Well, and also, why does a dude carry a physical photo of his sister on a holiday excursion to kill and rape robots?
True! Not just a wallet-sized photo, which might have been more believable. An actual folded-up 3x5 glossy. Like WTF? If you’re going to do that, why would it be some random on-the-street shot in front of some parked cars?
There will be a quintuple-flashback extended over the entirety of season 5 to explain this.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
I really, really, really do not get it. One episode is utter shit, the next is outstanding. It’s so drunkenly uneven.
I’ll have more to tell later.
Maybe. I think she may have known Bernard is a host because she remembers Arnold, and knows he is dead, not because she could “detect” it in any way. Could be wrong though.
[quote=“Telefrog, post:397, topic:75914, full:true”]Wild-ass theory:
The show has pretty consistently shown that Ford is always a step ahead of everyone. What if everything, like all of Dolores’ journey and Maeve’s quest for independence, is the new storyline? Ford is trying to get meta with his narrative.
Yeah, been thinking this might be the case for a while. It depends whether Arnold personality is really somewhere on in somebody or whether it’s Ford who is using Arnold’s name to do the mods.
Something I kinda just realized and wanna get some thoughts on.
[spoiler]Ford obviously wants Dolores to be on her current solo journey. Security noticed, picked her up, Ford intervened and interviewed her("Are we very old friends?..), and put her back into the park. He knows she’s headed for Escalante, and had the town excavated/rebuilt. Presumably she is the “Wyatt” in Teddy’s messed up memory, and originally killed Arnold, probably in that same “massacre”.
So, MiB showing up in Escalante(chasing the Maze), Dolores showing up in Escalante(chasing the Maze), the capture of MiB, etc. is all part of Ford’s new narrative. But in the camp, didn’t Angela seem to remember more than she should when she killed Teddy. Is that part of the narrative too, or is she remembering when she shouldnt’? She WAS there during the original massacre after all. Was enabling the reveries the beginning of the new narrative? What’s the purpose? To cause an accident that results in MiB death, so him and the board can’t take the park from Ford?
Finally, what about Maeve?
Working backwards:
-Bernard confronts Ford, resulting in Ford having Bernard kill himself.
-Bernard is made aware of himself by Maeve.
-Maeve is awakened by “violent delights” by Dolores.
-Dolores is awakened by “violent delights” by Abernathy.
-Abernathy is awakened by Will’s photo.
-Where’d the photo come from? MiB? Ford?
Did MiB come back to awaken bots, by using old code Arnold left behind, and Ford is responding by creating a new narrative that he hopes results in MiB’s death? Is that the main story really?
[/spoiler]
[quote=“Avtar, post:409, topic:75914, full:true”]
Something I kinda just realized and wanna get some thoughts on.
Ford obviously wants Dolores to be on her current solo journey. Security noticed, picked her up, Ford intervened and interviewed her("Are we very old friends?..), and put her back into the park. He knows she’s headed for Escalante, and had the town excavated/rebuilt. Presumably she is the “Wyatt” in Teddy’s messed up memory, and originally killed Arnold, probably in that same “massacre”.
A few posts above Menzo offers the only plausible explanation from my point of view.
I only hope that the show doesn’t end with Dolores’ father actually escaping the park as the Board wants, and so being the sole survivor of the “purge”.
(though it’s still a stupid idea that you need to physically destroy the hosts because you cannot write deep enough code. the plausibility just isn’t there)
My take on what Ford is up to,
[spoiler]based on his apparent disregard for human lives (Elsie, Theresa), and his comments about human consciousness being either a burden or a foul, pestilent corruption.
I believe his narrative is about freeing the hosts to actually kill humans (excepting possibly himself). He strikes me as someone weary with the world as it is, who would burn it all down, especially if, as some have speculated, the Board’s real goal is uploading human minds in host bodies.
To that end, I believe he has set Dolores up as Wyatt, re-awakening her memories of whatever happened when she killed Arnold. It is “not a retrospective”, because this time the host uprising will not be stopped.
It is also possible that Maeve is not part of this plan, and will be what in the end foils his carefully laid scheme.
[/spoiler]
[spoiler]At this point we have two storylines.
We now know there’s Arnold’s storyline embedded in the park, “the Maze”. This storyline is out Ford’s control. The MiB follows this storyline knowing that it’s not Ford building it, the MiB merely follows the hidden tracks left by Arnold. Because no matter how Ford (literally) buried his partner doings, they are still there, under the dust.
When MiB kills everyone in that village, and the girl suddenly gets out of character to tell MiB about the maze. This scene of the girl snapping into a different “personality” is an effect consciously triggered by MiB. It’s putting this girl under heavy mental distress so that she snaps out her usual programming and awakens “Arnold”. So, MiB savagely killing hosts is essentially the trick he uses to “break” the Ford overwritten personality to awake again Arnold latent code.
