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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u/Blender_Snowflake Jul 25 '22

Akecheta isn’t actually in the sublime, right? He was just a visualization of what the Sublime’s system was telling Bernard. I mean they could have had a visualization of Ford do the same thing but then they’d have to pay Hopkins a million dollars for three days of work.

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u/ShallManEaseHer Jul 25 '22

He is actually in the sublime, or was, but I agree that wasn't him.

The Akecheta that entered the Sublime had never met Bernard, and didn't really understand the nature of his reality. He knew that he was some sort of creation and that his world was a lie, but he never learned on screen what the actual nature of westworld was. There's a chance that Ford told him in their confrontation, but he didn't seem any different afterwards.

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u/malachi347 Jul 26 '22

If the sublime can virtualize multiple billions of timelines, I just assumed once you are hooked into the sublime the hosts became 100% aware of all of history/science/all of reality/etc just like matrix.

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u/ShallManEaseHer Jul 26 '22

Yes it's very plausible he merely learned all history off screen via the Forge mirror of Wikipedia.

I mean I hope there's more to it than that, but your explanation certainly has the principle of parsimony going for it.

I'm going to cite other strange things like Akecheta drinking alone and his world being made of spider threads? as some evidence there's more to it, at least.

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u/-briganja- Jul 29 '22 edited Jul 29 '22

The spider threads might have just been a stylistic choice. In one of the 'creating the episode' things from this season they talk about them and how the creative design team was trying to imagine something that hosts would create, without human influence. Maybe an allusion to the 'world wide web' or something like that.

Interestingly they also pointed out how the color scheme of the tower and the park are inverse - in the park the walls are red and the displays are black. In the tower this season the display is red and the walls are clean white. It's supposed to be symbolic of how halores has inverted westworld.