We are now officially half-way through the first season of  Westworld; HBO’s confusingly, Kubrickian hit series. But if you thought that reaching this milestone was going to get us any closer to some answers about what the heck is going on, then you’ve clearly never watched a TV show produced by J.J. Abrams. Sunday night’s episode only served to confuse things further. Sure, we got some confirmation on one of the biggest fan theories so far, but we also got a bunch of clues that suggest things are even more complicated than we ever imagined.
On the plus side, it now looks like we can be pretty sure that the “William is the Man in Black” theory is true. In last night’s episode we saw the Man in Black kill Lawrence only to have Lawrence pop up, moments later, in a scene with William, suggesting that the two scenes are taking place on very different timelines. But now some fans are saying that the dual timeline theory is too narrow. The show might actually be taking place over three or more timelines. This all stems from another popular theory: that Bernard, the park’s head programmer, is actually a robotic duplicate of Arnold, Westwrold’s deceased founder. If this is true then scenes we’ve seen between Bernard and Dolores could actually be scenes between Arnold and Dolores, which would mean they’re happening even earlier than the William scenes. That’s a whole new timeline to get you even more confused about when the heck anything in this show is happening.
So now we have the Arnold Timeline, the William Timeline and the Man in Black timeline to keep track of. Does this all make sense to you? Are there more timelines that we’re missing? Let us know in the comments.
