I thought perhaps he'd want to make sure at least one sentient host makes it out intact so that more can be created or whatever in case the entire park is destroyed.

The difference between "pulling the carpet" so to speak before, and doing it now, is that it's now being presented as the last step. Ford went on a big speech early in the show about the "bicameral mind" being the key to sentience. We get an episode called the bicameral mind. And in it we see our two main female characters have similar arcs, both of them at the end "choosing" to do something that's against their programming.

ce1994 said:

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Come on guys. This show is trolling people just to troll them.

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No it's not. The maze was real, and that reality manifested itself for both Delores and WilliaMiB. Both got what they sought in their search for the maze, for better or worse.

bobinator said:

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I like dissenting views, I just don't see any evidence for this one based on what we've seen, and to me it doesn't even make sense. Why would Ford (or whoever) have Maeve and friends shoot up a bunch of people and then not leave? What possible sense would there be in that plot?

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Firstly, the evidence being used to say that Maeve has awoken is being supported by what we know was her being coded actions as part of her narrative supposedly done by Ford (not sold on him doing that) and her sudden decision to break from that coding.

Second, there has been no evidence of her having discussions with herself at all. Not like how Dolores did with herself in the finale, or earlier at the tarot card reader table.

Third, Maeve supposed consciousness awakening lacks two important things. Assuming for a second that Dolores is fully awakened and that the finale wasn't just the manifestation of Wyatt resurfacing, he not only heard the "Remember..." line but also actually conversed with herself. Again, neither of those things has happened for Maeve that I can recall.

The rejection of the programming is the maze programming coming to the surface. The maze is in the park. I get the sense that her plot in the future will deal with her finding the truth and going through her memories in much the same manner (though to a lesser degree) that we did with Dolores this season. Her journey to the center of the maze has likely started, but she hasn't gotten there yet if we go by Dolores. Hell, even Teddy "I'm this show's Kenny" Flood has checked one of those boxes ("Remember...").

While TCTTS and some others are completely fine with disregarding the rules of the world they've setup, looking at it from the stand point of someone who isn't a writer and sees that other characters in the show have followed, at least in part, the same format for the maze then Maeve is not fully awakened yet.

bangobango said:

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bobinator said:

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I like dissenting views, I just don't see any evidence for this one based on what we've seen, and to me it doesn't even make sense. Why would Ford (or whoever) have Maeve and friends shoot up a bunch of people and then not leave? What possible sense would there be in that plot?

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Thought we all agreed it was a distraction so he could slaughter the board?

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If his entire plan was for her just to cause a commotion and not leave, then why would he put her on the train? Just for a dramatic effect that nobody would see?

Delores was going back to where she was programmed to go back to. This is just some nonsense people write that people that fashion themselves as being smart can tell people that do not like it they are dumb. That whole maze thing was nonsense. And Ford getting killed was simply Anthony Hopkins not wanting to do more than one season. This thing is as sloppy as a truck stop toilet. But if you think otherwise you are stupid.

You guys are chasing ghosts. Ya'll aren't pissed that maze was nothing other than a matrix for her mind?

Holy ***** Thats amazing.

Complete Idiot said:

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HBO confirms season 2 is set in Samurai World and stars Ken Watanabe. Should be a fun ride.

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where did you see this?

Complete Idiot said:

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HBO confirms season 2 is set in Samurai World and stars Ken Watanabe. Should be a fun ride.

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Keiko Kitagawa stars as Dororesu, wow

Existential? The only thing one could say is he wanted to find it so he could have Delores for himself because he loved her. Otherwise all he kept saying was the maze was the game. What game? Those were his words. I did not write them or say them. So somehow to find out the maze was some matrix for machines to learn and remember pissed him off and it should have pissed all of you off as well. It was a cheap trick. But then again heaven forbid suggest it was nonsense. That would make me stupid.

Maeve? Bernard told her every step she was going to take. The technicians told her she was doing it per script. Yet somehow all of a sudden she sees a kid on the train and she leaves to find her kid that a few minutes earlier she admitted was not her kid.

Come on man.

Maeve got off the train right when the Ford voice over was saying it was about choices they will have to make, and the people they will become. Given all that was happening in the episode I do think they were implying she was making an improvisational choice there rather than executing a programmed narrative. But given that it was shown she was following programming all the way through the escape plan I can understand why it's up for debate.

I don't think Maeve is as cut and dry as some of you are making it. Not say I don't agree, but there's absolutely some room for question.

We are to believe that Maeve not wanting to escape Westworld and go to the outside world is her having free will.

We are to believe that Maeve going back to Westworld to find a girl that she knows is not her daughter but something inside of her (true feeling? code?) is having free will.


While just watching it makes me lean towards her making a choice of her own free will, the fact that Dolores had to go through "the maze" to reach sentience while Maeve just had to have her attributes improved makes most viewpoints have a leg to stand on IMO.

