BWW Recap: WESTWORLD Reveals What it All Means

Guts, gore, heists, shoot outs, revelations, and one gnarly snake tattoo are just some of what you can find in the fourth and most explosively exciting episode of WESTWORLD to date. The episode, entitled "Dissonance Theory," already starts laying the firm foundation for where the season is headed, while doing what WESTWORLD does best; satiates your appetite but with such incredible flavors that make you want to come back for more just to confirm its brilliance. "Dissonance Theory," and what the concept of the title suggests, suggest that the human mind is constantly trying to find patterns amongst its cognitions and understanding (i.e. how your brain works and what it is understanding) but when a dissonance arrises, there is a need to take action to get rid of said dissonance to return to the peaceful equilibrium of before. As the hosts' world begins to unravel from inside out, and the inner workings of Westworld on every level start exposing their pure selfish corruption, dissonances are cropping up all around at a rate so quick, the possibility of attaining pure and consistent cognition is falling too far out of reach.

As we've grown accustomed to, we open the episode on Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) once more, during another session with a rather worried Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), who is inquiring as to her recent stray from her loop that landed her in William's arms. Dolores recalls the pain she felt; the loss. She talks about her parents and it is then that Bernard suggests once again, that he can make all of that pain, all of that feeling go away. It's the attitude Ford has been approaching the hosts from; to forget is to help. However, who is it helping? Them? You? Wiping their minds doesn't erase what is being done to them, nor relieve you of the guilt for creating them and putting them in those situations. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) clearly has a God complex, even comparing himself to a god this episode, but refuses to take any responsibility for the pure depravity his supreme power allows.

Dolores resists Bernard's suggestion to simply lobotomize her experiences. She wants to feel. "Pain...their loss. It's all I have left of them," she insists, paralleling what Bernard said about his son in "The Stray". Their loss helps them remember and hold on to what they have lost. It's such a human and sentimental concept that the sheer fact that Dolores is expressing it clearly takes Bernard aback. She elaborates further, speaking about how grief unlocked something in her, emotions, feelings, and knowledge that she never knew she had. That, she claims, is adapted from something they've written for her, but the first sentiment, the one that so closely mirrors Bernard's human emotion towards loss, cannot be fabricated.

Bernard looks at this child that he's thrown into the deep end and feels so incredibly helpless, albeit selfish within the machine he's simply a working cog within. She asks for his help and his guilt, the guilt that Ford denies and refuses to feel is exponentiated, propels him. When he asks her what it is she wants, she replies "I don't know, but this world...I think there may be something wrong with this world; something hiding underneath. Either that or there's something wrong with me. I may be losing my mind." He knows that he is responsible, as well as the cooperation he refuses to fight against, and so he gives her help in the only way he knows how; the maze. He may not directly help her, but he believes the maze might, and thus our first confirmation that this mysterious maze the Man in Black seeks truly exists and Bernard knows about it. He tells her that if she can find the center of the maze, perhaps then she can be free. "I think I want to be free," Dolores confesses, blindly grasping at the straws Bernard has thrown her.

She wakes back up with William (Jimmi Simpson) and Logan (Ben Barnes), right where we left her last week, and William tries to take care of her. The tension between William and Logan rises in this episode, as their clearly opposite morality and perspective on life becomes clear when face to face with all Westworld has to offer and more. William wants to guard Dolores and keep her safe. He sees her as a person, and even when Logan's thoughts start to filter into his mind, and he questions her reality, he immediately pushes that aside when talking with her because he sees the pure humanity within her; host or not. With that acceptance comes William's increasing frustration with Logan. When William insists she returns to Sweet Water out of fear that she will get killed on their bounty hunt, Logan just cocks his gun and suggests he should just kill her then and there and end William's worry, claiming the park will come get her. Logan, whose has investments in Westworld, sees the park as both a business and a game. It is never real to him. He sees the cogs behind the machine and embraces them fully, never second guessing what it is he is actually seeing. Logan tells William that Dolores was simply sent by control to heighten his experience because she was the one thing he "smiled at" back at Sweet Water. Control is watching their every move, Logan insists, which is a notion that we hear repeated and confirmed later on by Ford. For the guests, Westworld feels intimate; personal. According to Logan, that is because the park makes it so.

