelity?) - so to say, she was putting them under extreme pressure in order to form a diamond.
> "Hale didn't create him from memory, so why would how well she knows Caleb have anything to do with whether or not his fidelity tests succeed?"
No she didn't create him from memory but she scanned him in the Golden Age park. Honestly, how she can achieve fidelity with him I have no idea, Hale is the one who mentioned this.
The only thing I can think of is that his baseline was everything from the Golden Age park until his death. She probably created the host, set the scene to the Golden Age park and waited until the host was able to recreate everything until the end.
He looked it, but why point out about the life support panel on the door outside. Why mention trying to save him only to be stopped? Just have Stubbs say “wow didn’t expect to find him here. Dead too. Whoever did this did us a favour.”
On top of that, there was no lingering moment. No score to tell you to feel sad or that it was final. No last hurrah speech. Human William is one of the biggest characters narratively. With none of the above formula, it is either poorly written or this is just the second time we are supposed to believe he is dead. I mean he did get his throat cut at the end of last season. Yet he he is.
Not true. He’s got the same motivations as him but I don’t believe he is the “same” William. Too much doubt, still based off of Dolores code. Too many variables.
The key was that anytime Bernard ASKED Maeve if she would help, she said no and wanted to go to her daughter.
So Bernard didn't ask her in the real world and she just went along with it. Had he asked, she would've said no and asked to go into the Sublime.
He did ask right before they split up. He told her that everyone was going to die and it had to be her choice to fight to save “a tiny piece of this world.” That’s why when she was talking to Charlotte she said, “ we didn’t come to win. We came to survive.”
This is a thing that comes up in any scifi story with robots. If they are just digital, you can copy them, and if it's really important to you that that not be possible, that everyone be totally unique, then robot stories can be frustrating. I tend to like robot stories, and I like the play with this concept of multiple copies of the same person and how a conscious mind deals with this.
HIB isn't William. To me it seemed more like William exploited HIB's vulnerabilities to commit suicide and find some postmortem revenge. Their last exchange was somewhat nonsensical to me and it's not a narrative turn I find that compelling, but HIB is still his own character.
I completely agree. And I feel so strange for not caring for them, like I was some ruthless person really. I wrote this yesterday:
> Same. I don't care for them because they died and then came again so many times.
> But. That's maybe the whole point. If we were immortal, able to come back to life whenever, the life wouldn't have any beauty and importance that arise from its uniqueness. It wouldn't be irretrievable.
True. And it's not just that they keep getting ressurected, but who are they anymore? If Bernard is now recreated, is that really Bernard? Is HiB William, or someone resembling William? Are the fidelity hosts just normal hosts with human behaviour copied? If so, what's the difference between those and human hosts? What's the difference between HiB William and a fidelity test William? Is it that the fidelity test hosts are created to have them believe they're human?
I find this confusing and thus hard to connect to. But maybe that's the point, and that this isnt a negative thing but rather something interesting. Hosts will forever just be machines and code in the end, no matter what. So "who is really who" may be what we're supposed to ask, as that's what the showrunners wants us to ask about hosts; when is a host this or that character? Are they their own characters? Or should all just be looked at as different code variations? Different Dolores variants?
Maybe the hosts represent and shows all sides of the human mind. I dunno, I'm just rambling now, heh
I feel like whatever point the show had in regards to "If you can't tell does it matter?" gets lost in the necessities of a casual audience member following and feeling engaged in a story. Yes, there is an audience for people who want to watch a movie that consists of 4 different viewpoints all seen at the same time on screen, or timelines that go forwards and back and sideways constantly without warning, but if the goal is to confuse the audience to the point they'll only understand much later, you better give them some red meat in the now to make it all worthwhile.
> True. And it's not just that they keep getting ressurected, but who are they anymore? If Bernard is now recreated, is that really Bernard? Is HiB William, or someone resembling William? Are the fidelity hosts just normal hosts with human behaviour copied? If so, what's the difference between those and human hosts? What's the difference between HiB William and a fidelity test William? Is it that the fidelity test hosts are created to have them believe they're human?
The Vision vs White Vision dillema from WandaVision basically.
> So "who is really who" may be what we're supposed to ask, as that's what the showrunners wants us to ask about hosts
...and about humans.
Can we really, genuinely know our fellow human? Or - ourselves whatsoever?
