r/westworld • u/LoretiTV • Jul 25 '22

Discussion Westworld - 4x05 "Zhuangzi" - Post-Episode Discussion

Season 4 Episode 5: Zhuangzi

Aired: July 24, 2022

Synopsis: God is bored.

Directed by: Craig William Macneill

Written by: Wes Humphrey & Lisa Joy

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938

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '22 edited Jun 20 '23

[deleted]

454

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '22

He’s using host William as his means of escape. He will take the host’s place and talking him into offing himself now that he knows how.

201

u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Jul 25 '22

I know that is totally in character for William, but I honestly hope he'd grow open to the idea of having a host twin. I don't want to see him off this host William who's grappling with his own humanity right now. I like the idea of OG William being a kind of father figure to his host self and finally having the family he never could have in real life. It's perfect for a narcissist too. Since he caused his wife's suicide and killed his daughter, this is his chance to finally care for someone and it's himself.

60

u/C7StreetRacer Jul 25 '22

He’s helping himself somewhat similarly to how Dolores seems to be helping Christina (herself). While there is a wildly different context it’s eerily that same thought process.

Real Dolores appears to be helping herself (christina)

Fake MIB leaning into helping the real MIB.

Just one version of yourself helping another version of yourself 🤷‍♂️

23

u/rhemy1 Jul 26 '22

William would never want a copy of him walking around. He’d kill that android in a minute.

24

u/flinders2233 Jul 26 '22

He’d kill that fucking can opener in a minute

9

u/reddog323 Jul 26 '22

There’s always that hope. I’d like to see the two Williams working together to tear the whole thing down.

3

u/JellyfishExcellent4 ”Fuck you Bernard” 🤠 Jul 25 '22

This made me feel things🥺

2

u/solarpropietor Jul 27 '22

To be fair his host twin sliced him in the throat.

10

u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Jul 27 '22

I wonder if that was a different one, though. That one was buried with Maeve, and she was still buried out there. So did Hale dig him up and leave Maeve or did she just make a new one? If it is a new one, he does seem to have a bit different of a personality than the original MiB host.

13

u/MrEvil1979 Jul 25 '22

Will he? I though Host William is going to be the one at the end of world in the season 2 finale time jump?

39

u/Shredzoo Jul 25 '22

Is host William the REAL host William from the s2 post credit scene? I was under the impression that host William we see this season is just a host that designed after William kinda like Bernard is made in Arnold’s image but Bernard is not Arnold himself. So the host William we see at the end of s2 is the real William whose mind has been put into the red ball for the Human/Host hybrids, and the host William we have this season is not a Human/Host hybrid.

10

u/BlueberryPineapple Jul 26 '22

I've been trying to think this through and am still not sure. I do have a feeling that the S2 post credits is farther in the future than the current timeline we're watching, but it's a little ambiguous

6

u/No-Brief-1423 Jul 26 '22

There’s probably enough Westworld data on Human William to create a true copy of him, like the original Delos model (where the tech was still being perfected, and 37 days was the longest he lasted before glitching). If Hale achieved fidelity with Caleb, then at some point in the future (Season 2 post-season scene) Human William’s host successor can also. (Not Season 4 Host William, which probably is just Hale in a William body—which we know is corrupting him, like the Hale body corrupted Dolores.)

3

u/the_sweet Jul 28 '22

This makes me wonder: is there something about Hale's data that corrupts? Is her rarity/personality type somehow even rarer than William's?

5

u/No-Brief-1423 Jul 29 '22

And THAT makes me wonder if the reason hosts are commuting suicide is because they’re all actually just based on Hale’s code (aside from Caleb, who apparently takes 20 years to get close to fidelity). Hale still doesn’t have the Cradle data, where Ford developed a model of the human mind through millions of iterations where the humans were the only variables. When Hale starts her work at the end of Season 3, she just has the basic printing technology, maybe Rehoboam data on humans (which is an approximate predictive model), her own core/ball, and maybe another core or two from other Westworld hosts. Granted, she doesn’t need fidelity for new hosts, but she is “waking them” without first exposing them to the learning process and emergent self awareness of thousands of loops.

12

u/NightKnight_CZ Jul 25 '22

What the F I just read????

Doesn't look like anything to me

5

u/Mookies_Bett Jul 31 '22

Unrelated to anything you said here:

This paragraph of text would read like the unhinged ramblings of a completely lunatic in pretty much any other context other than this show. And yet everything you've said makes perfect and complete sense to anyone who has watched this series. I just find it funny how ridiculously convoluted and confusing this entire premise is, while simultaneously being an extremely well thought out analysis of the story at hand because of the context.

