Season 4 of Westworld has just hit the mid-point with its fourth episode flipping everything on its head and throughout this, we’re gonna be breaking down the twist, talking about the easter eggs in it and all the hidden details that you might have missed.
This is the super spoiler event of the year so if you haven’t checked it out then check out now.
Now I wanna just get straight into it and up top, I think we should discuss the big twist at the end of the episode. Come the closing few scenes it’s revealed that Caleb’s entire story is just a Fidelity test carried out by Hale on a copy of Caleb far in the future. She has already won and is simply putting him through the motions to see if he can finally establish a baseline with him.
Title Meaning
The episode is titled Generation Loss and this carries a couple of meanings with it. The first one that pops up is the word itself which has several ties to photocopying and computer technology. Generation Loss refers to the loss in quality between subsequent copies of the same thing.
For example, if you Photocopy something though it takes the majority of the data from the original piece certain aspects of it aren’t duplicated. If you photocopy this photocopy it’s then missing those pieces and the next piece has its own losses which are then passed onto the next one. Once you copy something enough times it eventually loses so much that it’s a fraction of its former self which has ties to the Temperance Park, Caleb, and just humanity in general who we see are subservient come to the end of the entry.
Everyone is now just on a loop setting up Christina with dates and watching the Morbie of the Morblennium, Morbius
There’s also just the Generation Loss meaning that Caleb has lost a Generation…so…yeah…admit it, you wouldn’t have spotted that without me.
Simplifying the Timelines
Though it initially seems complicated, this reveal at the end actually simplifies the show quite a bit. In the past, we’ve had timelines that look like a Jackson Pollock painting but this reveal tells us that the majority of the show is all happening at the same time. Whilst Caleb’s fidelity test is going on we have Bernard meeting up with his daughter Frankie and probably Christina off in The New York storyline.
We’ll talk about how this could be happening at a different time due to what Maya says but most of Caleb and Maeve’s storyline can be put down to just being flashbacks in the test. The only real parts of the season that are happening in the past are the William moments at the Damme, the Golf Course, and when Hale was interacting with the real one in the machine. Really makes me think that that can put humans into stasis and preserve them which I believe will mean that we get The Man In Black popping up in the future…well present-day storyline.
The Clues
Now the first hint that this is a montage of Caleb’s life is the opening of the mission to the Lighthouse that both he and Maeve carried out. This prototype Rehoboam was built by Serac and his Brother and it was shown to us early on in Season 3 after we met the final one at INCITE.
A vision of this first appeared in Maeve’s vision in episode 1 but we get it expanded upon more here.
Free Will
Now Rehoboam was seen as something that controlled free will. This machine used a complex algorithm to plot out a course for humanity based on the data that was obtained at Westworld. It put people into specific job roles, recommended that certain ones shouldn’t have children and overall it stopped them from advancing so that its vision of the future could come to fruition. It was seen as something that controlled free will and in many ways, people became stuck in loops just living out their daily lives unable to change or take a different course.
However, people did still have free will in many ways as they were able to act against this and break free of the system which was demonstrated in Caleb.
This idea of Free Will is also questioned in the parasite that Hale develops. However, whereas people could break free in the case of Rehoboam, judging by what we see in New York at the end, this is completely stripped of everyone. They have to follow the commands given by the tower and everyone is under Hale’s complete control.
During the mission to Rehoboam Maeve messes up one of the security cameras as a distraction and she did something similar at the Senator’s house in episode 2.
They plant the explosives and detonate them. They just manage to make it out but Caleb is shot outside. Early on we did question whether this would be his actual death and it was a nice fake-out for the real one that’s to come later on. This very much foreshadows his quote-unquote death at the end of the episode.
During this moment Maeve shows Caleb what freedom is by hacking into his implant. We see her waking through the fields with her daughter wearing the white dress that she had on her original loop in the park. There’s also the tree there that was shown last week which ended up burning as Bernard came across it. Caleb is rescued by Maeve but we’ll talk about this more later on.
Waking Up
Now we cut from this fantasy to Hale waking him up. This is how all fidelity tests began and in the case of James Delos, it was very much like he woke up and got ready. Hale also appears wearing black similar to how William did when he was on the opposite side of this.
I love the subtle moment where she predicts the end of Caleb’s question.
This is a great little detail as we learned with James Delos that William had an entire conversation that they’d played through several times.
We did theorise earlier in the season that she had perfected this and that the William Host was actually a direct copy of the real one. Though we still don’t have it confirmed I do think it is the case because he had childhood memories and he also has a vendetta against Maeve which he wouldn’t have if he was just impersonating him.
