Eight episodes into the opening season of Westworld a couple of questions have been settled, but more have sprung up in their place. We know now that Bernard is a host, and we are around 85-90 percent certain that William and the Man in Black are the same person based on ample evidence from earlier episodes and confirmation of at least three timelines. It seems possible, too, that the Man in Black has a controlling interest in Delos, a company seemingly owned by his late wife.
Beyond pointing to the Man in Black as William, the most recent episode was confusing, to say the least. Out of the episode, however, came a new batch of theories. Is Dolores actually Wyatt? Or is Teddy Wyatt? Is Bernard actually Arnold? Is it possible that Ford is a host? There’s some evidence to support these theories, but some evidence to contradict them, as well.
The only thing that I am certain of at this point is that Abernathy is important. There were a lot of hosts in cold storage that Charlotte Hale could have chosen when she decided to upload 35 years of code into one host, so there has to be some significance to the choice of Abernathy.
Consider this fact: Abernathy was the first host on the series we saw break. We know now that the “violent delights” line was not necessarily the triggering moment. Rather, what causes the hosts to develop sentience is a traumatic episode in their backstory. “She was alive. Truly alive,” the Man in Black said of Maeve, after he stabbed her and killed her daughter, essentially confirming that the death of a close loved one has the effect of waking up the hosts. The key to the bicameral mind is a combination of a backstory that gives the host a heart, and an event that breaks its heart. It’s how Ford made Bernard sentient: He gave him a son and a wife, and then he took his son away.
Knowing that, what provoked Abernathy into waking up seems all the more crucial.
That picture awakened Abernathy. Based on what we know about sentient hosts, we can assume that the picture was connected to Abernathy’s backstory, and that something terrible happened to the woman in the picture. Abernathy must have known her: She must have been a daughter or a wife. But the woman in the picture is not of Westworld. She’s of the real world, which means that somehow, Abernathy must have known someone in the real world.
That’s not out of the question, as we know now from Bernard. He had a girlfriend of the real world, Theresa. It’s thus possible that Abernathy had a relationship from someone in the real world, too.
My theory is this: Abernathy was the original Bernard.
The theory does not necessarily rule out the possibility that Bernard is Arnold. If Ford uploaded his consciousness into a host, it’s possible that he originally did so into Abernathy. We know, after all, that Abernathy predates Bernard. “Since I’ve been here, he’s been Abernathy for 10 years, he was sheriff before that …” Bernard told Ford in the pilot. The “since I’ve been here” clause suggests that Abernathy predates Bernard. It would explain why Abernathy wanted to kill both Ford and Bernard. He’s accessing fragments of prior builds, and one of those prior builds could be Arnold, just as Arnold had created host versions of Ford’s family. Maybe the fragments of Arnold inside of Abernathy hates Ford for not letting him rest or die in peace. “You’re in a prison of your own sins,” Abernathy yelled at Ford. Westworld is that prison; Ford’s sins are the sentient hosts. This Westworld is presumably what Arnold and Ford fought over 35 years ago. Arnold preferred to die than see Ford play God.
Maybe Abernathy also left that photo for himself, as Maeve left all those drawings of the Westworld technicians under the floorboard. He wanted to remind himself, to wake himself up.
One question, however, remains: How does that theory square with Bernard’s moment with Bernard?
I’m not sure. Maybe Bernard and Abernathy are linked through old fragments of Arnold. What we do know is that something strange is afoot and if Abernathy does have fragments of an earlier Arnold build within him, combining it with 35 years of Ford’s coding certainly seems to make Abernathy a very dangerous host, indeed. The kind of host, in fact, that might make a perfect ally for Maeve.
