As if just one saboteur wasn't enough to cause problems on Westworld, the new HBO show had to double down and add a second shadowy operator causing trouble behind the scenes of the futuristic amusement park. In this week's episode, "The Adversary," programmers Bernard and Elsie embarked on parallel investigations into whoever planted the satellite uplink in the rogue host's arm — and both investigations led them to the same conclusion: Arnold is speaking to the Westworld hosts and driving them dangerously off-loop.
Things first started looking shady when Bernard tracked the whereabouts of the stray in an attempt to find out who was controlling him… and instead discovered the presence of four additional unregistered hosts in the same off-limits sector of the park. When he went there (alone, natch) to find out what was going on, he discovered a family of four: the young boy we've previously seen in the presence of Dr. Ford, his brother, and their parents. Bernard was shocked to learn that these particular hosts didn't respond to any of his commands, but fortunately Ford himself was there to stop his chief programmer from getting hurt. (In the process, we got confirmation of the theory that the boy host in question is, in fact, a young version of Ford himself.)
All four of these hosts are older generation robots created by Arnold; mechanical in nature on the inside, rather than flesh and blood. But the main thing that distinguishes these original hosts from the new versions is that they have relays that allow them to be controlled manually from a transmitter on the outside, rather than simply relying on their programming to keep them on track. When Bernard did a quick search to find out how many of these older models were still in use in the park, guess who was at the top of the list? Dolores Abernathy.
This series of discoveries dovetailed with Elsie's investigation when she found the transmitter the saboteur (who turned out to be Theresa) was using to control the stray who was being used to smuggle information out of Westworld. She also learned that a different saboteur was also using the same transmitter to "speak to," or control, the older generation of hosts. We had assumed that the voices Dolores has been hearing and the hallucinations she's been seeing are glitches in her programming, but apparently they're actively being planted in her mind by someone inside the park.
Who is this second saboteur? Well, according to the transmitter, it's "Arnold." But Dr. Ford's partner has been dead for 35 years, right? Is someone carrying out Arnold's mission in his name? Could Arnold himself still be alive? Could the architect even have uploaded his own consciousness into a host before he died, which is now fulfilling his master plan? In the grand tradition of television dramas, one question is answered… and so many more are raised.
Images: John P. Johnson/HBO (2)
