Author: Brian Tallerico / Source: Vulture
Television’s most addictive obsession is back. The first season of HBO’s Westworld was a puzzle box of mounting questions and fan theories, several of which were figured out by fans early in season — Bernard is a host! William is the Man in the Black!
— and several of which were left unanswered for the new season. In Sunday night’s season premiere, “Journey Into Night,” Westworld laid to rest a few of those mysteries, but it also served up plenty of new ones in their place. Which, of course, means one thing: Welcome back to the world of Westworld fan theories! Let’s dive in, shall we?Theory No. 1: Westworld is on another planet
Let’s start with the season-one theory that’s torn to shreds by “Journey Into Night.” Westworld fans had lots of ideas about exactly where something as ambitious and gigantic as these parks could possibly exist. Might it be possible that Westworld was built on an entirely different planet?
Status: DEBUNKED! Nope, it’s near China! Early in the premiere, we meet Delos tough guy Karl Strand, who tells off a man wearing a Chinese military uniform and explained that Delos has “complete control” over the island they’re standing on. Unless China has taken over Mars (or other parts of Earth), Westworld is firmly located in that part of the world. As Vanity Fair’s Joanna Robinson notes in her thorough breakdown, there are Easter eggs buried in season one that affirm this, too: During a video chat, somebody speaks to Theresa in Mandarin, and Maeve escapes to a train station with a Chinese P.A. announcement in the season finale. That’s not all! Remember how Maeve got that slip of paper about the location of her daughter? The Finnish subtitles included coordinates that point to a man-made island between Vietnam and the Philippines … in a string of islands owned at least in part by the Chinese.
Theory No. 2: Robert Ford isn’t dead
At the end of last season, Dolores shot Dr. Ford in the head, but fans instantly started to wonder if death isn’t really death in Westworld. Given the amount of time devoted to Ford’s hands in his final scenes — hands are often the tell for hosts, apparently — some sleuths were convinced that Dolores actually shot an android version of the park’s puppet master instead of the real thing.
Status: DEBUNKED! Ford sure looks dead in “Journey Into Night.” When Strand and his men are killing hosts and taking data out of their heads, the android creations have not succumbed to decay in any way — even though many of them have been dead for days. Yet we get a very graphic shot of the late Mr. Ford, whose body is clearly rotting away. Unless Ford somehow replaced the android version of himself with a body that looks exactly like his own, he’s truly gone.
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