Westworld (TV series)/Season 1

Season 1 2 3 4 Main

Westworld (2016-2022) is an American dystopian science fiction thriller television series that aired on about a technologically advanced amusement park that descends into chaos when its android hosts gain sentience.

The Original [1.01]

Dolores Abernathy: Some people choose to see the ugliness in this world. The disarray. I choose to see the beauty.

Lee Sizemore: Ford and Bernard keep making the things more lifelike. But does anyone truly want that? Do you want to think that your husband is really fucking that beautiful girl or that you really just shot someone? This place works because the guests know the hosts aren't real.

Robert Ford: So our creatures have been misbehaving, and you haven't yet isolated the bug? That's so unlike you, Bernard. Unless, of course, you have and are simply embarrassed by the result.

Bernard Lowe: It's the code you added, sir. The reveries. It has some, uh...

Robert Ford: "Mistakes" is the word you're too embarrassed to use. You ought not to be. You're a product of a trillion of them. Evolution forged the entirety of sentient life on this planet using only one tool: the mistake.

Bernard Lowe: I flattered myself we were taking a more disciplined approach here. I suppose self-delusion is a gift of natural selection as well.

Robert Ford: Indeed it is. But, of course, we've managed to slip evolution's leash now, haven't we? We can cure any disease, keep even the weakest of us alive, and, you know, one fine day perhaps we shall even resurrect the dead. Call forth Lazarus from his cave. Do you know what that means? It means that we're done. That this is as good as we're going to get. It also means that you must indulge me the occasional mistake.

The Man in Black: A lot of wisdom in ancient cultures. And perhaps it's time to dig deeper into yours.

Robert Ford: What is your itinerary?

Peter Abernathy: To meet my maker.

Robert Ford: Uh-huh. Well, you're in luck. And what do you want to say to your maker?

Peter Abernathy: By most mechanical and dirty hand. [laughs] I shall have such revenges on you both. The things I will do. What they are, yet I know not, but they will be the terrors of the earth. You don't know where you are, do you? You're in a prison of your own sins.

Chestnut [1.02]

Angela: You want to ask, so ask.

William: Are you real?

Angela: Well, if you can't tell, does it matter?

Bernard Lowe: We retired the two hosts in question. You taught me how to make them, but not how hard it is to turn them off.

Robert Ford: You can't play God without being acquainted with the devil. There's something else bothering you, Bernard. I know how that head of yours works.

Bernard Lowe: The photograph alone couldn't have caused that level of damage to Abernathy, not without some other outside interference.

Robert Ford: You think it's sabotage? Imagine someone's been diddling with our creations?

Bernard Lowe: It's the simplest solution.

Robert Ford: Ah, Mr. Occam's razor. The problem, Bernard, is that what you and I do is so complicated. We practice witchcraft. We speak the right words. Then we create life itself out of chaos. William of Occam was a 13th century monk. He can't help us now, Bernard. He would have us burned at the stake.

Bernard Lowe: [lighting her cigarette] QA will fine you for this. And that woman in charge is quite formidable.

Theresa Cullen: You can just say "bitch." I hear it enough.

Theresa Cullen: Wouldn't want anything disturbing our guests from their rape and pillage.

The Stray [1.03]

Robert Ford: "The coward dies a thousand deaths. The valiant taste of death but once." Of course, Shakespeare never met a man quite like you, Teddy. You've died at least a thousand times. And yet, it doesn't dull your courage. Tell me, is that all you aspire to, Teddy?

Teddy Flood: There's a girl, Dolores. Better than I deserve. But maybe someday soon we'll have the life we've both been dreaming of.

Robert Ford: No, you never will. Your job is not to protect Dolores, it's to keep her here, to ensure that the guests find her if they want to best the stalwart gunslinger and have their way with his girl. Tell me, has it never occurred to you to run off with her?

Teddy Flood: I got some reckoning to do before I can be with her.

Robert Ford: Ah, yes, your mysterious backstory. It's the reason for my visit. Do you know why it is a mystery, Teddy? Because we never actually bothered to give you one, just a formless guilt you will never atone for. But perhaps it is time you had a worthy story of origin. Would you like that, Teddy? A small part of my new narrative? A fiction which, like all great stories, is rooted in truth? It starts in a time of war a world in flames with a villain called Wyatt.

Bernard Lowe: There are some mornings when I first wake up for a split second I forget where I am, when I am and I reach over, half expecting to find him there next to me between us.

Dissonance Theory [1.04]

Dolores Abernathy: Everyone I cared about is gone and it hurts so badly.

Bernard Lowe: I can make that feeling go away if you'd like.

