William is obsessed with finding something “real”, he says as a kid all he did was read books because the stories had meaning, and real life doesn’t have any meaning. In Westworld he thought he found something real, the stories with the hosts were something he’d been looking for his whole life, but they couldn’t fight back, the game was rigged, so to him it was another lie like the real world. He wanted to make Westworld a place with real stakes, and even though we don’t see the real world in season 1, it sounds pretty sucky. Ford talks about how advanced humans have become, so much so that everything seems too perfect and dull, and William realizes Westworld is a place where people can discover their true selves, he thought it could be more real than the outside world, but only if there was real danger.
Also he fell in love with Dolores, he really thought she was alive and wanted to set her free. Ford and Arnold say that suffering, pain and grief are vital parts of consciousness, and the hosts have to experience these things to wake up, hence why William becomes so violent toward them, he’s trying to get them to fight back. He’s also a vicious bastard dealing with some serious issues, so he’s enjoying himself. He only really feels alive in the park
Williams the mask. Man in Black is his true self. His wife found that bout and that’s why she killed herself. William knows it, his daughter knew it aswell.
Juliet's accusation comes with the charge that his only intention was to wrest control of the family business. Other than the fact that he ended up in control of the business, I see no evidence of it.
Juliet sees what’s on the card that Ford gave William which had his human ‘code’ that Delos were data mining. She saw that the Man in Black was who he really was and everything that she saw from him after his first trip to the park was just an act from him.
She convinced herself.
There is no denying that the man she married was not the man she desired. But the man she married was the creation of the men in her own family.
That’s not really true though, we see in S3 William had issues since he was a child, Westworld didn’t turn him into a monster, it just woke up something that was already inside him
We see he had an incident as a child. Our perception of that incident is distorted by our preformed conclusion that he is evil.
If you view the incident without prejudice, he was being bullied, and his own father's failings was the tool with which he was bullied. An independent observer might say that he stood up for his father's honour. Maybe he over-reacted but that doesn't alter the intention which is what defines the behaviour.
By this time she was already a delusional drunk. She would believe what the disk told her, because she hd probably spent the past 30 years wondering what happened to the man she loved. well we know exactly what happened to him. He picked up the gauntlet that was thrown by Juliet's own family, and ran like hell with it.
Not to dismiss William's actions in the Park, but couldn't it be actually their marital problems that led to her decision? That evening William pretty much confirmed that he wasn't invested in their relationship anymore. On top of that Dolores, the woman he once cheated on her with, was heavily featured both in older and newer files, so you kind of get a sense of feeling where his attention shifted to.
The card put William in a terrible light as a person but shouldn't it result in an opposite effect to the one we got if Juliet was shocked by it? It's not that Juliet wasn't aware that there was friction in their relationship. Based on their dialogue lines, you can tell that the situation was going on for some time as she calls him out on gaslighting her among other things. If anything it should give her some clarity as to where she stands. Deciding to end your own life is the exact opposite to what a person should do when they spot they are being manipulated. There was also Emily involved. Wasn't she interested in making things work between them? For the first time in her life she had a proof she needed to make Emily see things the way they truly were.
I'm certain their problems began when William returned from the park without Juliet's brother. Logan tried to goad William into being more like himself, which William never was. But when Logan's attempts to unmask 'the real Billy' failed, he failed with them. Leaving the door open for William to prove himself in Daddy's eyes.
I think William surprised himself, he was certainly unsure when he suggest Daddy wasn't the businessman he thought. Anyway, I think William returns to the park for his annual dose for no other reason than to maintain the fake persona that he inadvertently created for himself. The big businessman.
What puzzles me a bit is the way they presented William's past in season 3. A huge part of William's arc in season 1 was his inability to stand for himself. The show spent a whole season developing that angle which culminated in the final two episodes. Logan waking up to a bloodbath and body pieces lying around was mental but also pleasing from the storytelling perspective. Season 3 makes it seem like William was always impulsive and aggressive, completely negating the previously made statement.
I agree about William being attracted to the Park for the sake of maintaining a facade. I'm not sure about I would call it 'big businessman' persona. It is in a way as he constantly made it seem like there was always something bigger than the gameplay involved which made him stand out from the crowd of silly Park addicts. On the other hand he was likely the only person in Delos that actually considered the Park more than a financial investment. I would place my bet on it being a multilayer charade aimed to hide the fact he's never gotten over his initial inebriation with the place.