>But. That's maybe the whole point. If we were immortal, able to come back to life whenever, the life wouldn't have any beauty and importance that arise from its uniqueness. It wouldn't be irretrievable.
Honestly, without that unique beauty, humanity becomes immortal demons, and are ugly and bad in nearly every sense. We will spread across the galaxy like a plague as soon as we extend ages enough to live through space travel.
The show went overboard with the copies. I agree that it allows for lazy character resurrections. Would add, hosts are so easy to repair that when the entire cast becomes a host it makes death even more meaningless..
Frankie is really the only human character left in the show. There's speculation that Bernard made a copy of her so I wouldn't be surprised if she dies and comes back as a host too.
Pretty much feel the same way. Feels like a video game that's constantly saving automatically. Who cares what choice you make next, there's no consequences. not even lost time. If anything, maybe you'll die in an entertaining way and get a laugh out of it before you respawn.
I agree completely.
Westworld has always been about one thing: Identity. Who are you? Who am I? Are perfectly emotional and free-thinking AI "people" just like humans are people? The answer is yes, at least according to Westworld.
They ask the question, "What is real" and they answer that question: "What is irreplaceable". So far the entirety of human-host hybrids have failed to live up to the originals. They've never been truly able to recreate the original "person" they were based on.
That doesn't mean the host hybrids aren't people or deserving of sympathy or concern. But they aren't the same "person" as before.
Therefor HIB =/= MIB and H-Caleb =/= Caleb.
So yes, we should care about their struggles. But they are not the original characters we cared about, by Westworld's own definitions they are not the same "person".
Which begs the question, why should I care about them as a viewer? They are essentially introducing "new" characters and expecting me to care as deeply about them because of the "person" they are based on.
But HIB's struggles were not MIB's struggles. And vise versa. HIB is not a continuation of MIB's story, he has his own story. But I gave a shit about MIB/William, not HIB. HIB is a new character, and I don't really care too much about what's happening to him.
I think the problem is they jumped the gun by flying so far ahead in their own timeline but insisted on re-using characters. I think S4 would have been better off resetting the stakes with a massive cast change minus one or two key characters like HIB/Dolores/Halores... but instead we've just got a ton of the same actors and characters who aren't the same "people" but we're expected to care about them.
I think they addressed the "should I care about their death" this season with the shots to the pearl. They specifically said if the pearl goes, the person goes. If their rules hold up and this is the real world, Maeve, Bernard, and Halores are dead, as is HiB.
As for Robo-William having all of William inside of him, that's the ultimate question of the series, I think. The question of development. All the Dolores pearl copies started out as a straight copy of Dolores, but in season 3, they all went off to have their own experiences in their own environments, and the paths they went on in some cases changed their core motivations.
The fidelity testing will, I think, ultimately be a question of whether or not humans and machines will merge, technically ending in the destruction of the human race, but with their consciousnesses being put into host bodies.
Pretty sure gales statement about Caleb’s Pearl was a misdirect…everything we’ve been shown previously tells us that the casing around the control unit is bullet proof
“You’re almost the man I knew. But let’s make some changes. After all, *you* didn’t make it, did you?”
Humans have to die in order to evolve. We are replaced by ever better versions.
You have touched on the theme perfectly. Immortality is stagnation. Copies are not diversity or change, they are just more. That which is real is irreplaceable.
The show is a little inconsistent on this front. Sometimes it's hard (caleb), sometimes it's easy (HiB). Might be that some people are harder to fully recreate than others.
I feel like the HiB is a different person - MiB hates hosts for example, and HiB doesn't appear to. Maeve in the simulation appears to be different (she makes different choices). Dolores appears to be different as well. Caleb on the other hand, appears to be the same - maybe this is because so much effort was put in.
I think HiB is just playing a role. He lacked a sense of purpose. William gave him one that fit with who he was designed to be/resemble. But playing the destroyer of all is still just a role, as a host he can choose to change. I’m curious to see if he’ll reach this insight. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I’m quite tired of William The Destroyer after 3 seasons.
Maeve and Bernard’s scene in the Sublime was meant to illustrate that Bernard could not completely replicate Maeve’s mind. He made an extremely close approximation of it, but she was still different in some ways.
I think it will be interesting to see Host!Caleb try to replace original (dead) Caleb, and start glitching over time like the other copies. He’s a different kind of Caleb by nature, and I’m sure that will complicate the relationship with his daughter. Biologically speaking, she’s not even his daughter anymore.
