I watched and I'm now feeling pretty bad about the bet I made with my buddy (he said different times, I said no). Have mentally prepared myself for a loss. Still love the show, any show that I end up thinking and talking about this much is good even it ends up doing stuff I think is silly (different timelines seems like a needlessly complicated gotcha but whatever).

Another theory for someone to shoot down - it does appear 2 or more timelines are unavoidable, but I can't think of any inconsistencies if William's visit is actually at some point after MiB's arc.

That would explain some things much better - such as Dolores seeming to "remember" MiB at the ranch in place of the host rapist just before she narratively stumbles into William and Logan's campsite, Stubbs appearing to reference that she is off loop when she is with William, why she appears to be remembering herself when she is in Pariah with William, and why she seems to hear Ford's voice commanding her to sleep when she is chasing herself in the parade then wakes up alone being interviewed by Ford (and why she similarly seems to be pulled out of William's arc to be interviewed by Bernard).

Essentially it would allow for 2 timelines, but without the necessity of some of the intentionally misleading time jumps some (including me earlier in this thread) have complained about.

The timelines would have to be close enough for Stubbs to not have aged much, but distant enough for Logos to have been changed etc.

Commence William is MiB's son theories!

Great post.

1) I have the same feeling. The interview room and setting seem to be much different than interrogations conducted in present day. I was a bit surprised that Bernard disclosed the maze to Dolores and tells her it will set her free. Maybe Bernard is actually a host who has already experienced the maze.

The question is how long have these interviews been going on?

2) Not enough info to draw any conclusions.

3) It doesn't strike me that Ford cares that much about enhancing the experiences of his guests. He definitely has ulterior motives for introducing the new story line.

Bernard seems to think he has a wife and had a son, so if he's a host he's apparently not aware of it.

Bernard is interviewing Dolores covertly, so he wouldn't be using the normal rooms.

Here's my theory.

The host rapist scene where she is shot/not shot is not connected to the stumbling into William's camp.

The host rapist scene is present day. William camp scene is in the past. They spliced the two to create a misleading sequence.

I'll have to rewatch the stubbs scene again. There was something about it to make me believe there weren't necessarily talking about Dolores when they said "off the loop"

I get that but how does he smuggle Dolores into the facility? There are cameras everywhere.

Ford is aware of Bernard's affair, so I'm hard pressed to believe he couldn't figure out these interviews are happening in present day.

Well yeah, the intentionally misleading part is exactly what I'm trying to avoid by placing William's visit after MiB's.

No one knows as William bounced, but the park operators still prob call off the hosts after letting him get tuned up a little, so just beat down is way more likely.

I think Ford does know. I took Ford's comment to Bernard about his son as a warning for him to stop messing with Dolores, since she also had just asked Bernard about his son.

The William after MiB rather than before idea is interesting. Here's another one that just occured to me - what if, instead of alternate timelines, there is actually a park-within-the-park (possibly accessible via the maze) where there is a hosted (virtual or actual) replica of either the whole park, or even all of reality? What if that's where Arnold is and one of our timelines happens inside it? And maybe hosts who go into it are free in the sense that they become aware of the bigger picture, or become the "people"... I dunno. Needs a little work

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Neue, this is essentially what I've been trying to convince you of in your own theory. I think it is very possible that we're seeing man in black's story (memories filling in from the past that include the man in black), and that all the William and Logan stuff would be happening after. If there are two timelines this has been set up pretty much perfectly, but the timelines would not be 30 years apart, it would be something else. I still think multiple worlds and multiple versions of the hosts is more likely based on foreshadowing, but I haven't seen anything in the show yet that completely shoots down the idea of multiple timelines.

In regard to my crossing the line comment, I'm not sure if you're understanding what I mean. When I say crossing the line, I mean it in a technical way. They did a technical no no that is considered a mistake in filmmaking, unless they were doing it intentionally (they surely were). When you cross the line, you're playing with people's brains and they get confused because perspective flips. In this case, and you can literally see this back to back, in the previous shot to the one that's posted in this thread, Dolores is looking to her left. In the next shot, she is looking to her right. It is subtle, but the implication is that the Dolores looking to the left saying, "I'm coming" is looking right at the one we see in the final shot, and the one that's looking to the right in the final shot is looking right at the other Dolores. Again, this was set up very similarly in the fortune teller scene, but it was much more obvious.

In regard to the Bernard family storyline, that doesn't eliminate him from being a host. If Bernard had self awareness as an earlier version of a host, he might have asked "why don't I have a family?". So, in Bernard 2.0, a family would be added so that he wouldn't question who he is. That would explain why Ford said "Your son, Charlie" to him, instead of just "Your son". That could also be a test to determine *which* Bernard he's talking to if there are two.

Don't forget, Ford threatened Bernard by saying, "Don't make the same mistake Arnold did". I think the implication is heavy that Ford possibly created Arnold, and he's also saying that he knows what Bernard is up to. You can't just wipe away a person's existence like Arnold's apparently has been. The way out there idea is that Arnold created Ford (2 of them...one good one bad), and then killed himself to have the inmates all running the asylum. That's way out there, but not in the realm of unbelievability yet.

I just want to watch the show. They're revealing a ton of stuff every week, so I feel like a lot of this "exercise" is wasted time that takes away from the enjoyment of the show, since we're only having to wait for a few big answers while having many smaller ones revealed each week. The makers of the show know this show is very complex, and I think that's why they clear up certain things (like they know they put man in black in a weird territory, so they made sure you knew he was supposed to be a real world guy to essentially tell us to stop thinking about that). Certain things they obviously want ambiguous, and I'm willing to let it unfold, since they're moving very quickly on everything.