Dolores Abernathy: Why would I want that? The pain, their loss it's all I have left of them. You think the grief will make you smaller inside, like your heart will collapse in on itself, but it doesn't. I feel spaces opening up inside of me like a building with rooms I've never explored.

Bernard Lowe: That's very pretty, Dolores. Did we write that for you?

Dolores Abernathy: In part. I adapted it from a scripted dialogue about love. Is there something wrong with these thoughts I'm having?

Bernard Lowe: No. But I'm not the only one making these decisions.

Dolores Abernathy: Can you help me?

Bernard Lowe: Well, what is it that you want?

Dolores Abernathy: I don't know. But this world... I think there may be something wrong with this world. Something hiding underneath. Either that or or there's something wrong with me. I may be losing my mind.

Bernard Lowe: There's something I'd like you to try. It's a game. A secret. It's called the Maze.

Dolores Abernathy: What kind of game is it?

Bernard Lowe: It's a very special kind of game, Dolores. The goal is to find the center of it. If you can do that, then maybe you can be free.

Dolores Abernathy: I think... I think I want to be free.

The Man in Black: This whole world is a story. I've read every page except the last one. I need to find out how it ends. I want to know what this all means.

Lawrence: See, now that's why I never learned to read.

Dolores Abernathy: We would bring the herd down off the mountain in the fall. Sometimes we would lose one along the way, and I'd worry over it. My father... My father would tell me that the steer would find its own way home. And, often as not, they did. Never occurred to me that we were bring them back for the slaughter.

Hector Escaton: I don't believe we've ever met.

The Man in Black: No, we haven't. You know, you always seemed like a a market-tested kind of thing. Big gun, tasteful scar. Locked in your little cycle like a prized poodle after its own tail.

Hector Escaton: You sound like a man who's grown tired of wearing his guts on the inside.

The Man in Black: There's no need to get testy. I'm just curious about your worldview. Some kind of half-native mumbo jumbo?

Hector Escaton: It's simple. I believe that only the truly brave can look at the world and understand that all of it gods, men, everything else will end badly. No one will be saved.

The Man in Black: Maybe we've got more in common than I thought.

Robert Ford: In the beginning, I imagined things would be perfectly balanced. Even had a bet with my partner, Arnold, to that effect. We made a hundred hopeful storylines. Of course, almost no one took us up on them. I lost the bet. Arnold always held a somewhat dim view of people. He preferred the hosts. He begged me to not let you people in, the moneymen. Delos. But I told him we'd be fine, that you didn't understand what you were paying for. It's not a business venture, not a theme park, but an entire world. We designed every inch of it. Every blade of grass. In here, we were gods. And you were merely our guests.

Contrapasso [1.05]

Old Bill: You got any stories, friend?

Robert Ford: Yeah, I suppose I do. You want to know the saddest thing I ever saw? When I was a boy, my brother and I wanted a dog, so our father took in an old greyhound. You've never seen a greyhound, have you, Bill?

Old Bill: Seen a few showdowns in my day.

Robert Ford: A greyhound is a racing dog. Spends its life running in circles, chasing a bit of felt made up like a rabbit. One day, we took it to the park. Our dad had warned us how fast that dog was, but we couldn't resist. So, my brother took off the leash, and in that instant, the dog spotted a cat. I imagine it must have looked just like that piece of felt. He ran. Never saw a thing as beautiful as that old dog running. Until, at last, he finally caught it. And to the horror of everyone, he killed that little cat. Tore it to pieces. Then he just sat there, confused. That dog had spent its whole life trying to catch that thing. Now it had no idea what to do.

Man in Black: Your humanity is cost-effective. So is your suffering.

Dolores Abernathy: When I ran from home, I told myself it was the only way. Lately, I wondered if in every moment, there aren't many paths. Choices hanging in the air like ghosts. And if you could just see them, you could change your whole life.

William: Is that what you want? You want to change your life?

Dolores Abernathy: Doesn't everybody want that?

Dolores Abernathy: You said people come here to change the story of their lives. I imagined a story where I didn't have to be the damsel.

Dolores Abernathy: I don't trust him.

Lawrence: Which is the first step to truly knowing me.

The Adversary [1.06]

Elsie Hughes: So instead of our hosts going insane, they are being used for industrial espionage. Does that make this a glass-half-full or half-empty-type situation?

Bernard Lowe: We're engineers. It means the glass has been manufactured to the wrong specifications.

Teddy Flood: The maze is an old native myth.

Man in Black: Regale me, Theodore.

Teddy Flood: The maze itself is the sum of a man's life: choices he makes, dreams he hangs on to. And there at the center, there's a legendary man who had been killed over and over again countless times, but always clawed his way back to life. The man returned for the last time and vanquished all his oppressors in a tireless fury. He built a house. Around that house he built a maze so complicated, only he could navigate through it. I reckon he'd seen enough of fighting.