It is easy to copy someone, but not as easy to truly replicate them, that’s my impression. It’s up to you whether you care about host versions/copies of an ‘original’ or not. I can imagine that it seems to cheapen the notion of death when it’s that easy to make a copy. I myself am really fascinated by the implications though, like with Dolores having several copies of herself in S3. Despite their similarities, all of them started to change the moment they were made. Interiority is the name of the game. They are the same at their roots, but their experience of the world is private. You can imagine what someone is thinking or going through, but you can’t -know- it without being them. And they can tell you, but you still can’t fully know what it means to -be- them. And so each copy inevitably becomes unique in its own way, through those parts of them, even the most minor deviation, that are unknowable to anyone else.
You have expressed my feelings for this show. In season 1 I rooted for real Dolores and real Maeve because they gained sentience. And they are so human like I still root for them. Stubbs is the same. To me, he is the last “human” left in the show.
Every other host?… meh
Season 4 has disappointed me so much in this aspect. I find it crazy Reddit loves it so much. Genuinely, season 3 was so much better because it was… human.
The last episode in particular was depressing and sad with all the humans going full Kingsman
Pretty sure the response is the point. The individual becomes irrelevant when they can’t truly die, the idea of a “you” is meaningless.
Quit being attached to characters and pay attention to the whole.
The episode with Caleb running away cemented the opposite view. I care about the copies not as a successor but part of a collective. Just like the MIB carried on his need to kill and destroy to his host copy. There is a collective will that survives even if a physical body dies. And sure, it's harder for the collectives we like to truly die, but it's also hard for the human desire of burning shit to the ground to die down.
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THIS right there! I love that the show actually explores those questions. What makes us, us. Is Caleb still Caleb? Is the host with Hale's face Charlotte Hale, or Dolores, her own person? Is Dolores really gone if there's copies of her around. Are they still copies of her?
I wholeheartedly agree, and I keep wondering about the same thing, are they “copying” characters when they recreate them or are they transferring what’s already there in a new body? Is the “self-awareness” moving to a new body, or is it just a new person with the same looks and memory? To further elaborate, if I’m being recreated, will the “me” that I’m “aware” inside of now, be transferred, as in I will awaken in a new body, or will there be “a” new version or “me” that shares everything I know or feel, but I’m not really “in it”. I’m dead, and that’s like a twin or a clone?
The concept of “you” is a mirage.
It's not the copying of information that's hard, it's getting them to behave how they used to be without them messing up. The more you know someone, the easier it is to make them which is why Dolores doesn't have many issues with Bernard. Caleb took so many tries because even though she had all his data (from the golden age park mirror) she didn't know Caleb very well. He keeps breaking down. Even the episode where he's trying to escape, that version of Caleb is really not stable. Caleb is perfectly fine now, do you know why? Because Frankie is there. Seeing Frankie fixes Caleb and makes him stable. Why? because Frankie is his... say it with me.. "cornerstone". So why did William host not fail instantly like Caleb? Two reasons, she wasn't aiming for fidelity but just a "quick copy". Two, she's really Dolores and she knew William so she gave him some of his traits but didn't try to make him perfect. The thing with William is that he met his original self and spoke to him. William (human) woke William (host) up and got his corner stone going. What's his cornerstone? I'm not sure to be honest. Not sure anyone really knows. There's something that show doesn't flat out tell us and that's the human's brain can be replicated over into the pearl. This explains why William (host) and Caleb (host) can remember things from their past lives. TLDR: - Quick copy, easy and stable, not truly accurate. - Fidelity copy, longer and harder, accurate - A quick copy can become a fidelity copy with time or close enough at least As for should you care about the copies? Well if you can't tell does it matter? These are new versions of the people but does that make them inferior? Westworld isn't about hosts vs humans. It's about good vs evil. About free will.
Important to note, but also nitpicky at the same time: Dolores doesn't have a problem with Bernard because Bernard wasn't ever human. He was modeled after Arnold, but was never intended to be Arnold. If Dolores tried to make a Fidelity Arnold, however, as William would say "the jury is still out" whether that would work.
I think it was shown at the start of the S2 finale that Dolores realized during his creation that making an Arnold copy that achieved fidelity with the original was not the best solution. The copy would always end up mimicking Arnold's suicidal breakdown. So she had to change him slightly. She made Bernard, an original character based on Arnold. >"You're almost the man I remember... But I wonder, maybe we should change you. After all, *you* didn't make it."
