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HBO's "Westworld", starring Anthony Hopkins/produced by J.J. Abrams

From being a denier last season to a theorist/prediction-maker this season: The very first scene of the episode wasn't between Dolores and Arnold like I've seen some people claim; it was between Dolores and Bernard, and has to take place in the future at some point beyond the "present" (11 days after Ford's death).

The evidence of this is pretty clear in hindsight because their conversation is about the very thing that happens in the episode's "present" as revealed by episode's end.
 
So is Anthony Hopkins out? I don't think he was listed in the opening credits. I thought there was a good chance that it was a Ford replica that got killed, or maybe Bernard will now create a replica of him just as Ford did with Arnold. But if Hopkins is not under the contract then Ford maybe gone for good.
 
I guess I shouldn't be surprised they would do two competing timelines again, but at least the show is more upfront about it this time around (aside from what might be going on in the prologue). Considering we saw Jimmi Simpson in the trailer, the timelines are going to get awfully crowded unless the 11-day gap is closed up quickly.

As much as I love seeing Gustaf Skarsgård in an important role for the second season, I do wish he had kept his natural accent (or at least something similar to what he uses in Vikings) because the American/flat accent is boring and unengaging.

No sign of Elsie or Shannon Woodward in the opening credits (she didn't appear in the credits for episodes she didn't appear in last season, so there's at least that), but considering how much ground needed to be established and covered in the first episode, it's not surprising they didn't get to Elsie. Hell, they didn't even broach what happened to Ashley and how he escaped the Ghost Nation. Speaking of surviving characters, I sure hope Felix is still alive.

For awhile, I wasn't sure if Bernard remembered his true nature until he injected the clear fluid into himself. Based on the episode's end, it looks like he's still struggling pretty damn hard about his existence.

Weird how the technician needed to scalp the Hosts' heads in order to access recorded footage considering how much control they have with the pad and wireless connection. I guess that can be chalked up to an expanded scope and wanting to show the maze to Karl Strand (Skarsgård's character).
 
I'm wondering if the "he" from the end is Old William, and whatever he did is connected to The Door?
Sizemore going through the park with Maeve and Hector should be interesting.
I like how they had both sides being equally ruthless with each other. It always makes things a bit more interesting in a story like this when there isn't one side who is the obvious good guy.
So was Tessa stealing the data for the Delos board then? I thought maybe she was stealing their data for someone else.
I was surprised when Old William killed the kid Ford host, once he popped up I thought maybe he was going to be popping up from time to time to drop cryptic clues.
Was that Teddy dead in the water at the end?
 
JD said:
So was Tessa stealing the data for the Delos board then? I thought maybe she was stealing their data for someone else.
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You mean Charlotte Hale (Tessa is the actress' name), and Yes, she and the late Teresa Cullen were the ones behind the "smuggling" of the park data, although, as explained in Season 1 and again in this episode, they weren't 'stealing' the data so much as trying to preserve and back it up in defiance of Ford's refusal to legitimately do so himself and in service of whatever Delos' ultimate end-goals for the park's I.P. and technology are.

Was that Teddy dead in the water at the end?
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Yes.

Also, as an aside, this episode definitively answered a question that was brought up way back in 1x03, "The Stray", but never really answered, which is "why were they only going to take the woodcutter Host's head?"

The answer is because the only part of the Hosts that the park techs and personnel actually need in order to do information analysis is their CPUs, which are inside their brain-casing.
 
I was looking through one of IGN's article and it reminded of another big reveal. We know now that parks are all on an island that Delos apparently bought or leased from an Asian country. Anybody know either from the uniforms or language what country they militar guys might have been from?
Anybody seen anything or have any theories about when exactly the show takes place? The tech does seem more advanced than today, so it's probably the future, but it doesn't seem to be quite as advanced as something like Star Trek or The Expanse. I'm not really counting the Hosts alone as evidence that it's the future, since there have been stories with one or two advanced things like them that are set in an alternate version of today.
The park has been around for more than 30 years, so it's probably at least that far in the future.
 
^ A few things:
1) The military guy that Strand was arguing with was Chinese.

2) We know that WestWorld is set in our current century (the 21st Century), as per creators/showrunners Jonathan/Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy (Nolan).

3) As of Season 2, WestWorld itself has been officially open for 34 years, and under Delos control for at least 30 (depending on how long after his very first visit William rose in power within the company and basically bought 95% of the park on its behalf).
 
^ You're welcome.

As an aside, I've been reading Internet reactions to last night's episode, and I seem to be the only person who * ISN'T * confused about what we were shown.

Yes, the show gave us some new mysteries to pick apart ("what is The Door?" for example), but for 99% of the story, things were actually laid out pretty straightforwardly (if we see Bernard with Stubbs, Strand, and Costa, we're in the "present", and if we see Maeve and Co., William by himself, Dolores and Co., and/or Bernard with Charlotte, we're 11 days earlier, right after Dolores shot Ford).
 
^ My point was that last night's episode wasn't nearly as confusing as a lot of the wider Internet seems to think it was. :)
 
Agreed that the story was pretty straightforward, but a lot of the confusion I had by the end of the episode really stems from the fact that I don't remember season 1 all that well! That might be a big part of the internet confusion. I thought I could make it through without an s1 rewatch, but it appears that I was wrong. I'll probably just try to read reviews and fill in the blanks online since I really don't think I have time to rewatch it.
 
^ Hm, perhaps people are just over thinking it then, and confusing themselves as a result. I honestly couldn't grasp what was going on in the episode until my friends and I filled in each others gaps from what happened last season, because we couldn't remember exactly what had happened in the last few episodes, so by the end of the episode we collectively kinda knew what was going on.
 
I'm really glad I watched the first season again over the weekend because I definitely forgot a great deal and picked up on certain nuances that I missed the first time around (mostly involving Arnold/Bernard, William (past and present), and Dolores (and her Wyatt personality). Having done so, certainly made things a lot more clearer in this episode.
 
Emh said:
Considering we saw Jimmi Simpson in the trailer, the timelines are going to get awfully crowded unless the 11-day gap is closed up quickly.
Click to expand...

Yeah, young William and Logan will be in future episodes.

No sign of Elsie or Shannon Woodward in the opening credits (she didn't appear in the credits for episodes she didn't appear in last season, so there's at least that), but considering how much ground needed to be established and covered in the first episode, it's not surprising they didn't get to Elsie.
Click to expand...

didn't they show her getting killed by Bernard (in flashbacks, under Ford's orders) last season?
 
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