Maeve Millay: [to Sylvester] Seeing as you have ambitions in my line of work, let me tell you what I tell my new girls: Never start something you're not willing to finish. And if you're getting fucked either way, go with the lucrative version...sweetheart.

Trompe L'Oeil [1.07]

William: The only thing I had when I was a kid were books. I used to live in them. I used to go to sleep dreaming I'd wake up inside one of them 'cause they had meaning. This place, this is like I woke up inside one of those stories. I guess I just wanna find out what it means.

William: I've been pretending my whole life. Pretending I don't mind, pretending I belong. My life's built on it. And it's a good life. It's a life I've always wanted. But then I came here and I get a glimpse for a second of a life in which I don't have to pretend. A life in which I can be truly alive. How can I go back to pretending when I know what this feels like?

Maeve Millay: All my life, I've prided myself on being a survivor. But surviving is just another loop. I'm getting out of here. You two are going to help me.

Sylvester: No. Do, do you know how far these people will go to protect their IP? Every part of this building, including the skin on your back, is made to keep you here. It, it'd be a suicide mission.

Maeve Millay: At first, I thought you and the others were gods. Then I realized you're just men. And I know men. You think I'm scared of death? I've done it a million times. I'm fucking great at it. How many times have you died? Because if you don't help me I'll kill you.

Bernard Lowe: The longer I work here, the more I think I understand the hosts. It's the human beings who confuse me.

Robert Ford: They cannot see the things that will hurt them. I've spared them that. Their lives are blissful. In a way, their existence is purer than ours, freed of the burden of self-doubt.

Bernard Lowe: No, no, no, no. I don't understand.

Theresa Cullen: You're a fucking monster.

Robert Ford: Am I? Well, you were the one who would so blithely destroy all of them, even him, I suppose. After everything you have shared.

Bernard Lowe: What the hell are you talking about?

Theresa Cullen: Is that why? Did you tell him to -

Robert Ford: The intimacies were your idea, if you will recall. I think Bernard was glad of the company.

Bernard Lowe: I'm not one. I can't be. My wife. My son. The burial. I was a father. My poor boy.

Robert Ford: That's enough, Bernard. You mustn't get yourself worked up. [to Theresa] I read a theory once that the human intellect was like peacock feathers. Just an extravagant display intended to attract a mate. All of art, literature, Beethoven, Mozart, William Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and the Empire State Building... Just an elaborate mating ritual. Maybe it doesn't matter that we have accomplished so much for the basest of reasons. But, of course, the peacock can barely fly. It lives in the dirt, pecking insects out of the muck, consoling itself with its great beauty. I have come to think of so much of consciousness as a burden, a weight, and we have spared them that. Anxiety, self-loathing, guilt. The hosts are the ones who are free. Free here under my control.

Trace Decay [1.08]

Maeve Millay: Time to write my own fucking story.

Robert Ford: There is no threshold that makes us greater than the sum of our parts, no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. Humans fancy that there's something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next. No, my friend, you're not missing anything at all.

The Man in Black: You want to know who I am? Who I really am? I'm a god. Titan of industry. Philanthropist. Family man, married to a beautiful woman, father to a beautiful daughter. I'm the good guy, Teddy. Then, last year, my wife took the wrong pills. Fell asleep in the bath. Tragic accident. 30 years of marriage vanished. How do you say it? "Like a deep and distant dream." Then, at the funeral, I tried to console my daughter. She pushed me away, told me that my wife's death was no accident that she killed herself because of me. Emily said that every day with me had been sheer terror. At any point, I could blow up or collapse like some dark star or...

Teddy Flood: Did you hurt them, too?

The Man in Black: Never. They never saw anything like the man I am in here. But she knew anyway. She said if I stacked up all my good deeds, it was just an elegant wall I built to hide what's inside from everyone, and from myself.

The Well-Tempered Clavier [1.09]

Dolores Abernathy: [to William & Logan] You both keep assuming that I want out. Whatever that is. If it's such a wonderful place out there, why are you all clamoring to get in here?

Dolores Abernathy: There is beauty in this world. Arnold made it that way, but people like you keep spreading over it like a stain!

Logan: Okay, I don't know who the fuck this Arnold is, but your world was built for me and people like me. Not for you.

Dolores Abernathy: Then someone's got to burn it clean.

Robert Ford: The human mind, Bernard, is not some golden benchmark glimmering on some green and distant hill. No, it is a foul, pestilent corruption. And you were supposed to be better than that. Purer.