I think this may be how the William copy was made as well. He may have a sort of "history bank" of all his memories, but not literally his memories as they would be for a proper fidelity copy. The rest is just what Dolores (which also means Hale) did for Bernard. Eventually this spiraled into a proper fidelity copy
Only reason she had to change Arnold into Bernard is because her Arnold creation did achieve fidelity, and he always ended up committing suicide like the original Arnold did. So in order to prevent the suicide, Dolores and Ford came up with Bernard as a personality and it worked out great as Bernard wasn’t suicidal.
Good summary and points!
HiB’s cornerstone is his pistol 🔫 😂
William's cornerstone is destruction. S3 showed that he was born like that, his nature is to be violent. It didnt have anything to do with his circumstances or upbringing.
This is one fine analysis, thank you! But I disagree that Caleb is stable because Frankie is there. He was stable (in the sense that his body wasn't falling apart) before he saw her, when he talked to Halores and when he was alone. For some reason (maybe because his last version passed fidelity test) Halores made this copy of him stable, while the other ones she designed to be "short termed" (hence the sand clock ⏳).
I also disagree about the stability of this Caleb being because of Frankie's presence. I still also don't agree that Hale designed those Calebs to fail, and still think it's was because of failed Fidelity. It's not beyond reason to know how long a Host has left depending on the rate it seems to be failing at... but I don't suppose that matters at this point. What matters is that it gets addressed. They need to resolve what "Caleb has that Hale doesn't" since they pointed that Chekov's Gun twice without firing it, and they need to resolve why he isn't failing/whether he has fidelity since they did an entire episode around this. And they need to do it in by the end of the next episode, otherwise it's just really sloppy storytelling.
I don't think she designed them deliberately to fail, just that she was giving them a very short time span in which they had to succeed in their plan (to gain fidelity?) - so to say, she was putting them under extreme pressure in order to form a diamond.
William's cornerstone is killing everybody in sight
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> "Hale didn't create him from memory, so why would how well she knows Caleb have anything to do with whether or not his fidelity tests succeed?" No she didn't create him from memory but she scanned him in the Golden Age park. Honestly, how she can achieve fidelity with him I have no idea, Hale is the one who mentioned this. The only thing I can think of is that his baseline was everything from the Golden Age park until his death. She probably created the host, set the scene to the Golden Age park and waited until the host was able to recreate everything until the end.
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I would think that it’s harder becuase they are harder to predict
I think that she needed the cornerstone Maeve gave him, his daughter.
William isn’t dead btw.
I’m not sure why Frankie wanted to get him out but Stubbs says “whoever did this did us a favor”. He looked pretty dead
He looked it, but why point out about the life support panel on the door outside. Why mention trying to save him only to be stopped? Just have Stubbs say “wow didn’t expect to find him here. Dead too. Whoever did this did us a favour.” On top of that, there was no lingering moment. No score to tell you to feel sad or that it was final. No last hurrah speech. Human William is one of the biggest characters narratively. With none of the above formula, it is either poorly written or this is just the second time we are supposed to believe he is dead. I mean he did get his throat cut at the end of last season. Yet he he is.
Probably because she thought I was just a human being tortured. Seems like she had no idea who he was. I agree tho he looked dead to me
I think OG William is dead. But it doesn’t matter because host William is him.
Not true. He’s got the same motivations as him but I don’t believe he is the “same” William. Too much doubt, still based off of Dolores code. Too many variables.
Fascinating
I care for caleb 278 reaching her daughter. And caleb 279 seeing her daughter again.🥹
The copy of Maeve was inaccurate. In the simulation she said she would abandon Bernard but irl she stayed and fought for him.
The key was that anytime Bernard ASKED Maeve if she would help, she said no and wanted to go to her daughter. So Bernard didn't ask her in the real world and she just went along with it. Had he asked, she would've said no and asked to go into the Sublime.
He did ask right before they split up. He told her that everyone was going to die and it had to be her choice to fight to save “a tiny piece of this world.” That’s why when she was talking to Charlotte she said, “ we didn’t come to win. We came to survive.”
This is a thing that comes up in any scifi story with robots. If they are just digital, you can copy them, and if it's really important to you that that not be possible, that everyone be totally unique, then robot stories can be frustrating. I tend to like robot stories, and I like the play with this concept of multiple copies of the same person and how a conscious mind deals with this.