We get a closer look to just how much the park controls and regulates this episode. When it is brought up that Dolores has strayed off of her loop, and they can't confirm that she is with a guest because Ford's new narrative has sent everything out of loop and into chaos, they send someone in to pull her for examination. They find her when she is in a town William and Logan pass through on their hunt; the same town the Man in Black found Lawrence's family in. Dolores happens upon Lawrence's daughter who sparks memory fragments in her, after she tells Dolores that they both come from the same place. Quick flashes hop across the screen, too fast to make sense of but slow enough to make you mad with questions; just as they do to Dolores. We see a church with the same steeple on it that Ford revealed in Episode 2 (presumably buried over time as a narrative long forgotten), Lawrence's daughter, and Dolores couching by a grave with a gun. This pattern of memory fragments being triggered by a word, a voice, a phrase, or a face from said memories are BECOMING more and more frequent in the hosts and function just as human memories do; prompted by familiarities almost like deja vu. Lawrence's daughter also traces the maze pattern we saw on the scalp the Man in black is carrying around into the ground. The maze is clearly more than just an easter egg.

Already shaken up, Dolores jumps when a man, presumably from control or behavior, comes up to her insisting that she needs to return to Sweet Water because her father is worried sick. Dolores, fueled by grief, remembering, insists her father is dead. There is no one to go back to. There is nothing left for her there. She insists she is not going back; a sentiment she later repeats to William. William, of course, steps in, letting the man know she is with him but not before we see a pure fire, rage, and fury in Dolores's eyes that we've never seen before. "I need to keep going," she insists, refusing to go back to the hellish loop she has been on for thirty years.

While talking to William later and trying to make him understand what it is she's feeling and why it is she's going, she compares herself to the steers on her ranch. One steer would always stray but her father always said they would find their way back home eventually. This was true, but what she never thought about until now was that they weren't bringing them home. They were simply leading them back to their slaughter. This slaughter, obviously, doubling for the horrors she is forced to endure every night for the entertainment of the depraved; like Logan.

William and Logan finally get their bounty, Logan charging right in there and enjoying the hit, without even savoring the strategy or the moment. He plays black hat in Westworld like most play Grand Theft Auto. He goes in guns blazing, knowing he cant get hurt, shooting everything, and then switching his gun for an upgrade he finds, just as you do in a video game.

The man the captured for the bounty lets slip, however, that his boss El Lazo will pay them double what the sheriff will give them and Logan is immediately drawn in to what he says is a park easter egg. He kills the host that joined them on the bounty hunt; both to William and Dolores's horror. Dolores stands up to him, refusing him to let this criminal go free and William and Logan have a stand off. Logan tries to convince William to go black hat will him and William fights back, shouting what we've all been saying. "What is you problem? The second we get away from the real world, you turn into an evil prick." However, that is exactly what Westworld does to you. It shows you who you could be. For Logan, that's the evil prick he's become and for William, that's the man who stands up to men like Logan and actually cares. Westworld can enable you to be the best person you can be...or the worst if, like Logan, cover up your atrocities and impulses by insisting it is just a game.

The Man in Black (Ed Harris), on the search for the maze just as Dolores is, becomes a little more grounded this episode as we start to learn more about him and what his motives are, other than to just find the ultimate easter egg. In that sense, he's like Logan, but he's clearly here for something greater. He doesn't take enjoyment out of the park and its inhabitants in the same way that Logan does; which perhaps makes him more frightening.