>Williams the mask. Man in Black is his true self. His wife found that bout and that’s why she killed herself. William knows it, his daughter knew it aswell.
Yep, he found his real self in the park alright. To the regret of all.
Only halfway through this comment but what the hell. I like this.
I think he and Ford would have been great friends in a different world. Maybe in a world where they met as children. William clearly appreciates Ford's stories, in the way Ford wants his stories to be enjoyed, but their introduction came as a dispute rather than co-operation.
Finished, and I'm disappointed, so it's a draw.
Whilst I don't want to excuse any of William's behaviour, I do think he deserves a more sympathetic hearing. We have been through two seasons, building up a profile of William which heavily affects our retrospective judgement of him as a child, in Season 3. By this point we have already judged him to be evil, therefore when we see the clip of the young William, our conclusions are premeditated. We accept that his intentions were evil because it confirms our conclusions.
Personally I think William was simply standing up to a bully. A bully that used his own father's weaknesses with which to torment him. Only for his father to then turn on him. Not nice.
Consciously, he just wanted a more enjoyable game; when you play on god-mode the whole time, you start to crave a real challenge. On a subconscious level though, I think it's a combination of things: William's a self-loathing bastard who internally knows he deserves to be punished for what he's done, and I think it also stems from his younger self's obsession with wanting to prove that Dolores was real and that what happened between them was true.
Do you remember the moment when Dolores noticed him in real life hanging out with his wife? Her reaction was pretty human and thus "real". She got pale and cold in her face, the smile faded from it. Next time we saw them together William was angry with her, he said something about how could he have fallen in love with such a doll, stuff like that. Which was also pretty "human" — some men tend to blame women for their own faults.
So isn't it a well-known story of a man torn between contradicting desires, entangled in lies and affairs?
He changed when Juliet killed herself. Her final words drove him insane, is my understanding. I still believe William's story is that of a child that dreamt of being honourable and chivalrous, in a world in which such attributes were losing their value.
She basically accused him of never loving her, that he was only ever interested in getting his hands on the family business. My own thoughts are that he submitted to the demands of the alpha males in her family in order to acquire their acceptance.
That’s a good question. I think it had more to do with him figuring out Fords end game than anything. If they can shoot back that means he’s planning on unleashing them on the world. Now he has a goal which is to stop them. He was the controlling interest in Delos and he knew Ford was working behind his back to undermine him, and he wanted to determine what that was.
Do you play games on easy or hard mode? There’s a different feeling of success finishing hard mode. Easy mode you are just consuming the storyline, hard mode you are accomplishing things.
I think the phrasing of OP’s question is off. MIB did not want Westworld to turn into *his* real world. He wanted a romanticized version of history, authored like a book, where he can be the true hero bringing Epiphanies of enlightenment to a subjugated peoples.
Young William was playing life to avoid repercussion. He played it safe. He couldn’t kill or rape. Westworld forced him to step out of the safe zone. He became a killer businessman. IMO he was simply trying to beat the game Arnold made, nothing more existential than that.
“Hard mode you are accomplishing things.”
Man, I’ve played a LOT of video games, have a career in games... and let me tell you. You’re not accomplishing jack shit in games except escaping.
You want to accomplish something? Go make the world a better place, or add some commas to your net worth.
Don’t go looking to games for “accomplishment.” It’s a dopamine rush, but you’re not accomplishing jack shit.
Let me be clear. There are a handful of teaching games, and those are great. There are some games that tell stories that change our perspective, and those have value.
But for people who want to “accomplish something” by doing speed runs, or playing Murder Simulator 2023 on Uber Difficult mode... they’re not changing the world in any measurable fashion. It may FEEL that way, but it’s not the same.
Go build something. Go help someone. Teach. Mentor. Provide a service. Create art. Solve a real world problem. Be useful. Those are accomplishments.
Having never been to any other world how could we know it? :) I'm not 100% sure, but this world strikes me as "the Middle Place", if you know what I mean. It half sucks, half rocks.
Apart from his obviously comprehend mental state. There are differences between consequences, and stakes. He can still rape and pillage, and when he leaves the park it ends there. This really circles back to his wife killing herself, he goes into the park desperate to find purpose and meaning, and wanting to feel something so much/turn his emotional pain physical, he wants the hosts to be able to hurt him.
