While it wasn’t made explicit, as it probably will be in upcoming episodes of Westworld, episode 5 ‘Contrapasso’ seemed to largely confirm the most popular Westworld fan theory: that the plot of the show sprawls across two timelines. The most common iteration of this theory holds that William is actually a younger version of the Man in Black. His adventures in Pariah and the park’s fringes are building to the deadly incident that happened 30 years ago, in which Dolores was a major factor. The most compelling evidence comes in the Man in Black’s conversation with Westworld’s Creative Director Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), where he alludes to the Man in Black’s unexpected evolution into the park’s greatest villain.
So what does the Man in Black want? One possibility is that the secret of the maze is the secret to uploading human consciousness (presumably discovered by Arnold), making the Man in Black’s quest a search for immortality.
Perhaps.
But the more romantic and intriguing theory is that the Man in Black is chasing Dolores’ consciousness. 30 years ago, as William, the Man in Black witnessed the birth of the first robot consciousness and the utter destruction it wreaked on the park. Now, despite all the park’s efforts to suppress Dolores’ sentience, the Man in Black hopes to help her awaken once more, rekindling that moment of purpose he found in Westworld all those years ago. Doctor Ford, who may lose control of the park to a board of bean-counting executives, might prove an unexpected ally in this quest.
None of this is proven, btw, though I suspect William or Dolores will bump into a little girl dining with her parents in some future episode (a memory shared with Dr. Ford in the “modern” timeline). The evidence all points in one direction: fans sussed out the show’s secrets far earlier than intended.
These theories about the nature and motivation of the Man in Black are crowdsourced online, using the entire fanbase as a massive computer for spoilers. Should the above theories prove true in subsequent episodes of Westworld Season 1, it will be a perfect demonstration of a new TV writing principle best codified (in a great AV Club interview that also included writer and producer Ryan Ridley) by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, co-creators of the Adult Swim series Rick and Morty.
Dan Harmon succinctly stated why shows so often fail to hide their biggest twists:
“I think that’s a really remarkable thing about today’s TV audience. You cannot write payoff-based TV anymore because the audience is essentially a render farm. They have an unlimited calculation capacity. There’s no writers’ room that can think more than 20 million people who can think about it for an hour a day. That season of Dexter being the big example: They had planned out this whole Fight Club reveal that there was a character that didn’t really exist except in someone else’s head. They’d planned out the whole clever thing, and they were going to reveal it, and all this stuff, and then after episode one aired, somebody on reddit just like, [Snaps fingers.]. You can’t do it anymore. You can’t try to fool the audience.”
According to Harmon, it’s a waste of time trying to game the audience, a lesson the Westworld writers might be learning right now, episodes ahead of any “official” revelation. It’s no longer the job of the TV writers room to attempt to trick the audience, but to focus instead on great characters (which, other than the Man in Black, Westworld lacks).
“The really cool thing is that render farm reduces your job as a writer to story and jokes. Character.” Harmon said. “This idea that you’re a magician that, like, gets there early and puts threads somewhere — they’re always going to see it.” (sidenote: this is why the Rick and Morty Season 3 “Ticket Theory” is ultimately unconvincing)
Maybe Westworld will learn the lesson in Season 2. Or maybe we’ve got it all wrong and the Man in Black really will manage to fool us before slashing our throats and hanging us upside down from a tree to bleed out.
