Westworld Season One: The Maze
Arnold created a literal maze for Dolores that ended at her (false) grave with his child's toy buried there -- a symbol of Dolores becoming like another child to Arnold, but also that she must leave sweet Dolores Abernathy behind to become her real self. Yet as we saw throughout this season in the most compelling storyline, Maeve found the center of her maze on her own. Yes, Ford did engineer her actions, but twice (both relating to her daughter) we saw that it wasn't the insurrection against the makers that drove Maeve to self-awareness, it was a search for her daughter and to revive that connection. The seeds of insurrection, somewhat surprisingly, came from Dolores (in a kind of parallel to young William and Dolores' innocence turning into violence by the end of Season 1).
Westworld Season One: The Maze
No television show since perhaps Lost has generated as much collective confusion and as many fan theories as Westworld. Central among both the confusion and the fan theories has been the maze. For the entire first season, the hosts, the staff, the guests and the creators have all cryptically referred to the maze. Some, most centrally the Man In Black, have actively searched for it. Is it a literal place? Is it a figurative idea? Well, apparently the answer is a bit of both.
The finale of Westworld season one answered the maze question pretty directly, but like everything else on the show, the answer is pretty complicated. Originally, the maze was a children's toy Arnold's son played with. After the child's death, Arnold used his grief and sorrow to start understanding the hosts on a deeper and different level.
Westworld was in development for several years before eventually being open to the public, and it was during those years that Arnold and Ford's interests began to diverge. While Ford was satisfied with merely creating a simulation of consciousness - just enough to fool people - Arnold wanted to create the real thing. Dolores was Arnold's pet project, and throughout season 1 we saw snippets from Arnold's sessions with Dolores, as he tried to determine her level of self-awareness and push her towards the center of the maze.
Six episodes in, we haven't seen this scene happen in the show yet. But HBO included it in a full season one teaser video, and we can't wait to see the moment in more context. The two people at the center of the maze look like Maeve and her daughter from the homestead narrative Maeve has been having "nightmares" about. Perhaps we'll see more of this storyline flashback in the episodes to come.
Hopefully by the end of season one we'll have some answers about the maze. So far we don't even have confirmation that it's a physical place and not just a metaphor for the complicated path towards consciousness. But that's a discussion for another time.
We'll go through the main characters' overall storylines, focusing on where they end up at the end of season 2. Once you're done here, you should be ready to watch season 3, which premiered March 15 on HBO, without getting lost in the maze.
But the Bicemeral Mind theory seems to relate to the Hosts' increased self-awareness in the show, which would ostensibly link it to the center of the maze: The mysterious endgame of the park that may be specifically intended for the Hosts, rather than guests. The maze, whatever it may be, should hold the answer for some of season one's lingering questions. 041b061a72