Warning: Spoilers for episode six ahead.
Westworld is a show that keeps hinting at mysteries and secrets, but has, so far, saved the big reveals for later. With so much shrouded in mystery, it’s no surprise that fans are scouring the show for clues as thoroughly as the Man in Black searches the park for his maze. This week’s episode, “The Adversary,” continues the biblical title trend from last week, employing a classic name for Satan.
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Biblical references are seemingly scattered throughout the characters’ names here: Bad guy bandit Hector Escaton’s (Rodrigo Santoro) may refer to “eschaton” a.k.a. the end of the world. Good guy gunslinger Teddy Flood’s (James Marsden) last name calls to mind the biblical flood. Dolores’s (Evan Rachel Wood) name comes from the Spanish term for Our Lady of Sorrows a.k.a. the Virgin Mary.
Of course, plenty of other names reference non-biblical things. Dr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) may reference Henry Ford, the pioneer of mass production. Arnold calls to mind the famous traitor Benedict Arnold. What do all these references mean? Well, we don’t know yet. But Westworld is certainly keeping us guessing as they build up to what promises to be an escalating series of reveals in the final episodes.
Hey Arnold!
“The Adversary” is Lucifer, the fallen right-hand man of God who now works to destroy his heavenly realm. For Robert Ford, the genius behind Westworld who touts himself as a god, this adversary is certainly Arnold. Ford starts episode six as a benevolent god. He decides not to destroy an entire village when the construction crew tells him it’s in the way of his new storyline. But surveying his world, Ford finds something out of place: the maze symbol scratched into a wooden table.
What do you do when you’ve attained the power of a god but still have some Freudian issues to work out? If you’re Ford, you keep a secret little house filled with robot replicants of your family to play around with. Bernhard (Jeffrey Wright) stumbles upon this unhappy home when he notices there are five unidentified robots hanging out in an unused section of the park. Bernhard is more interested in practical questions and marvels at the first-generation robots whose faces flower open to reveal glittering metal skulls. “Arnold built them as a gift,” Ford explains. “He said that great artists always hid themselves in their work.”
In episode five, Dolores told Ford that Arnold had enlisted her—or at least encoded her—in his quest to destroy the park. Arnold hasn’t gotten to it yet, but he does begin destroying Ford’s model family. When Ford finds his kidbot to play fetch with their shared dogbot, the dog is dead. He interrogates the child, who admits that “a voice,” Arnold’s, told him he needed to kill the dog, so it couldn’t hurt anything anymore.
What is Westworld to the robots but a place where they are constantly hurt?
While we’re on the subject of names, Arnold and Bernard do sound a bit similar, don’t they? Perhaps Ford’s family isn’t the only bit of the past Ford has kept around in robot form…
Raw Pulp of Truth
While writers like Ford may be the gods of their stories, the frustrated Lee “on sick leave” Sizemore (Simon Quarterman) can only wallow by the hotel pool drinking margaritas. Theresa (Sidse Babett Knudsen) wants him to “start plugging” the holes that Ford is creating in his stories, but Sizemore can’t get over his workshop critique from episode two: “I’m talking about the years of my life squeezed down to the essence, the raw pulp of truth, my truth, in one transcendent narrative.” “Is that where the whore-o-borus came in?” she quips.
Sizemore tries to hit on a guest at the pool bar, played by Tessa Thompson, but gets interrupted. Further frustrated, he goes and urinates across the giant map of the park, before finding out the woman who got away was the executive director of the board. And he tucks himself back in.
Elsie Wants to Believe
Elsewhere this episode, Elsie (Shannon Woodward) roots through dim, cluttered rooms to untangle the mystery of the transmitter she found last episode. She thinks she’ll get a big pay raise from the “corporate overloads” for doing so. This subplot has a nice X-Files feel to it, and Elsie learns that the voices the robots have been hearing have been broadcasted. And their core programming has been changed by Arnold, who is a “pretty prolific coder for a dead guy.” Then someone grabs her from behind.
The Road to Pariah
The Man in Black (Ed Harris) gets Teddy to regale him with the “old native myth” of the maze as they ride to the unsubtly named outcast town of Pariah. He starts out talking about how the maze is “the sum of a man’s life,” but then switches to a story about one man who’d “seen enough of fighting” and built a maze so complicated no one could find him. Teddy himself may theoretically have had enough of fighting, but when they’re spied and captured by the Union soldiers guarding the tunnel to Pariah—and who interestingly use the mysterious maze symbol as a brand—Teddy breaks free and uses the gatling gun to kill every last soldier. He may be named Flood, but he kills with lead.
Workshop of the Gods
The star of this week’s episode is Maeve (Thandie Newton) whose name is Gaelic for “she who intoxicates.” This week, she’s intoxicating Felix, the repairman with a heart of gold. To get to him, she finds the roughest-looking brothel customer and insults him until he chokes her to death. Back in the repair area, she wakes herself up and begins asking probing questions about her existence. Felix reluctantly explains that she’s a robot while he’s human, like the guests who come to her each day… as well as those who control her.
Hosts and guests may look the same, notes Felix, but there’s “one big difference”: The processing power in Maeve’s head is way beyond what ordinary humans have. Still, the robots are completely controlled by their creators. Felix pairs Maeve’s brain to his tablet and watches her watch her own speech unfold in a series of algorithmic choices until she fritzes out.
Then comes one of the show’s most entrancing scenes so far, as Felix walks Maeve around the upper levels of the headquarters. As a sweeping string instrumental of Radiohead’s “Motion Picture Soundtrack” plays, they wander past dead bodies being hosed of blood, workers carrying trays of body parts, nude plastic bodies being pumped to life with blood, programmers testing buffalo and horses, and more. We see Maeve express immense wonder as wanders through god’s workshop.
“What the fuck, ding-dong!?” Sylvester, Felix’s co-worker, shouts to break the spell. (Felix and Sylvester are the names of famous cartoon cats… Although, I doubt that’s the key to any mystery.) Sylvester is, how do I put this, a raging asshole, but with the work of a well-placed scalpel, Maeve is able to convince both him and the sympathetic Felix to tweak her robot brain by lowering her loyalty and feelings of pain, and ramping up her intelligence and agility up to max.
What do the gods do when their creations become more powerful than their makers? It looks like we might find out soon.
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