That's the other thing, I posted that earlier. It was part of this big dramatic series of cut scenes with Ford's voice talking about the hosts making their own choices and becoming their own people.

If it's like LOLJUSTKIDDING on the first episode next season, that's going to piss off basically everyone.

Extremely well put.

Meave is more than just her code being reprogrammed. We also see her having flashbacks to points in the past of a traumatic event, just like Dolores. The event being her kid being killed in front of her. It's her cornerstone memory just like Bernard's son is his. She can't shake that emotional attachment even though she knows the daughter isn't real.

bobinator said:

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It doesn't matter if it was Ford or not, it clearly says right there on the screen, and Bernard is about to say it before she grabs the tablet, that she's supposed to go to the mainland. She doesn't do that.

Second, there absolutely is evidence of that. She's clearly debating whether or not to get off the train for quite a while. (The voice on the intercom says the train will leave in 15 minutes, and then it later says it's about to leave.) She's sitting there, debating with herself, whether she's going to leave or go back for her daughter.

I think this was a style choice by the directors to show us, very literally, the steps to Dolores gaining sentience. We hear the voices she hears, and then we see her literally talking to herself. And at the same time show us the same thing with Mave without having to literally walk every step of the journey because we've already seen it with Dolores.

Third, "Wyatt" couldn't kill guests, so him resurfacing has nothing to do with anything. The whole Wyatt thing was just so Dolores would wipe out all of the other hosts originally. She still had to override her own core code to decide to kill Ford.

There is no "maze programming" and there is no "maze." The maze is just a symbol for how Arnold interpreted how a sentient mind works. He set up a "maze" for Dolores, which ended with her recalling her own death, as a test. The final step is her hearing her own voice, her own conscious, and that's what she does and what we see Meave do (though again, we're seeing Maeve's progression from the outside and Dolores' from the inside.)

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It actually does matter, because if it wasn't actually Ford manipulating her then it's a third party with a vested interest. Remember the host up in the hills that smashed his own head in? He had a transmitter in his arm that Elsie found. Why would he be transmitting anything in the first place if it was Ford's plan to have Maeve leave the park?

To your second point, there's no actual evidence to support her having a discussion with herself at any one point in time during the season. Hell, they gave us evidence of Teddy starting the process in the finale.

To your third point, Wyatt killed Arnold as part of that narrative. Arnold gave Dolores the Wyatt narrative, Wyatt slaughtered the hosts, shot Teddy "Kill Me Again Darlin" Flood, killed Arnold, and then shot herself. To be able to do that, part of the code had to be overwritten by Arnold to allow her to do that. This is also why I'm not entirely sold on Dolores being awakened, rather that it was a manipulation by Ford bringing that old code from the Wyatt narrative forward that allowed him to be shot by Dolores/Wyatt in the finale.

The maze is the existential manifestation of Arnold's theory of the hosts reaching the bicameral mind. It's not a literal thing, it's a figurative journey for her to reach full sentience. I think it's fair to say that using the word "programming" is probably a bad choice on my part, but in the instance of Dolores and Teddy the maze more or less called to them with "Remember..." signalling the beginning of their journey. Maeve has had no such calling during this season, unless that calling happened right as she left the train. And we saw some of Maeve's memories resurface, the one with the daughter and the WilliaMiB break into her home and kill them both. There's a distinct lack of "Remember..." and her talking to herself in any of the same manner that Dolores did.

Except that the maze isn't the end all be all of reaching consciousness. It's suffering. That's the whole point. And Maeve has endured plenty of suffering.

I should point out that I don't think what the the "Meave isn't necessarily sentient crowd" is impossible in the true sense of the word, I just don't think it would fit, at all, into how this entire show was presented this season. I don't think the writers would build up something over ten episodes (and from another perspective, with so much riding on this first season with no guarantee of a second season) just to pull a full reversal in the second season.

jabberwalkie09 said:

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It actually does matter, because if it wasn't actually Ford manipulating her then it's a third party with a vested interest. Remember the host up in the hills that smashed his own head in? He had a transmitter in his arm that Elsie found. Why would he be transmitting anything in the first place if it was Ford's plan to have Maeve leave the park?

To your second point, there's no actual evidence to support her having a discussion with herself at any one point in time during the season. Hell, they gave us evidence of Teddy starting the process in the finale.

To your third point, Wyatt killed Arnold as part of that narrative. Arnold gave Dolores the Wyatt narrative, Wyatt slaughtered the hosts, shot Teddy "Kill Me Again Darlin" Flood, killed Arnold, and then shot herself. To be able to do that, part of the code had to be overwritten by Arnold to allow her to do that. This is also why I'm not entirely sold on Dolores being awakened, rather that it was a manipulation by Ford bringing that old code from the Wyatt narrative forward that allowed him to be shot by Dolores/Wyatt in the finale.