He finds the snake he is searching for with Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.) in the form of a woman, Armistice (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal), who is apart of the saloon heist narrative that happens every two weeks. He agrees to aid her in her quest to break her associate, Hector Escaton (Rodrigo Santoro) out of jail, if she tells him the story of her snake tattoo. While on their mission, two guests that are accompanying Armistice approach the Man in Black, nervous with anxiety and excitement reminiscent of when a fan meets a celebrity. "Such an admirer of yours," he tells the Man in Black. "Your foundation literally saved my sister's-" he begins to say before the Man in Black cuts him off with annoyance, threatening to slit his throat. "This is my fing vacation." This, along with the information that the Man in Black is one of Westworld's most loyal customers for thirty years, is the only hint of the Man in Black's identity outside of Westworld. It is interesting that the man we see evocative of what the worst part of the black hat narrative promises, who is on a path of destruction, violence, and terror, is associated with the word savior in the outside world.

The Man in Black also, curiously, mentions Arnold. He says that Arnold left one last story before he died and he is determined to find it. We begin to have a clearer idea of what Westworld means to him and why he is doing what he is doing. To him, Westworld is a game, but a game he grows tired of playing. It's a game with no STAKES because you cannot get killed. That is the only rule and the one person who broke that rule was one of the people that enforced it; Arnold. Perhaps he too wants to break the "game."

While on their way to the prison, The Man in Black talks to Lawrence about choices, insisting that Lawrence never actually has a choice, bound by the confines of choices made for him by others, and perhaps he is his savior, come to finally set him free. "I'm your salvation," he also tells Hector when he finds himself sharing a jail cell with his mission target. This episode truly highlights the possibility that perhaps the Man in Black isn't "bad" or a stereotypical "black hat." Does he want to die in the park? Or does he want to continue Arnold's work? If this man's company saves lives, so much so that he has people practically fawning over his greatness, then there must be good in him. Yet, he becomes absolutely depraved in here. Perhaps it is because, just like Logan, he knows how it works. However, unlike Logan, he wants something greater. Perhaps instead of taking solace in seeing the cogs, he wants to go beyond.

They bust out of prison with explosive cigars that he was carrying, signaling control for a pyrotechnic effect request which they quickly grant, and save Lawrence who was once again about to be executed. With Hector delivered, The Man in Black gets THE STORY BEHIND her tattoo and it's a doozy. "I was seven when they rode into my town. Masked men in devil's horns. They killed everyone; women, children, even the animals. They gutted my mother from her jaw to her sex. I had to paint her warm blood over my skin to make sure they'd think I was dead. Everyone of them I track down I use their blood to paint my skin again." The last man, is of course, Wyatt, who is starting to seem like more than just a small puzzle piece in Ford's narrative. Every thread points back to him and if he is apart of THE JOURNEY for those who seek the center of the maze, perhaps Ford's plan isn't so selfish and direct as it seems.

His narrative, however, is causing a ruckus, forcing Theresa goes to meet with him out in the park. He is literally bulldozing lands (digging his church out perhaps?) putting the hosts to work, almost like slaves. The board is worried just about how big of an endeavor this new narrative truly is. Ford is incredibly defensive as the two sit down for a drink, challenging her immediately, insisting she doesn't like Westworld. She agrees, saying that she admires the audacity of it, but ever since she came there as a child, she knew it wouldn't be a place she could enjoy. She saw the depravity of it and still does, but prefers to engage in it from a strictly business sense because she could never enjoy it. Ford reveals that he didn't always think the park would turn out this way and originally hoped for more balance, contrasting Arnold's beliefs that humans are depraved and that would only exponentiate within a place like Westworld. Arnold saw the corruption in humanity and so he preferred the company of the hosts. Ford didn't and still doesn't in the sense that he's not replacing humanity for hosts. They are not equivalent in his head because he doesn't allow himself to believe they are as Arnold did. They cant truly be his replacements because he doesn't allow himself to personify them. He also mentions that Arnold didn't want to let suits into Westworld. Ford said he knew it would never be a problem though because, as he menacingly threatens, "In here we were gods, and you, merely our guests." The hosts all around them, in the fields and in the restaurant, pause, frozen simply by Ford's thoughts or words.

