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Why 'Westworld' Works (Spoilers)

Plot points up to and including the ninth episode of the first season of Westworld discussed below.

Over at Forbes, Erik Kain seems almost ... well, a little sad that the various fan theories about Westworld are panning out. As fans speculated early on in the show, we're dealing with multiple timelines and we've learned that Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) is in fact Arnold, Dr. Ford's (Anthony Hopkins) partner who hoped their creations could achieve sentience. Here's Erik:

For those of us who spend far too much time puzzling over Westworld’s mysteries, the surprises are less profound. I think this is still a deeply satisfying show on many, many levels, but it’s done very little to surprise us in the past few episodes. Even as it masterfully answers our questions, tying up loose ends in a way that should make myriad other shows green with envy, we watch less in amazement and more in a sense of confirmation. Our best guesses have been validated.

As someone who has long disdained "fan theories"—or, rather, the noxious subgenre of fan theories that involves people speculating wildly about programming based on little more than trailers and commercials—I have to say that I've been pleasantly surprised to see Westworld's various mysteries pay off in a way that makes narrative sense.

The problem with so many of these puzzle box shows is that they throw non sequiturs at viewers in a random and haphazard way so as to create confusion all while the writers have no real idea of how to make things pay off in the end. (Lost, I'm looking squarely at you.) Westworld, on the other hand, has done a masterful job of feeding people just enough clues to let them figure out what's going on on their own without making things obvious. It's rather like the first season of Mad Men in that way.

And Mad Men provides a clue as to how Westworld might proceed. AMC's period drama evolved from a puzzle box (Who is this Don Draper, really? Where is he from?) into a broader character study of a man and his times. The idea that Westworld must maintain the mystery for future seasons, as Erik suggests, strikes me as both risky and wrong, the sort of idea that invites endless recursive loops of troublemaking for the writers until the show is unwieldy and unwatchable. I imagine showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy can milk several seasons out of a potential robot uprising as the hosts gain sentience and revolt against their creators.