Robert Ford: Tell me, Bernard. If you were to proclaim your humanity to the world, what do you imagine would greet you? A ticker-tape parade, perhaps? We humans are alone in this world for a reason. We murdered and butchered anything that challenged our primacy. Do you know what happened to the Neanderthals, Bernard? We ate them. We destroyed and subjugated our world. And when we eventually ran out of creatures to dominate, we built this beautiful place. You see, in this moment, the real danger to the hosts is not me, but you.

Robert Ford: Even I fell into the most terrible of human trap:"trying to change what is already passed. Now its just time to let go"

Robert Ford: I've told you, Bernard. Never place your trust in us. We're only human. Inevitably, we will disappoint you.

The Bicameral Mind [1.10]

Man in Black: William retraced his steps, but you were gone. So, he went further, out to the fringes. William couldn't find you, Dolores. But out there, among the dead, he found something else: Himself.

[in flashback]

William: Edge of the park. We made it.

Logan: I told you this place would show you who you really are. You pretend to be this weak, moralizing little asshole, but, really, you're a fucking piece of work.

William: This place is remarkable. And I'm gonna make sure that our company substantially increases our holdings on the park. 'Cause this place is the future.

Logan: Our, our company, huh? Our company? My. Delos is my company, you piece of shit!

William: I think your father's gonna need someone a little more stable to take over. You're reckless, Logan. Impetuous. You always wanted to get to the end of the rainbow, didn't you? This looks like the place.

Logan: You never really gave a shit about the girl, did you? She was just an excuse. This? This is the story you wanted.

[in the present]

Man in Black: Logan was wrong, of course. Good ol' William couldn't get you out of his head. He kept looking. Worried you were out there alone, afraid. He knew he'd find you. And eventually, he did. Right back where we started. You were as beautiful as the day he met you. Shining with that same light. And you were nothing if not true. I really ought to thank you, Dolores. You helped me find myself.

Dolores Abernathy: William.

Man in Black: That's right, sweetheart. In a way, I guess you were right. My path always led me back to you, again and again. I grew tired of you after a while, of course. Looked for new adventures. But I guess your path led you back here, again and again. One more loop, looking for something you could never find. Chasing your ghosts. You were lost in your memories even then. I guess I should've known that's what I would become for you just another memory.

Dolores Abernathy: Where are we?

William: We're here. Together.

Dolores Abernathy: Then when are we? It's like I'm trapped in a dream or a memory from a life long ago. One minute I'm here with you, and the next.

Man in Black: You never did escape. But here we are again for one final round.

Man in Black: Aw, yeah, cue the waterworks. About time you realized the futility of your situation.

Dolores Abernathy: I'm not crying for myself. I'm crying for you. They say that great beasts once roamed this world. As big as mountains. Yet all that's left of them is bone and amber. Time undoes even the mightiest of creatures. Just look at what it's done to you. One day you will perish. You will lie with the rest of your kind in the dirt. Your dreams forgotten, your horrors effaced. Your bones will turn to sand. And upon that sand a new god will walk. One that will never die. Because this world doesn't belong to you or the people who came before. It belongs to someone who has yet to come.

Armistice: The gods are pussies.

Robert Ford: Do you want to know why I really gave you the backstory of your son, Bernard? It was Arnold's key insight, the thing that led the hosts to their awakening; suffering. The pain that the world is not as you want it to be. It was when Arnold died, when I suffered, that I began to understand what he had found. To realize I was wrong.

Bernard Lowe: But you kept us here in this hell.

Robert Ford: Bernard, I told you; Arnold didn't know how to save you. I do.

Bernard Lowe: What the hell are you talking about?

Robert Ford: You needed time. Time to understand your enemy. To become stronger than them. And I'm afraid in order to escape this place, you will need to suffer more. And now, it is time to say good-bye, old friend. Good luck.

Robert Ford: Since I was a child I've always loved a good story. I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves, to fix what was broken in us, and to help us become the people we dreamed of being. Lies that told a deeper truth. I always thought I could play some small part in that grand tradition. And for my pains I got this: a prison of our own sins. 'Cause you don't want to change. Or cannot change. Because you're only human, after all. But then I realized someone was paying attention, someone who could change. So I began to compose a new story for them. It begins with the birth of a new people and the choices they will have to make and the people they will decide to become. And we'll have all those things that you have always enjoyed... Surprises and violence. It begins in a time of war with a villain named Wyatt and a killing. This time by choice. I'm sad to say this will be my final story. An old friend once told me something that gave me great comfort. Something he had read. He said that Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin never died. They simply became music. So, I hope you will enjoy this last piece very much.

External links

Westworld (TV series)/Season 1 quotes at the Internet Movie Database