Westworld Season 1, Episode 3 recap: Biggest WTF moments
By Josh Hill
We were gifted with another episode of the hot HBO series Westworld tonight, but what were the most shocking and interesting moment?
After three episode of Westworld, fans are desperately trying to find out what the show is all about. That’s usually not a good thing, to have your audience confused, but Jonathan Nolan and company have crafted a series that is intricate and delicate while also violent and horrific. It’s a perfect mixture of suspense and romance that harkens back to all the things we love about Westerns and Sci-Fi films.
Tonight’s episode dug deeper into the mystery of why the hosts are remembering things and where that is going to lead the psyche of the artificial. Before we start looking ahead to next week’s episode, let’s take a look back at the biggest WTF moments and latest theories from this most recent episode of Westworld.
William Gets Shot
We were told from the start that one of the caveats of the park is that the hosts can’t shoot the guests but the guests can shoot and kill the hosts. This was confirmed when The Man In Black was seen being shot by Teddy but nothing happened.
So we were thrown for a small loop on Sunday when William was shot and seemed to have absorbed a hit. The initial thought here was that William wasn’t actually a guest but a host. How could he have been shot and felt the hit if all indications prior to the was that being shot by a host garnered no results.
This could lend credence to the theory that William is The Man In Black. When we saw him getting shot int he first episode by Teddy, it’s possible that he’s just used to the impact at this point from decades of getting shot. It’s also possible that this takes place int he past and technology at Westworld has advanced to the point where the hosts are indeed firing blanks and not primitive versions of that.
Who Is Arnold?
The first episode of the series featured a host named Cletus, who was shooting up a saloon and talking to voices in his head. This raised red flags all over, as artificial intelligence shouldn’t have the consciousness to be able to talk to voices inside their heads.
In this episode, some investigation into the incident revealed that Cletus was carrying on conversations with someone named Arnold. This was also seen in another host that had to be shut down for talking to voices in its head.
Dr. Robert Ford revealed that Arnold was his old partner — a man who wanted to be God, essentially. Where Ford realizes that there needs to be an on/off switch on the hosts, Arnold wanted to give them conciseness, which historically is a bad thing. It went south and as a result Arnold was removed from the equation. But like we’ve seen with hosts remembering things that should have been wiped from their minds, it appears that Arnold’s fight for coding consciousness might become a major factor moving forward.