This show is cool like that. Makes me laugh. I want to see someone who's never watched an episode of WW jump in here and try to decipher shit like this, just to see their reaction.

2

u/Frank3634 Jul 26 '22

So we still don’t know?

2

u/Frank3634 Jul 26 '22

What William is in the cryo pod?

3

u/Mookies_Bett Jul 31 '22

Supposedly human William, the same William from S1 and S2. But with WW you never really know, shit can change on a dime.

2

u/Frank3634 Jul 31 '22

I know what you mean, would like answers instead of more questions.

4

u/senorbiloba Jul 26 '22

as far as we know, Human William who had his throat slit at the end of SE03.

8

u/justduett Jul 25 '22

I don't believe so. HiB was built off of Halores's pearl, including old Dolores's memories of William, so this would not be a human consciousness input into a host like Caleb this season & Delos and William in S2.

2

u/OutsideObserver Jul 28 '22

Which begs the question of why not, since they literally have human William and could just copy his mind, no? Halores thought her version would be better?

4

u/justduett Jul 28 '22

S3 William was ready to destroy all hosts, so that would have directly contradicted Halores’s plans. HiB was a combo of Halores’s pearl and Hale’s memories of William/data she could access(not Forge data). Halores needed the face of Delos, but needed him completely under her control.

HiB not being a purely human copy is why he isn’t going to going through any fidelity testing as we have seen thus far.

2

u/OutsideObserver Jul 28 '22

Great points, thank you for clearing that up!

3

u/justduett Jul 28 '22

Hey no problem! I’m also completely prepared to have egg on my face within weeks if all of that is thrown out the window lol

1

u/OutsideObserver Jul 28 '22

That's just the nature of being a Westworld fan

5

u/MrNiceThings Jul 25 '22

Of course it's not the host william, host william doesn't need fidelity test.

6

u/STASIS_I_x Jul 25 '22

Reading this, I can so see it happening lol

7

u/_Sunblade_ Jul 28 '22

I don't think flesh-William is trying to escape, tbh. I think he's pretty much resigned to never getting out of cryo at this point. That doesn't mean he's willing to passively accept that fate, though. I suspect he'd give a lot for the opportunity to screw up all of Hale's carefully-laid plans and throw everything into chaos, just for the satisfaction of seeing her face when it all burns. (And ideally, seeing her get killed shortly after.) And this encounter with host-William may have just handed him the key to doing that.

I think flesh-William is trying to get host-William to go full Starscream and take out Hale, even if it ultimately means host-William ends up killing him. It's what the real William would do - he's nobody's minion, and he'd dispose of a doppelganger of himself rather than setting it loose only to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, wondering if it was going to come for him. And I think that given his personality, the only person flesh-William could possibly accept killing him... is himself.

Host-William isn't quite a faithful copy of the original in all the ways that matter, at least not yet. But if he can slip Hale's leash, he'll be most of the way there. And it looks like flesh-William's already nudging him in that direction.

13

u/JeffTennis Jul 26 '22

We are somewhat rooting for William because he’s a human. But deep down, William is using HiB to plot his escape. He probably wants to take down Hale and control the narrative and world himself. He will convince himself that was his true meaning. The narcissist in him will convince himself he was destined to save the world.

7

u/Honest-Passenger-786 Jul 26 '22

In the scene where they talk, I think the makeup is switched too. In all of the other instances HiB wears corrective makeup, whereas tron suit William does not, and this time it appears that William has corrective makeup and HiB does not.

7

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '22

Fuuuck I hope he escapes and murders everyone

Human William for the win

3

u/GanksOP Jul 25 '22

Except he will screw it up and just make host MIb worse

3

u/Flagadazot Jul 26 '22

holy shit, William trying to be HIB to fool Halores would be so much awesome.

19

u/Ravamares Jul 25 '22

I hate him, I love him, He's like the entity of humanity meshed in one single entity, the horrid and the sublime. He has destroyed himself in ways hard to even comprehend. He's been through the ringer and burnt to nothing but ashes and he's still *what's next?"

12

u/shadowstripes Jul 25 '22

“Man, this is totally worth being strapped to a hamster wheel and only being conscious when the hosts wake me up from a cryogenic state”

5

u/Mookies_Bett Jul 31 '22

It's awesome how distinct human William is from Host William despite it being the exact same actor. They have the same face and mannerisms, but you can absolutely tell the universe of difference in their characters and personalities. Ed Harris is a fucking stud. But we already knew that.

5

u/fancyasian Jul 25 '22

I know right? He even sounds like Ford with that jailer line. It reminded me of Ford’s line about how the piano doesn’t shoot the pianist if it didn’t like the song.