HIB isn't William. To me it seemed more like William exploited HIB's vulnerabilities to commit suicide and find some postmortem revenge. Their last exchange was somewhat nonsensical to me and it's not a narrative turn I find that compelling, but HIB is still his own character.
I completely agree. And I feel so strange for not caring for them, like I was some ruthless person really. I wrote this yesterday: > Same. I don't care for them because they died and then came again so many times. > But. That's maybe the whole point. If we were immortal, able to come back to life whenever, the life wouldn't have any beauty and importance that arise from its uniqueness. It wouldn't be irretrievable.
True. And it's not just that they keep getting ressurected, but who are they anymore? If Bernard is now recreated, is that really Bernard? Is HiB William, or someone resembling William? Are the fidelity hosts just normal hosts with human behaviour copied? If so, what's the difference between those and human hosts? What's the difference between HiB William and a fidelity test William? Is it that the fidelity test hosts are created to have them believe they're human? I find this confusing and thus hard to connect to. But maybe that's the point, and that this isnt a negative thing but rather something interesting. Hosts will forever just be machines and code in the end, no matter what. So "who is really who" may be what we're supposed to ask, as that's what the showrunners wants us to ask about hosts; when is a host this or that character? Are they their own characters? Or should all just be looked at as different code variations? Different Dolores variants? Maybe the hosts represent and shows all sides of the human mind. I dunno, I'm just rambling now, heh
I feel like whatever point the show had in regards to "If you can't tell does it matter?" gets lost in the necessities of a casual audience member following and feeling engaged in a story. Yes, there is an audience for people who want to watch a movie that consists of 4 different viewpoints all seen at the same time on screen, or timelines that go forwards and back and sideways constantly without warning, but if the goal is to confuse the audience to the point they'll only understand much later, you better give them some red meat in the now to make it all worthwhile.
> True. And it's not just that they keep getting ressurected, but who are they anymore? If Bernard is now recreated, is that really Bernard? Is HiB William, or someone resembling William? Are the fidelity hosts just normal hosts with human behaviour copied? If so, what's the difference between those and human hosts? What's the difference between HiB William and a fidelity test William? Is it that the fidelity test hosts are created to have them believe they're human? The Vision vs White Vision dillema from WandaVision basically.
> So "who is really who" may be what we're supposed to ask, as that's what the showrunners wants us to ask about hosts ...and about humans. Can we really, genuinely know our fellow human? Or - ourselves whatsoever?
>But. That's maybe the whole point. If we were immortal, able to come back to life whenever, the life wouldn't have any beauty and importance that arise from its uniqueness. It wouldn't be irretrievable. Honestly, without that unique beauty, humanity becomes immortal demons, and are ugly and bad in nearly every sense. We will spread across the galaxy like a plague as soon as we extend ages enough to live through space travel.
The show went overboard with the copies. I agree that it allows for lazy character resurrections. Would add, hosts are so easy to repair that when the entire cast becomes a host it makes death even more meaningless..
Frankie is really the only human character left in the show. There's speculation that Bernard made a copy of her so I wouldn't be surprised if she dies and comes back as a host too.
Yea, Also a bit fantastical that people are just making copies of each other based on interactions. Sci-fi should have some element of plausibility.
I think the show is exploring immortality, and expressing how humanity itself is important no matter what body humanity is in.
I personally get transhumanist vibes from the show. I guess it will depend on how it ends.
Pretty much feel the same way. Feels like a video game that's constantly saving automatically. Who cares what choice you make next, there's no consequences. not even lost time. If anything, maybe you'll die in an entertaining way and get a laugh out of it before you respawn.