These two are both tough people who know what they want. They aren't afraid of a fight. Theresa pushes back, questioning how that thought process worked out for Arnold, but Ford challenges her back, insisting that Arnold simply lost his perspective but he never will. "We know everything about our guests don't we?" he asks her as she realizes he sat her in the very chair she sat in as a child. He goes on, trying to break her. "As we know everything about our employees. I do hope you will be careful with Bernard. He has a sensitive disposition." Ford's clearly got an agenda here, but if it's to keep the suits away and involves Wyatt and the maze, perhaps it isn't as sinister as it appears. What is bad for the humans might not be bad for the hosts. He insists that the hosts are not alive and they don't think and feel, but does a god hold no love or compassion for its creations? Ford may feel he is in control but he still underestimates those who have the power to change everything; those who are truly at the center of the maze; the hosts.

Maeve (Thandie Newton) begins to untangle more about her identity and past as a man in the saloon triggers a memory of when he slaughtered everyone in that very room, her and Clementine (Angela Sarafyan) included. Just as Dolores was triggered by voices and faces, as we humans are, Maeve is as well. She remembers seeing the cleanup process, perhaps because she taught herself the internal countdown that causes the hosts to wake back up. She remembers hearing the men during clean up, who were dressed in hazmat suits, saying that they left a bullet fragment in her when they were trying to get her ready to be back out on the floor as they were in a rush. Shaken by her memory, she rushes back home to see if she can see the spot where she was shot but there is nothing there. Worried and confused, she tries to hold onto what she saw by drawing one of the men in the suits. She makes to hide the image under her floorboard but quickly finds several more drawings of the same figure that she has forgotten about. She has clearly remembered this fragment before.

Back in town, natives are walking through and a little girl has a toy in her bag that resembles Maeve's drawing. She wants to ask them what the figure is but they walk away, one man stating it's a lost cause as the figure is just "part of their religion." Maeve doesn't relent. Back at the saloon, men go upstairs but she recognizes them as people who run with Hector, the bandit. It is said that Hector "lives out with the savages," which sparks an idea in Maeve's head.

Hector and Armistice ride into town, as it's time for the heist once again, this time with guests tagging along and to the tune of the "Habanera" from the opera Carmen. We see control really at work here, playing with the logistics of the heist and the guests' experience, reconfiguring soldiers to give them "something to shoot at".

Maeve corners Hector at gun point when he gets inside and leads him into THE ROOM with the safe they are after. She promises to give him the code in return for information. Meanwhile, control says that families have changed their itineraries and are heading towards town early, which is currently an absolute bloodbath. Needing to start cleanup early, they cut the guests riding with the bandits off, jamming their guns and sending in the calvary to give them a night in lock up before they are busted out to keep them squared away so as to not see the clean up and ruin their experience.

Hector tells Maeve that the shape in her drawing is "the man who walks between worlds, sent from hell to oversee [their] world." Maeve tells Hector about the bullet and ask Hector to cut her so they can find the fragment and Maeve can settle her mind; either clearing the dissonance or confirming it. He hesitates, perhaps out of programming instinct, telling her that some say it's "a blessing to see the masters who pull their strings." Maeve refutes, cutting herself and Hector feels around for the bullet. They find it, both looking at the small piece of shrapnel that will change their lives. "What does it mean?" he asks her. "That I'm not crazy after all," she celebrates, realization spreading across her face. The calvary come charging up the stairs, looking to take care of anyone left in the heist before cleaning up, and Hector reaches for his gun. Maeve stops him, adding on "And that none of this matters," before kissing, fully aware of the fact that they are both about to get shot up but with an understanding that there's something greater going on and that what happens today, for them, doesn't effect their tomorrow.

The episode goes out in a bang, quite literally, but reveals so much of the underworking of Westworld to us while we begin to see it unravel as the hosts start to see behind the curtains. The maze, as we learn from Bernard, is the path to freedom but what does it mean that the man who created the prison is shedding light on the pathway out of his self-imposed confines? Is Ford playing a different game than he is insisting? And, with Dolores and the Man in Black heading in the same direction, perhaps we will see their paths cross again and with her ever growing consciousness and awareness, maybe he will finally be confronted with the pure and indisputable fact that his actions in Westworld matter. Despite his, and Logan's insistence that the park is merely just a game, it is clearly not.

Photo Credit: HBO

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