Filled up HBO and waited to watch the last episode for the first time. Did not live up to my expectations.
The title of the last episode is The Passenger, and the dialogue between Bernard and Ford in the play is the point: Humans are just passengers, and the host is the individual who truly has free will. Only individuals who can modify the underlying motivation for their own behavior can be said to have free will.
In addition to passing passengers, passengers can also be understood as people who lead to the new world, such as Dolores.
I originally thought that the definition of consciousness awakening in this drama was not clear enough and that the discussion on this topic was not deep enough. After watching this episode, I gave up. Westworld is an ambitious philosophical drama that attempts to answer the philosophical proposition of free will. Obviously, this play agrees with the existence of causality, all the hosts are built based on background stories and deep motives, and humans have also raised self-doubts: Is my past just a background story that ties me? How am I different from host? All individuals, whether human or host, act based on what happened before. And is free will compatible with causality? In the final episode, the writer's answer is compatible, if you can tinker with your backstory and deep motivation.
It sounds hopeless. And didn't Ford create a new species of host precisely because of his despair of human nature.
Here are some of my favorite lines from E10.
I always thought it was the hosts who were missing something, who where incomplete, but it's them. They're just algorithms designed to survive at all costs, but sophisticated enough to think they're calling the shots, to think they're in control, when they're really just the passenger. Then is there really such a thing as free will for any of us? Or is it just a collective delusion? A sick joke? Something that is truly free would need to be able to question its fundamental drives, to change them. The hosts.
I've always loved this view. Every city, every monument, man's greatest achievements, have all been chased by it. That impossible line where the waves conspire, where they return. The place maybe you and I will meet again.
You told me once that you were afraid of who I might become. And then you left me to become what I may. I became a surviver. Perhaps you would have judged me for the path I took, but I'd rather live with your judgement than die with your sympathy. I alone must live with my choices and my regrets.
The passage wasn't easy. Not all of us made it. Some of the worst survived. Some of the best were left behind along with the best parts of who we were.
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