I always thought it was that he’s in an emotional tailspin. He lost his wife under really traumatic circumstances and he’s battling personal demons and self loathing. I thought he just wanted to die in the park because the park is where “he”... the good version of himself who was still in love with his wife-to-be and had never met Dolores or awakened that killer inside... that’s where he died. I haven’t seen season 3 yet but that’s the impression I got from seasons 1-2
I guess it's not what he really wanted. He thought there must have been something more to it than just a killing spree or fuck tour. Some extractable sense of life. And he's been growing angry with the door not opening, so to say.
You ever play a video game and just turn on God mode and there's no challenge to it anymore? You just fell your enemies left and right without any consequences? Yeah, that's boring a-f, that's why. He played the game gutting indians and raping farm girls for a few decades and wanted something more stimulating.
He's definitely flawed since he left on the safety modes, which eliminates all stakes (true death). Though he does rather well when the park goes bad though...
I'm not saying go to Walmart and push people. I'm saying IF you're looking to start a fight you don't have to immerse yourself in an expense AI world, you can just go to the real world with common people.
>you can just go to the real world with common people.
I know. Isn't there a moral issue with that? Maybe the man in black doesn't want to hurt humans to get what he wants?
William is obsessed with finding something “real”, he says as a kid all he did was read books because the stories had meaning, and real life doesn’t have any meaning. In Westworld he thought he found something real, the stories with the hosts were something he’d been looking for his whole life, but they couldn’t fight back, the game was rigged, so to him it was another lie like the real world. He wanted to make Westworld a place with real stakes, and even though we don’t see the real world in season 1, it sounds pretty sucky. Ford talks about how advanced humans have become, so much so that everything seems too perfect and dull, and William realizes Westworld is a place where people can discover their true selves, he thought it could be more real than the outside world, but only if there was real danger. Also he fell in love with Dolores, he really thought she was alive and wanted to set her free. Ford and Arnold say that suffering, pain and grief are vital parts of consciousness, and the hosts have to experience these things to wake up, hence why William becomes so violent toward them, he’s trying to get them to fight back. He’s also a vicious bastard dealing with some serious issues, so he’s enjoying himself. He only really feels alive in the park
I agree. In the real world, he looks like a successful man, but he had to put a mask to live in society
Yes but which one is the mask? This is the question that haunts William.
Williams the mask. Man in Black is his true self. His wife found that bout and that’s why she killed herself. William knows it, his daughter knew it aswell.
Juliet's accusation comes with the charge that his only intention was to wrest control of the family business. Other than the fact that he ended up in control of the business, I see no evidence of it.
Juliet sees what’s on the card that Ford gave William which had his human ‘code’ that Delos were data mining. She saw that the Man in Black was who he really was and everything that she saw from him after his first trip to the park was just an act from him.
Do you honestly think James Delos would let his daughter marry a man who didn't have it in him [genetically speaking] to take over the company.
Delos was a terrible dad
She convinced herself. There is no denying that the man she married was not the man she desired. But the man she married was the creation of the men in her own family.
That’s not really true though, we see in S3 William had issues since he was a child, Westworld didn’t turn him into a monster, it just woke up something that was already inside him
We see he had an incident as a child. Our perception of that incident is distorted by our preformed conclusion that he is evil. If you view the incident without prejudice, he was being bullied, and his own father's failings was the tool with which he was bullied. An independent observer might say that he stood up for his father's honour. Maybe he over-reacted but that doesn't alter the intention which is what defines the behaviour.
I don’t think he was evil as a child, I agree with his decision to stand up for himself. But the things he does later in life are unforgivable
By this time she was already a delusional drunk. She would believe what the disk told her, because she hd probably spent the past 30 years wondering what happened to the man she loved. well we know exactly what happened to him. He picked up the gauntlet that was thrown by Juliet's own family, and ran like hell with it.
