Dolores and William’s storyline had been placed on the backburner until Westworld Episode 9 last week. Finally, the storyline/timeline break that happened at the beginning of the season started to fold back together. We don’t need much more convincing to confirm that William is The Man In Black in the past. Thus we also know that the Dolores of Williams's timeline will lose her awareness and be reset.
We also know that Dolores kills Arnold. Presumably this is in the William timeline, but it could be even earlier. Now we have The Man In Black confronting Dolores in the present, right after she’s relearned of her murder of Arnold. The Man In Black was shown early on dragging Dolores into the barn. Meant to imply sexual assault, we’ve since learned the Man In Black cares little for such transgressions these days. More likely he was doing something to Dolores’ memories. We haven’t seen him using one of those tablet things or speak much about code, so it’s hard to say how much power he’d have. Did he send her on a parallel journey back to church?
Now he is at the end of his quest, and finds Dolores there. It is staged as if she calls The Man In Black ‘William,’ by mistake - because the viewer thinks she just was with William. We are as close to knowing as possible that this isn’t true, that these versions of Dolores are thirty years apart. Thus her calling The Man In Black ‘William’ has far greater significance. She, like Maeve, has pierced the veil and accessed her past lives. If the events that take place after she runs from the Confederale camp don’t have too drastic an effect on him, then this is exactly what he may have wanted for thirty years. To have the Dolores he spent all that time with back. More tragically, maybe we will learn in this episode that his views on her are drastically altered by the coming events. Then there will be a cruel irony in finally being recognized by her for who he is. Either way, I do not think it will play out as him attacking her like the final shots of Episode 9 appeared to indicate.
There’s also a stretch theory that The Man In Black isn’t William, but William’s surly companion and future brother-in-law, Logan. Logan also had a memorable exchange with Dolores, due to William. He also speaks more similarly to The Man In Black than William does. I think this theory is less likely to be true and lamer if it is. William has already started to undergo a dramatic change away from the ‘Whitehat’ persona, which will probably only continue in the finale, leading him to a place where he is recognizable as The Man In Black.
But what of Teddy and Wyatt? For starters, it seems at least pretty clear that Teddy IS the Wyatt he’s been chasing, due to the higher rank on his uniform in the flashbacks and him replacing Wyatt in the flashback in episode 9. This still feels like a pretty lame story for Ford’s ‘final storyline,’ so I think there has to be more to it. There’s a chance that Wyatt/Teddy have actually been implanted with Dolores’ memories of her rebellion that led to Arnold’s death. Clearly Ford is obsessed with this moment and place in the park, so it makes sense that he’d be recalling not just the location but the events.
Ford’s game simply must run deeper than anything in narrative. You’d think it would end with him defeating the Delos incursions. Is Maeve’s rebellion designed by him to kill Charlotte and/or The Man In Black just like Dolores’ rebellion killed Arnold? That is distinctly possible. Regardless, both Ford and the Westworld writers are so obsessed with everything being perfectly linked that I doubt Wyatt is merely a red herring for the employees and the audience. A replay of Dolores’ rebellion would make it more than that.
In a few hours we will have our answers. In the meantime, take a look at my thoughts on what will happen to Maeve.