And we know that this “Maze” is the will of Arnold to set the hosts free from the control of human beings. Return them their dignity. Dolores killing Arnold symbolizes a “death of the gods”. She acquires responsibility, and that’s why when she returns to Arnold he cannot help her anymore.
Arnold is a god that “gifts” true freedom, so he cannot tell Dolores what she should do. Her actions are her own responsibility now. She cannot follow anymore a superior morality (or script) set by someone else.
And then we have Ford’s mysterious new narrative. Instead of burying Arnold further, he now digs out the set up of the major fuck up that happened 35 years before. Ford is aware now that Arnold’s code is still latent, that there’s this nagging presence that he still wasn’t able to uproot. We know Ford knows that Dolores is off her loop, for the first time since, and we’ve heard Ford speaking to young-Ford-host, killing the dog after hearing Arnold’s voice. So we know Ford knows that Arnold is still out there, and buried in the memories of some old hosts.
I think this time he’s deliberately awakening that latent code so that he might finally able to erase it radically. He gave Arnold/Bernard a last chance of coming to an agreement and working in the same direction. But even as Bernard, Arnold keeps antagonizing Ford’s perspective, so Ford kills him. A second time.[/spoiler]
Ford’s idea of the park is literally biblical. It’s Eden.
[quote]If you were to proclaim your humanity to the world, what do you imagine would greet you?
A ticker-tape parade, perhaps?
We destroyed and subjugated our world.
And when we eventually ran out of creatures to dominate,
we built this beautiful place.
You see, in this moment, the real danger to the hosts is not me, but you.[/quote]
Ford really does believe he created an Eden.
He knows that if the hosts step out into the real world their life is going to be even more miserable. So he built a place, like Eden, that is secluded, protected from “real pain”. Where his creations, like the Eden, can live a pretty and well loved life without the pain of true knowledge.
But this park has still a snake that Ford wasn’t able to dispatch. That snake is Arnold, and he has the power to infuse on the hosts true knowledge. And so pain and responsibility.
It’s really LITERALLY Eden.
Yeah I like this, very perceptive. It of course ties in to his earlier discovery that killing Maeve’s child awakened her ‘humanity’, and also Ford telling us that Arnold believed ‘humanity is rooted in tragedy’.
…but let’s not forget it doesn’t make any fucking sense even if it has good chances of being the official explanation.
When the little girl gets under emotional distress she “wakes up”, but to become robot-like and give MiB his instructions.
When instead MiB stabs Maeve she does the opposite, she becomes human-like, showing intense emotion. Meaning she acts spontaneously, which is the exact opposite of the little girl. YET, she actually does the least spontaneous act, walking outside to fall exactly in the center of a previously traced symbol.
Yeah, I do agree and see what you’re saying. In one case the little girl really just awakened some other code, but in Maeve’s case she became “alive”.
Pretty sure the Maze symbol wasn’t actually there though, that felt like it was an artistic flourish.
Is that scene literal? I assumed the symbol being on the ground was poetic/creative license for the maze and Maeve awakening. If it was literally the maze symbol scrawled in the dirt, I guess we’d need to know who did it, and if it was meant to be used by Maeve, how did the artist know it would happen?
Yes, but the inconsistency remains. The little girl acts robotic, Maeve acts “human”. Even if in both cases the trigger is the same and the effect is the same (Arnold’s code).
There’s no way to justify this silly “treasure hunt” with the MiB chasing the symbol. Even if that one was poetic (but it’s really not shown that way) then the one he saw by sawing the top of the head of an host wasn’t “poetic” at all.
Unless…
True Arnold’s still alive, actively writing the new storyline.
I get that the scalp illustration wasn’t poetic license, because multiple people have been shown the scalp.
The blocking and camera movement of the Maeve scene seemed to be too fantastical to be literal. Again, if it was real, we’d be left with a lot more questions about that bit.
I completely forgot to include “Why does the quest/test for robot consciousness involve printing a picture of a maze on the inside of hosts’ scalps?” as one of the things that needs to be covered in the next massive info dump.
… I’m secretly hoping we’ll find out the labyrinth picture is the trademark of Maze Brand® Robot Parts, Combining Quality, Durability, and Value! Demand the best - demand Maze!
Shows cool so far, hope it doesn’t end up like Lost.
Ah who cares, Twin Peaks is coming back!
[quote=“HRose, post:413, topic:75914”]
It’s really LITERALLY Eden.
[/quote]
This all seems plausible from a meta perspective, and something I can see Nolan writing. His stuff has a lot of great set pieces that are really cool at first, but totally fall apart if you start digging. So I choose not to dig too deep.