[I understand.
It doesn't cater
to your lowest self --
it reveals your deepest self.]
The reveal at the end of Westworld’s season 1
answered everyone’s biggest question
about the Man in Black --
we learned he is actually William,
30 years later.
But this answer raised a lot more questions:
Was William evil from the start?
Why is the Man in Black still so obsessed
with Westworld after all this time?
[I'm never going back.]
And what does this character say
about the show’s underlying philosophy
and whatever it’s reflecting of our world?
[The world out there,
the one you'll never see,
was one of plenty.
A fat, soft teat people cling
to their entire life.
Every need taken care of except one.
Purpose.
Meaning.]
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By the way, to avoid confusion,
we’re going to be referring to this character
as William when talking about earlier timelines
and as The Man in Black when we're talking about
later timelines.
William and his later self, the Man in Black,
are driven by the hunger for meaning and truth.
Much like the hosts, William feels stuck
in a life that he didn’t choose for himself.
[I've been pretending my whole life.
Pretending I don't mind.
Pretending I belong.]
He is marrying into the family
who own the company he works for,
and he’s constantly being humiliated
by his future brother-in-law --
[You walked into my office in
that cheap black suit of yours,
and you shook my hand and you thanked me
for the opportunity.
That was the best day of your life.]
so William feels “owned” by his future family,
not free to make his own choices.
[Humans fancy that there's something special
about the way we perceive the world,
and yet we live in loops as tight
and as closed as the hosts do,
seldom questioning our choices,
content, for the most part,
to be told what to do next.]
In the park, William starts
to see his own loop
and he longs for a way out of it.
He decides that he has found
an escape from that loop
in Dolores and their love.
William eventually becomes disillusioned
with Dolores,
but later as The Man in Black
he’s still on this same journey
of searching for meaning,
trying to understand reality.
[I want to know what this all means.]
It’s this feeling that only “real” things count,
that leads the Man in Black to murder hosts
without a second thought.
But both William and the Man in Black
are looking for meaning in the wrong places.
They seem to think meaning
is something external and tangible --
a thing they can obtain via a place,
a person, or a quest --
a thing that’s captured by searching
outside themselves,
instead of looking inside themselves.
For William, Dolores is significant
not because he truly loves her,
but because he thinks their story is special.
Her journey means his own life
is destined for something more.
[You’ve unlocked something in me.]
[I’m not a key William.]
For the Man in Black, the search for meaning
is even more clearly externalized --
he’s literally searching for "the maze"
as a place he thinks he can find the center of,
as if truth were something you could capture
and hold in your hands.
[Where is the center of the maze, Dolores?]
When Ford shows Dolores Michelangelo’s
famous painting of God and Adam
from the Sistine Chapel,
he describes it as
[The divine moment when God gave human beings
life and purpose.]
So Ford's pointing out that
the traditional interpretation of this painting
tells the story of man receiving
purpose and meaning from an external source --
from God.
But later in the conversation Ford explains
another deeper meaning of this painting.
[See, it took 500 years for someone
to notice something hidden in plain sight.
It was a doctor who noticed the shape
of the human brain.
The message being that the divine gift
does not come from a higher power
but from our own minds.]
Meaning and purpose, then, are not things
that exist pre-made outside of us;
they are created via our own consciousness.
And this is a message that the Man in Black
can’t seem to comprehend.
[What is this bullshit?]
[You were looking for the park
to give meaning to your life.
Our narratives are just games,
like this toy.]
It’s no coincidence that everyone
keeps telling William,
[I told you this place will show you
who you really are.]
[Who you really are.]
People come to Westworld to learn more
about themselves.
William’s mistake is that he doesn’t understand
the answers aren't inside the game,
but inside his own mind.
The way the Man in Black relates to Westworld
is eerily similar to how you’d feel
about a video game you’ve played
a thousand times.
For one thing he’s constantly calling it a game.
[There's a deeper level to this game.]
[A game.]
[The game is rigged.]
Secondly, he’s got that same exhausted frustration
you feel when you’re stuck
on one really hard level
that gets you every time.
[You just skipped the waterworld.]
[Yeah, I hate that world.]
[Any special tricks for us?
They teach you to sit up, beg?]
And he also exhibits that hostile boredom
that comes with having been through
the same levels over and over again,
hearing the same scripted dialogue.
[Yeah, cue the waterworks.]
The Man in Black likes to feel all-powerful
among the hosts in Westworld.
[You're livestock, scenery.
I play.]
But while Ford knows and understands Westworld
as a developer would,
the Man in Black gets it only
as deeply as a proficient player.
Meanwhile, if the point of this whole game
is exploring what makes us human
and if the Man in Black can’t crack
the meaning of this world,
it follows that The Man in Black
is missing the point of being human.
As the epitome of the gamer,
the Man in Black is naturally
more at home in Westworld,
than in the real world.
He even has a Westworld-like accent,
unlike other guests.
[In a sense, I was --
I was born here.]
And like a socially awkward gamer,
the Man in Black wants to escape reality
and stay in Westworld.
But because he’s so hooked on this game,
his real life completely deteriorates.
[My wife's death was no accident.
That she killed herself because of me.]
Westworld initially helps William
stand up to Logan.
[And don’t call me Billy!]
And we can surmise that it’s
thanks to this agency
that he’s able to take control of
Logan’s family’s company
and become a majority shareholder of Westworld.
Maybe his new understanding
of how to dominate in Westworld
lets him “play” the outside world, too.
William starts thinking that the rest of life,
like Westworld,
is just a game he can crack.
And on the one hand that makes him
a successful man,
but on the other,
it destroys his relationships.
And this person with a name and identity --
William -- degenerates into
a shell of a person,
with no name -- the Man in Black.
Over time he’s devoted too much attention
to the outcomes --
like who’s winning and losing,
or what is the score --
instead of to the process
and experience of living.
Think of how he speaks of his wife’s death:
[Last year, my wife took the wrong pills.
Fell asleep in the bath.
Tragic accident.
30 years of marriage vanished.]
He seems to think that if
the tangible proof of marriage --
the wife -- is gone,
his own experience of those 30 years
has been erased, too.
Through showing us this game-obsessed villain,
Westworld is saying something about us, too.
In modern society, so many parts
of our daily lives are gamified.
Central aspects of our social,
professional, romantic or family lives,
encourage us to focus a little less
on the experience
and a little more on the
quantifiable outcomes of things --
the likes a photo gets,
rather than the memory behind it,
the number of matches or followers,
rather than the actual meaningful connections
or real friends we might have,
the job title or salary,
rather than the impact we feel
we're making on the world.
So by showing us how wrong
the Man in Black is about the maze,
and how evil this point of view can be
when taken to the extreme,
Westworld is pointing out that
this kind of competitive behavior
is ultimately empty.
[The Maze itself is the sum of a man's life:
the choices he makes,
the dreams he hangs onto.]
Life isn’t a game you can win,
because it ends the same for everybody.
And meaning isn’t some prize
that you obtain by conquering a literal maze.
More likely, the meaning of your life
comes from the subjective experiences
you have along the way.
Through characters like Dolores and Maeve,
who are only sort of beginning
to discover humanity,
Westworld is reaffirming
those parts of human life
that are inherently valuable:
the human connections,
the joys of growth,
the challenge of expanding
our consciousness,
and the beauty of experiencing life.
[The game is not worth playing
if the opponent's programmed to lose.
I wanted them to be free,
free to fight back.
Should've known you'd never let them.]
It's Debra.
And Susannah.
You're watching ScreenPrism.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
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