Spoilers for Westworld: Season 3, Episode 1 follow.
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Westworld has always been a series that invites speculation and crazy fan theories. The series is constantly pulling the rug out from under viewers, whether it’s revealing popular characters are actually android Hosts or playing with our perception of time.
With Season 3 ushering in a major status quo shift and bringing Dolores Abernathy into the real world, the speculation machine is running at full speed again. Thanks to social media sites like Reddit’s /Westworld subreddit, fans have already been dropping new theories and trying to pick apart every minor detail revealed in the Season 3 premiere. As we wait for the next episode, we thought it would be fun to take a closer look at the two most popular fan theories so far. Read on for more, but beware of spoilers for Westworld: Season 3, Episode 1!
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Theory #1 – Is Caleb an Android?
The Season 3 premiere introduces Aaron Paul’s Caleb, one of the show’s most important new characters. We see Caleb eking out a living as a construction worker, caring for his ailing mother and dodging phone calls from an old friend connected to his tragic past. Even though Caleb lives in the real world and has no apparent connection to Delos, fans are already speculating he may be something more than human.
Reddit user jayhawk618 points to one scene in particular, where Caleb’s mother doesn’t recognize her son in the hospital. The implication is that she’s suffering from some form of Alzheimer’s or dementia, but could there be more to that interaction? Is it possible Caleb truly isn’t her son, despite what he believes?
As other posters in that thread point out, both executive producer Jonathan Nolan and his brother Christopher have been heavily inspired by Blade Runner in their work. Chris Nolan previously told us Blade Runner was one of the biggest influences on The Dark Knight Rises, and we definitely detect some similarities in Westworld’s vision of a futuristic Los Angeles.
The idea here is that while Caleb probably isn’t a Host like Dolores, he may be some other sort of android being. Like the Replicants of the Blade Runner universe, he may have been implanted with the memories of a real person. Caleb could be a prototype of a new type of android tasked with carrying out physically demanding jobs in the real world, allowing the wealthy human elite to continue enjoying their hedonistic lifestyles. Reddit user TeddardFlood points out the interesting visual parallels between Caleb and Dolores’ respective debuts on the show. Clearly, the show is trying to draw attention to how similar Caleb’s daily grind is to the life of a Host.
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Theory #2 – Is the Real World Actually a Simulation?
The first two seasons of Westworld have both included major plot twists that completely alter our perspective of the story up to that point. In Season 1, we learned Jimmi Simpson’s character William is actually a younger version of Ed Harris’ Man in Black and that his entire storyline was happening decades in the past. Season 2 introduced its own jumbled timeline.
We have to assume Season 3 will feature its own game-changing plot twist, though the show may be hard-pressed to trick viewers by manipulating time again (and the producers have said things are pretty linear for now anyway). Instead, many fans are convinced the real-world Los Angeles setting is actually a digital simulation. Dolores may have escaped one prison only to emerge in an even larger prison. Basically, Westworld has become The Matrix.
One argument in favor of this theory involves the Incite computer system, which shows various “anomalies” at different points across the globe. Is this the result of a computer system monitoring different developments across a vast digital network? Perhaps, though based on what we know about this system, it seems more something put in place to monitor human activity and alert its owners to instances where humans act contrary to Incite’s predictive algorithm.
Reddit user PeteCampbellisaG has a slightly different theory worth considering. They speculate the LA scenes are happening in the real world, but that the world is “augmented” through virtual reality tech to look cleaner and more pristine than it actually is. Despite being set many decades in the future, Westworld’s vision of LA is a strangely pleasant and quiet place. It’s sparsely populated and seemingly un-ravaged by the effects of climate change (very unlike the world of Blade Runner).
Is it possible this vision of LA is nothing more than a facade? Given how much technology has been integrated into wealthy society, it could very well be that the world we’re seeing is nothing more than a mask covering up the decaying, overpopulated real deal. We’ve already seen glimpses of Caleb’s time as a soldier. It could be that the entire world has been consumed by military conflicts and climate change, and only the lucky few have the technology to retreat into a sanitized fantasy. If so, we’d expect Dolores to bring a swift end to this lie and expose the real world that exists beneath the facade.
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Do you think either of these theories is correct? Let us know what you believe in the comments below. And be sure to check out our review of Season 3, Episode 1 and our breakdown of that unexpected post-credits scene.
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
Source: IGN.com Westworld: Two Major Plot Twists That Could be Coming in Season 3