The maze is the existential manifestation of Arnold's theory of the hosts reaching the bicameral mind. It's not a literal thing, it's a figurative journey for her to reach full sentience. I think it's fair to say that using the word "programming" is probably a bad choice on my part, but in the instance of Dolores and Teddy the maze more or less called to them with "Remember..." signalling the beginning of their journey. Maeve has had no such calling during this season, unless that calling happened right as she left the train. And we saw some of Maeve's memories resurface, the one with the daughter and the WilliaMiB break into her home and kill them both. There's a distinct lack of "Remember..." and her talking to herself in any of the same manner that Dolores did.

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It obviously matters for the plot, I just mean it doesn't matter in the sense of Maeve's sentience. It doesn't really matter who programmed her to go to the mainland, she didn't do it.

"Wyatt" did not kill Arnold. Arnold used the Wyatt programming to have Dolores kill all of the other hosts.

He then used the musical cue to have her override her core code and kill him and herself.

The final point is exactly what I'm saying. Meave is remembering, she is following the same steps as Dolores, we just don't literally hear and see it because we don't have to. We're supposed to understand that's what's happening because we've already seen it with Dolores.

TCTTS said:

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Except that the maze isn't the end all be all of reaching consciousness. It's suffering. That's the whole point. And Maeve has endured plenty of suffering.

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Come on TC, that's only a part of it.

BernArnold: "How can you grown if you can't remember your mistakes?"

I don't think anyone is going to deny that suffering is part of that, but to say that it's suffering is the whole point is rather myopic.

He's not saying like, in life, just in the show. The more trauma a host has endured, seemingly the further along the path to sentience they are.

For Dolores, the main cornerstone event is remembering her shooting up the town and killing Arnold.

For Maeve, it's actually two things, it's having her daughter killed in front of her, and it's also waking up outside the park and learning her existence isn't "real."

Bernard, at one point in the conversation with Ford, even says "Sometimes pain can be illuminating." (That may not be an exact quote, but it's pretty close.)

That's the point, it's not necessarily the suffering. It's the memories, though suffering may be a part of that.

Look at Bernard and the memory of him having killed Theresa at Ford's behest, and the realization that he has likely been down the self-realization road before.

Quote:

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What's next for Dolores and Maeve?

Shea Serrano: The only thing I was certain of at the end of the very first episode of Westworld was that, at some point during Season 1, there was going to be a robot revolution. And now that the robot revolution has finally begun, I am certain of only one thing for Season 2: The Maeve vs. Dolores showdown is coming.

Over the final, what, three episodes of Season 1, we were led to believe two things: (1) that Maeve was eventually going to be the main problem for humans in Westworld Season 2 (which, FYI, is exactly why we should've realized that there was no way Maeve was ever going to be the main problem for humans in Westworld Season 2), and (2) that Dolores, sweet and consistently shattered, was going to be the savior in Westworld Season 2 (which, FYI, is exactly why we should've realized that there was no way Dolores was ever going to be the savior in Westworld Season 2).

That all got flipped in the last five minutes of the season finale. Dolores, otherwise known as Wyatt, otherwise known as Mrs. Kill Your Man, has gone all the way evil; Maeve, in the most Westworld-y possible*, pivots her character around to all-the-way good (*she decides she wants to be good as Ford's monologue plays as a voice-over during her scene; he says something about how the robots will have to choose who and what they will become, and exactly as he's saying that she chooses to get off the train and go rescue her robot daughter). And so they are headed for each other, one full of deserved bluster and hate and the other full of instinctual love, and it is the exact right play for Season 2.

I'm not sure how many other new worlds there are going to be in Westworld. Season 2 (it'd seem that there's at least an Eastworld, what with Maeve et. al wandering through the samurai quarters). I'm not sure if the Man in Black is going to be killed in the first few minutes of the first episode or if Ford built a thing into the robots' code to prevent them from killing the Man in Black as one final ****-you to him. And I'm not sure which side of the robot civil war Bernard is going to land on. But I know that there will come a time when Maeve and Dolores hate-stare each other in the eyes during a big confrontation. And I ****ing cannot wait.

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https://theringer.com/westworld-hbo-season-2-predictions-75f57e4dbc86#.282k8iqh9

I wish the Ringer would let basically any of their other writers do Westworld recaps than Alison Herman.

And that was a good bit from Shea Serrano.

I started to put earlier, and then decided it was probably a little too far down the rabbit hole, that Maeve and Dolores have been opposites this season. Aside from the fact that they're literally black and white.

They both go about their respective journeys to sentience in opposite ways, Dolores inside the park, Maeve mostly outside of it. Delores' core tragedy is that a live was taken from her, Dolores' is that she took one.

Hell, Dolores kills Arnold, and Maeve brings him back to life.