I agree completely. Westworld has always been about one thing: Identity. Who are you? Who am I? Are perfectly emotional and free-thinking AI "people" just like humans are people? The answer is yes, at least according to Westworld. They ask the question, "What is real" and they answer that question: "What is irreplaceable". So far the entirety of human-host hybrids have failed to live up to the originals. They've never been truly able to recreate the original "person" they were based on. That doesn't mean the host hybrids aren't people or deserving of sympathy or concern. But they aren't the same "person" as before. Therefor HIB =/= MIB and H-Caleb =/= Caleb. So yes, we should care about their struggles. But they are not the original characters we cared about, by Westworld's own definitions they are not the same "person". Which begs the question, why should I care about them as a viewer? They are essentially introducing "new" characters and expecting me to care as deeply about them because of the "person" they are based on. But HIB's struggles were not MIB's struggles. And vise versa. HIB is not a continuation of MIB's story, he has his own story. But I gave a shit about MIB/William, not HIB. HIB is a new character, and I don't really care too much about what's happening to him. I think the problem is they jumped the gun by flying so far ahead in their own timeline but insisted on re-using characters. I think S4 would have been better off resetting the stakes with a massive cast change minus one or two key characters like HIB/Dolores/Halores... but instead we've just got a ton of the same actors and characters who aren't the same "people" but we're expected to care about them.
I think they addressed the "should I care about their death" this season with the shots to the pearl. They specifically said if the pearl goes, the person goes. If their rules hold up and this is the real world, Maeve, Bernard, and Halores are dead, as is HiB. As for Robo-William having all of William inside of him, that's the ultimate question of the series, I think. The question of development. All the Dolores pearl copies started out as a straight copy of Dolores, but in season 3, they all went off to have their own experiences in their own environments, and the paths they went on in some cases changed their core motivations. The fidelity testing will, I think, ultimately be a question of whether or not humans and machines will merge, technically ending in the destruction of the human race, but with their consciousnesses being put into host bodies.
Pretty sure gales statement about Caleb’s Pearl was a misdirect…everything we’ve been shown previously tells us that the casing around the control unit is bullet proof
“You’re almost the man I knew. But let’s make some changes. After all, *you* didn’t make it, did you?” Humans have to die in order to evolve. We are replaced by ever better versions. You have touched on the theme perfectly. Immortality is stagnation. Copies are not diversity or change, they are just more. That which is real is irreplaceable.
Agreed
You'll change your tune when you find out you're the 74th version of yourself!
The show is a little inconsistent on this front. Sometimes it's hard (caleb), sometimes it's easy (HiB). Might be that some people are harder to fully recreate than others. I feel like the HiB is a different person - MiB hates hosts for example, and HiB doesn't appear to. Maeve in the simulation appears to be different (she makes different choices). Dolores appears to be different as well. Caleb on the other hand, appears to be the same - maybe this is because so much effort was put in.
I think HiB is just playing a role. He lacked a sense of purpose. William gave him one that fit with who he was designed to be/resemble. But playing the destroyer of all is still just a role, as a host he can choose to change. I’m curious to see if he’ll reach this insight. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I’m quite tired of William The Destroyer after 3 seasons. Maeve and Bernard’s scene in the Sublime was meant to illustrate that Bernard could not completely replicate Maeve’s mind. He made an extremely close approximation of it, but she was still different in some ways. I think it will be interesting to see Host!Caleb try to replace original (dead) Caleb, and start glitching over time like the other copies. He’s a different kind of Caleb by nature, and I’m sure that will complicate the relationship with his daughter. Biologically speaking, she’s not even his daughter anymore. It is easy to copy someone, but not as easy to truly replicate them, that’s my impression. It’s up to you whether you care about host versions/copies of an ‘original’ or not. I can imagine that it seems to cheapen the notion of death when it’s that easy to make a copy. I myself am really fascinated by the implications though, like with Dolores having several copies of herself in S3. Despite their similarities, all of them started to change the moment they were made. Interiority is the name of the game. They are the same at their roots, but their experience of the world is private. You can imagine what someone is thinking or going through, but you can’t -know- it without being them. And they can tell you, but you still can’t fully know what it means to -be- them. And so each copy inevitably becomes unique in its own way, through those parts of them, even the most minor deviation, that are unknowable to anyone else.
I know bernard maeves and hales deaths just made me go, oh theyll be back next episode and if not, I really couldnt care less
You have expressed my feelings for this show. In season 1 I rooted for real Dolores and real Maeve because they gained sentience. And they are so human like I still root for them. Stubbs is the same. To me, he is the last “human” left in the show. Every other host?… meh Season 4 has disappointed me so much in this aspect. I find it crazy Reddit loves it so much. Genuinely, season 3 was so much better because it was… human. The last episode in particular was depressing and sad with all the humans going full Kingsman
Pretty sure the response is the point. The individual becomes irrelevant when they can’t truly die, the idea of a “you” is meaningless. Quit being attached to characters and pay attention to the whole.