Ford's story is Arnold, his now-legendary (and now deceased) founding partner. But an entire world," he tells her as their robot waiter-suddenly frozen in time-pours blood-red wine into an overflowing glass. Ford forcefully imparts in the episode's most chilling moment, when he takes Theresa Cullen to the Westworld restaurant where she originally dined as a child, then casually brings the entire section of the park to a halt. This week's episode is built around hammering home a simple concept: In the park, everything-no matter how dangerous or chaotic it seems-actually happens for a reason.
Ford-which was uploaded into Teddy's backstory just a single episode ago. The big piece of information the Gunslinger works so hard to recover in this week's episode? The identity of Wyatt-a "fiction" (albeit "rooted in truth"), according to Dr. But the Gunslinger actually has the opposite problem: He obsessively considers all of his choices, refusing to acknowledge that his every experience actually comes due to the work and the whims of the people running the show. You tell yourself you've been at the mercy of mine because it spares you consideration of your own," says the Gunslinger to Lawrence, the robot he's been dragging around the park for the past few episodes. In Westworld, he’s a merciless drifter in the real world, he's Bill Gates.Īnd if the Gunslinger isn't actually a villain, what is he? A person throwing himself into the role of the villain, believing that all the violence he inflicts has no genuine, real-world consequences. "This is my fucking vacation." It's the first information we’ve been given about the Gunslinger's life outside of Westworld, but even that one tells us a lot: He's wealthy, he's famous, and he's philanthropic. "One more word and I'll cut your throat, you understand?" the Gunslinger snarls back. The episode's most startling moment comes when a fellow guest nervously approaches the Gunslinger to thank him for starting a foundation that literally saved his sister's life.
So what is he actually doing here? It's a stretch to describe the Gunslinger as likable, but he's clearly more complicated than he seems. Given his decades of experience as a Westworld devotee, the Gunslinger must know all of that by now. This week's episode hammers home a simple concept: In the park, everything-no matter how dangerous or chaotic it seems-actually happens for a reason. He's just playing the "game" in a totally different way, and the behind-the-scenes security team is watching his every move, opting not to intervene because he's not actually doing anything they're not prepared to handle. But as we saw in the second episode, the Gunslinger hasn't bucked the conventions of the park at all. When we were first introduced to the Gunslinger, he cut a mysterious and intimidating figure: dragging Dolores into a barn so he can rape her, or dragging a man to the top of a cliff so he can scalp him. "That's exactly what they’re doing," Logan replies.Īnd here's the trick: We already know Logan is right. "I'm sure the people monitoring the controls are watching my every move," he says, rolling his eyes. When Logan suggests that Dolores' sudden appearance at their campsite might have been carefully engineered to loosen him up a little, William bristles. In principle, it's possible that the stakes at Westworld are just as high as you'd set for children on a playground: How much fun can you have before it's time to head back home? That's certainly the principle on which the vast majority of Westworld's employees seem to approach their work.