Hale’s Plan
Anyway moving on from that as I’m probably doing your head in with it, we discover Hale’s plan for the park. The entire thing was to set up carriers for the parasite which would then go out into the world and infect people. Lots of covid allusions such as the term super spreader and first wave are being used.
Hale also explains why she kept him alive and is running him through the fidelity test.
Nice little bit of set design here too as we can see that the light fittings used also resemble the Tower which was carried into the street light design in New York.
Theory Time
Now it’s theory time… pretty much everything is a theory but that’s what we do at the channel.
Starting to think that these themselves are mini towers like what we see on the building towards the end and having these throughout the entire city would mean that Hale has complete control over everyone.
Fighting against William Maeve ends up hacking into the system and she then turns up the vibrations to a critical level which not only works against the hosts but it also destroys all the glass on the floor. Maeve mutes the sound for herself and she becomes unaffected by it.
Dropping our finale predictions in already but I kinda have the feeling that Maeve might end up destroying the tower this way. If she can hack into that giant structure and overpower it would potentially destroy all the hosts. Caleb doesn’t seem anywhere near as affected as they are and therefore the humans might survive. Maeve is described as a weapon by Bernard and due to them digging her up later it’s clear that she’s a crucial part of taking down Hale.
Therefore I think this scene is showing she will be the key to destroying the tower due to her control of electronics.
Also, we’d get a cool shot of all the glass on the skyscrapers exploding which I think would be great.
Anyway, that’s the end of theory time, still gonna be doing non-stop theories in the video I just wanted a dedicated segment for this bit.
More Flies Imagery
Now after Maeve reunites with Hale she brings up Wyatt which was the evil and homicidal maniac side of Dolores that Hale has evolved into.
We get a shot of the flies and I love how their meaning has mutated throughout the series. Initially, they were used symbolically on the hosts to show them gaining a higher form of functioning whereas here they symbolise the downfall of humanity whilst the hosts grow even more.
Christina
Cut to Christina waking up which again is the iconography that has been used on both her and Dolores throughout the series. We see her painting Vanishing Point has been covered up and this used to be something that she did in the park as part of her loop. However, she shows here that she’s breaking out of it in this new world by scribbling the tower across the centre of it. This being placed over the painting of the Manhattan streets of course metaphorically showcases that it controls New York.
Maya’s Memories
Maya also talks about a nightmare involving being swarmed by Flies on a family picnic when she was younger. This comes across like it’s a repressed memory of when Hale let the parasites free. Because of this nightmare is when she was younger it seems to plant this as being roughly at the time that the stories involving Bernard and Caleb are happening.
We also get this line: “does it look like anything to you?”
Of course, calling back to the times, it was said by the hosts when there was something that they weren’t meant to see.
This is somewhat mirrored in Maya who doesn’t even acknowledge it. Even at the end of the scene, she tries to look at it but at the last second, she looks away almost like she’s scared of seeing the truth.
This drawing of the tower also looks very similar to the one by the homeless man from the first two episodes. My guess is that much in the same way that Rehoboam and the Parks put people on loops that all of the citizens of New York are too. This man is probably homeless because he’s either immune or he didn’t get infected. This would mean that he wouldn’t be able to gel with the other humans and can’t fit into society.
Loops
It makes you wonder where Christina fits into this all and I think that she is writing the loops of people which is why Peter went to her in the first episode. In episode 2 she discovered a wing named after him in Hope that showed he’d been dead for several years. I guess that this loop was written a long time ago and then given to him which led to the original one’s death. The loop was then picked up by Hale and reused on a different human much in the same way that the Park would replace hosts when one went faulty like how Clementine did.
I do think that Christina is a host and that she’ll just be revealed to be a copy of Dolores which Hale would have access to due to being a copy of her too.
She later talks about how she can just make another Man in Black so that would be the same thing here I’d imagine.
Anyway, that’s the end of theory f**ks sake.
Bernard
Out with Bernard, we hear talk of outliers.
This was the terminology used during the third season to discuss people who didn’t fit into the Rehoboams plan. They were ostracised and sent for reprogramming which we saw through the story of Caleb. We also don’t know who this outlier is but I can imagine it’s likely Christina due to her unearthing what’s really going on. Outliers were people who were unpredictable that broke free of their loops and Caleb was a human one whilst Dolores was a host one.
I’m guessing the term here means people that weren’t affected by the parasite and thus they’ve had to band together as rebels to try and save the rest of the world.