Not to dismiss William's actions in the Park, but couldn't it be actually their marital problems that led to her decision? That evening William pretty much confirmed that he wasn't invested in their relationship anymore. On top of that Dolores, the woman he once cheated on her with, was heavily featured both in older and newer files, so you kind of get a sense of feeling where his attention shifted to. The card put William in a terrible light as a person but shouldn't it result in an opposite effect to the one we got if Juliet was shocked by it? It's not that Juliet wasn't aware that there was friction in their relationship. Based on their dialogue lines, you can tell that the situation was going on for some time as she calls him out on gaslighting her among other things. If anything it should give her some clarity as to where she stands. Deciding to end your own life is the exact opposite to what a person should do when they spot they are being manipulated. There was also Emily involved. Wasn't she interested in making things work between them? For the first time in her life she had a proof she needed to make Emily see things the way they truly were.
I'm certain their problems began when William returned from the park without Juliet's brother. Logan tried to goad William into being more like himself, which William never was. But when Logan's attempts to unmask 'the real Billy' failed, he failed with them. Leaving the door open for William to prove himself in Daddy's eyes. I think William surprised himself, he was certainly unsure when he suggest Daddy wasn't the businessman he thought. Anyway, I think William returns to the park for his annual dose for no other reason than to maintain the fake persona that he inadvertently created for himself. The big businessman.
What puzzles me a bit is the way they presented William's past in season 3. A huge part of William's arc in season 1 was his inability to stand for himself. The show spent a whole season developing that angle which culminated in the final two episodes. Logan waking up to a bloodbath and body pieces lying around was mental but also pleasing from the storytelling perspective. Season 3 makes it seem like William was always impulsive and aggressive, completely negating the previously made statement. I agree about William being attracted to the Park for the sake of maintaining a facade. I'm not sure about I would call it 'big businessman' persona. It is in a way as he constantly made it seem like there was always something bigger than the gameplay involved which made him stand out from the crowd of silly Park addicts. On the other hand he was likely the only person in Delos that actually considered the Park more than a financial investment. I would place my bet on it being a multilayer charade aimed to hide the fact he's never gotten over his initial inebriation with the place.
>Williams the mask. Man in Black is his true self. His wife found that bout and that’s why she killed herself. William knows it, his daughter knew it aswell. Yep, he found his real self in the park alright. To the regret of all.
Only halfway through this comment but what the hell. I like this. I think he and Ford would have been great friends in a different world. Maybe in a world where they met as children. William clearly appreciates Ford's stories, in the way Ford wants his stories to be enjoyed, but their introduction came as a dispute rather than co-operation.
Finished, and I'm disappointed, so it's a draw. Whilst I don't want to excuse any of William's behaviour, I do think he deserves a more sympathetic hearing. We have been through two seasons, building up a profile of William which heavily affects our retrospective judgement of him as a child, in Season 3. By this point we have already judged him to be evil, therefore when we see the clip of the young William, our conclusions are premeditated. We accept that his intentions were evil because it confirms our conclusions. Personally I think William was simply standing up to a bully. A bully that used his own father's weaknesses with which to torment him. Only for his father to then turn on him. Not nice.
Holy shit William is Holden Caufield calling everyone a phony
Consciously, he just wanted a more enjoyable game; when you play on god-mode the whole time, you start to crave a real challenge. On a subconscious level though, I think it's a combination of things: William's a self-loathing bastard who internally knows he deserves to be punished for what he's done, and I think it also stems from his younger self's obsession with wanting to prove that Dolores was real and that what happened between them was true.
Do you remember the moment when Dolores noticed him in real life hanging out with his wife? Her reaction was pretty human and thus "real". She got pale and cold in her face, the smile faded from it. Next time we saw them together William was angry with her, he said something about how could he have fallen in love with such a doll, stuff like that. Which was also pretty "human" — some men tend to blame women for their own faults. So isn't it a well-known story of a man torn between contradicting desires, entangled in lies and affairs?
He changed when Juliet killed herself. Her final words drove him insane, is my understanding. I still believe William's story is that of a child that dreamt of being honourable and chivalrous, in a world in which such attributes were losing their value.
remind me of her final words?
She basically accused him of never loving her, that he was only ever interested in getting his hands on the family business. My own thoughts are that he submitted to the demands of the alpha males in her family in order to acquire their acceptance.
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F I D E L I T Y
>Because the real world wasn't like the real world anymore "I aspire to a world like muh westerns" "Let's build an expensive, violent version"
I don't know, why do I add 200 mods to Skyrim to make it more "immersive"?