Unlikely. here's why.

In Ford's flashback to the early days of Westworld we see the "Old WW logo" on the labcoats. We see the William at the top of the escalator with the old logo in the background.

We see the "new WW logo" in present day . The characters in present day reference MIB. For example. Stubbs saying that VIP gets to do whatever he wants

Can someone please copy in all photos in reference to the logos they want to use as evidence, along with shot context (which person's storyline it's in)?

Also, there's a piece of actor business that Jeffrey Wright has done frequently that could be a visual clue, though I haven't ever tried to verify it. He frequently plays with his glasses in some of the interrogation scenes. In the Nolan family playbook, it could be the equivalent of a totem like the wedding ring in Inception (Jonathan Nolan did not write Inception).

But this wouldn't prevent new Westworld from being the park-within-the-park (although with that one we are getting into territory where, depending on the conventions of the inner park and how it draws in or reproduces it's inhabitants, almost nothing is refutable / verifiable).

Like, what if MiB has already been through the maze once to reach the inner park, and now he is looking for the maze again (to go even further in - or maybe out?) Not realizing he has already done so once. The idea of the people being stuck in a "loop" too is kind of interesting.

Or maybe this is all very keanu-reeves-wait-whoa.jpg and JJ Abrams is gonna be like "tricked you suckas, it's one timeline, we just made a bunch of continuity errors."

In the "I'm coming" shot the camera is clearly pointed at the BACK of the train car. The camera then switches to the other direction in the final shot. There is only 1 Dolores standing in 1 spot (although apparently at 2 different times).

Cool I didn't know that, oh well.

Back to living with obfuscatory editing

While JJ Abrams is attached to this show, it's not his show. It's Jonathan Nolan's show, and you can see how he treats his audience in another AI based TV show that ran for 5 seasons on CBS called Person of Interest.

No, you can't look at it looking at the camera angles, that's the point I'm making. Don't look at any of the background scenery, ONLY look at the faces. This appears to be intentional directing/editing trickery to leave the idea ambiguous, but this absolutely crossed the line in editing/directing. One Dolores is looking left. One is looking to the right in back to back shots, ignore every other thing you see in the scene other than that (what you're saying is your mind adjusting to the "error", not the reality of what happened). If this were not what I believe to be intentionally ambiguous, it would be a huge technical directing mistake. And again, I don't think it's a mistake at all.

Going back to this, I've heard yet another theory today (not mine but I kind of wish it was) that present day Bernard is a host modeled after Arnold, and in the interview scenes with Dolores we are actually seeing Arnold himself with her 34 years ago.

That would take intentionally misleading time jumps to a whole new level, but would also explain why he knows about the maze.

I have no idea what you're talking about but the scene is not at all meant to be ambiguous, nor is it. The camera angle switches intentionally for the sake of shock value, and the intent is clearly to reveal that (one) Dolores is standing in the same spot but that William and Lawrence have disappeared in the final shot. There is no evidence there are 2 Dolores's present at the same time.

You're hopeless. Look at the scene in context. Ignore the flip in camera angle. Ignore the background, ONLY look at the faces. Are you seriously denying that Dolores in the previous shot, when she says "I'm coming" is looking to the left? Are you seriously denying that Dolores in the very next shot is looking to the right? If you are denying this unambiguous fact, I don't know what to tell you.

What I am trying to say is that in the craft of filmmaking, putting these two shots together this way accidentally would be a HUGE technical mistake. I'm saying it is not a mistake. The ambiguity comes from what you're supposed to be interpreting from these two shots. You somehow think it's saying, "wow look, different timelines". I'm saying it's leaving the idea of different timelines, and two Doloreses (the last one being her MEMORY) intentionally ambiguous. The shot is intended to be ambiguous, there's nothing clear about it, no matter what you think. They even set up an extremely similar scene (shown obviously) in the fortune teller scene so that people wouldn't think this was an accident. And again, many people would miss what happened there, because it didn't happen at the end of the show. It was subtle.

jesus

This is a guy who is obsessing over every detail but cannot seem to grasp something I've laid out for him multiple times in very simple ways I believe most laypeople can understand. If he can't see what I'm talking about from how I laid it out in this version, there's no way he's going to understand it.

Completely agree - its not ambiguous at all.

She is clearly standing in the exact same spot in the two shots. If you look at the background in the second shot, you can see the exact same chair that Lawrence was sitting in, before he disappeared. Thus, in both scenes she is standing to the left of the coffin, assuming you are looking from the back of the train towards where William/Lawrence are/were. The only difference in the shots is that now William and Lawrence are missing.

Edit: even looking at just her face, in both she's pretty much looking straight forward. In the first, she was looking down and to the right, but then looks up and pretty much straight forward (maybe slightly to the left) and says "I'm coming." In the second she's looking at most slightly to the right. This is 100x more likely to be a minor technical error than some intentional change.

Just start at 2:28 of the youtube video I posted. It's pretty clearly spelled out there.

So much want, Jonny...lol.

It is not a mistake, you're ignoring what you're seeing because you want so much to be right about this multiple timeline thing. I'm telling you that it's saying your theory can still be right while also saying that is potentially Dolores looking at a filled in memory when she says it (why the characters are looking at each other). I'm not saying the background hasn't changed, it obviously has. I'm saying that what you're seeing in the no William/Logan/Lawrence background is ambiguous. Again, you can disagree with this all you want, but it was set up in the fortune teller scene. Go back and look at that.