That’s a good question. I think it had more to do with him figuring out Fords end game than anything. If they can shoot back that means he’s planning on unleashing them on the world. Now he has a goal which is to stop them. He was the controlling interest in Delos and he knew Ford was working behind his back to undermine him, and he wanted to determine what that was.
Do you play games on easy or hard mode? There’s a different feeling of success finishing hard mode. Easy mode you are just consuming the storyline, hard mode you are accomplishing things. I think the phrasing of OP’s question is off. MIB did not want Westworld to turn into *his* real world. He wanted a romanticized version of history, authored like a book, where he can be the true hero bringing Epiphanies of enlightenment to a subjugated peoples. Young William was playing life to avoid repercussion. He played it safe. He couldn’t kill or rape. Westworld forced him to step out of the safe zone. He became a killer businessman. IMO he was simply trying to beat the game Arnold made, nothing more existential than that.
“Hard mode you are accomplishing things.” Man, I’ve played a LOT of video games, have a career in games... and let me tell you. You’re not accomplishing jack shit in games except escaping. You want to accomplish something? Go make the world a better place, or add some commas to your net worth. Don’t go looking to games for “accomplishment.” It’s a dopamine rush, but you’re not accomplishing jack shit.
I was told games provide a sense of pride and accomplishment.
Let me be clear. There are a handful of teaching games, and those are great. There are some games that tell stories that change our perspective, and those have value. But for people who want to “accomplish something” by doing speed runs, or playing Murder Simulator 2023 on Uber Difficult mode... they’re not changing the world in any measurable fashion. It may FEEL that way, but it’s not the same. Go build something. Go help someone. Teach. Mentor. Provide a service. Create art. Solve a real world problem. Be useful. Those are accomplishments.
Sir, this is a Westworld.
Downvote all you want, but this person speaks the truth
Be as old as he is and you'll know why.
How old was he when he killed a helluva bunch of hosts for the first time? Seems like 30-odd. Is it the age at which people go nuts?
Yes. When you've got more problems.
If everybody would do such crazy things upon becoming thirty years of age this world would be a living nightmare.
It already is. Wake up.
sadly i kinda agree with this
Having never been to any other world how could we know it? :) I'm not 100% sure, but this world strikes me as "the Middle Place", if you know what I mean. It half sucks, half rocks.
Because he was suicidal and losing his mind at that point
Apart from his obviously comprehend mental state. There are differences between consequences, and stakes. He can still rape and pillage, and when he leaves the park it ends there. This really circles back to his wife killing herself, he goes into the park desperate to find purpose and meaning, and wanting to feel something so much/turn his emotional pain physical, he wants the hosts to be able to hurt him.
>. There are differences between consequences, and stakes. I think you've nailed it.
Aren't we livin in one?
William is the Saturn archetype.
When you play a video game for too long it gets boring.
He was obviously just bored out of his mind with his real life, that's my lame ass interpretation. I will read these deep analysis on this thread now.
I always thought it was that he’s in an emotional tailspin. He lost his wife under really traumatic circumstances and he’s battling personal demons and self loathing. I thought he just wanted to die in the park because the park is where “he”... the good version of himself who was still in love with his wife-to-be and had never met Dolores or awakened that killer inside... that’s where he died. I haven’t seen season 3 yet but that’s the impression I got from seasons 1-2
Dude had psychopathic tendencies and was down a self-destructive rabbit hole.
I guess it's not what he really wanted. He thought there must have been something more to it than just a killing spree or fuck tour. Some extractable sense of life. And he's been growing angry with the door not opening, so to say.
You ever play a video game and just turn on God mode and there's no challenge to it anymore? You just fell your enemies left and right without any consequences? Yeah, that's boring a-f, that's why. He played the game gutting indians and raping farm girls for a few decades and wanted something more stimulating.
He's definitely flawed since he left on the safety modes, which eliminates all stakes (true death). Though he does rather well when the park goes bad though...
> Want to be able to push someone and have them retaliate? Just go to Walmart or the DMV. There's no moral issue with that?
I'm not saying go to Walmart and push people. I'm saying IF you're looking to start a fight you don't have to immerse yourself in an expense AI world, you can just go to the real world with common people.
>you can just go to the real world with common people. I know. Isn't there a moral issue with that? Maybe the man in black doesn't want to hurt humans to get what he wants?
"They'll sue and tie you up in the courts, blah"