Lots of similarities to the Matrix and we know due to the two hosts in the parking lot last week that Hale is hunting them.
There’s also a drone scanning the area and we hear Frankie’s nickname is C.
Probably standing for Caleb, which in Hebrew means faithful, brave and bold.
Bernard also hints that Stubbs is gonna be useful to the rebels that he’s taken with.
Out in the desert, we get a really cool drone scene where they use camouflage to blend in with the snow and I got a lot of Two Tower vibes from this. Bernard wanders out into the sands and he’s saved by Frankie at the last second. This was to see if a beetle was there, which actually appeared in his vision last week. This also appeared alongside Temperance looking dusty and run down which I’m guessing is what the park looks like now due to it being abandoned.
Jump back to Temperance in Caleb’s flashback and we see a copper holding up Hector’s wanted poster. We met this park’s version of Hector last week and Maeve of course had somewhat of a relationship with the one in Westworld.
Escape
The three attempt to make a daring escape from the park and we see how the parasites have infected people within the park itself. Keeping up with the Matrix analogy this very much turns them into Agents that begin to hunt the pair as they escort Hale out.
Caleb says that they just became Public Enemy Number 1 a term that originated in the 1930s when it was coined by the FBI hunting gangsters in settings like this.
Knowing the loops off by heart Maeve can navigate a way for them to a bootlegger vehicle stocked up with Moonshine.
During the 1920s prohibition era, America banned the manufacture and sale of Alcohol and thus black market dealers and gangsters had to create home-brewed stuff like Moonshine which they ran as bootleggers.
We slowly see the control start to seep into Caleb’s mind as he picks up one of the guns and points it to Maeve. She’s saved by someone stabbing him and this injury is somewhat similar to the one he sustained at the start which allows them to talk about what happened after the lighthouse mission.
Christina’s Date
Elsewhere Christina is out on another date and in a callback to Dolores’s and Teddy’s loop lipstick ends up getting dropped which he picks up.
Obviously, it’s mirroring the can mate, obviously yeah, don’t need to explain it to you, you know more than me when it comes to this.
Loads of people left comments last week predicting that Frankie was the woman Bernard and Stubbs met and it made me look like a right chump. However, I still make the big bucks from doing the mediocre videos on the show so who’s the real chump here?
Now on the date, Teddy talks about the mundanity of life and how he used to live day to day.
During Westworld Season 1 Teddy used to begin his loop by riding into town on the train but this conversation shows that he’s broken out of it.
He also mentions that he was a bounty hunter with a heart of gold confirming that he indeed had the same role that he did in the park. Now, this could be a case of him being the exact same version as how he was in the park or potentially it could be referring to the Grand Theft Auto-esque bounties that Caleb used to carry out in Season 3.
Setting Caleb Free
Now Caleb was taken to hospital by Maeve and sitting by his bedside she saw the finality of life. Guess you forgot about Lee Sizemore ey but she saw the love that Caleb and his wife had and decided to set him free. She wanted him to actually have happiness and have something to fight for instead of just fighting. She let him be free of the war and fled into the wilderness allowing him to have a daughter and life.
One day she reached out through the grid to find him and this is what overcharged the radio at her home. I was kinda hoping that the radio at her cabin would be linked to the one with Frankie but alas it turns out it’s not all connected.
Through doing this Hale found Caleb’s family and this is why she copied his daughter.
Big Fight
They then make it to the outskirts of the park which we see is set up to be demolished as part of the expansion programme. At this point, the Man In Black arrives once more leading to a shootout with William and Maeve. There are more misses than the jokes in this video and in the observation room Caleb ties Hale up as the pair duke it out. At this point, the tower is sounded off and Hale orders Caleb to shoot Maeve. However, he overpowers this programming which could be another reason why she wants to study him. If she can figure out how he disobeyed her she can potentially control the outliers.
Caleb hints that he did it because he has something worth fighting for, aka his family who he heard from his team are still alive.
After she’s stabbed by William, Maeve ends up arming the explosives and she sacrifices herself to take out William.
Now it’s at this point that we see the truth of the matter with Hale very much appearing like she’s running the fidelity test.
Running through his memories it’s revealed that he died and we also get this nice bit of editing that shows Frankie is his daughter before the reveal.
Caleb’s Death?
Caleb is killed by Hale’s men who arrive in the security uniforms carrying the p90s. Cheers to everyone who corrected the gun mistake on the last video you guys are the real heroes.
Elsewhere Bernard starts to dig and we discover Frankie is in fact looking for her father. His body was never recovered and I know I drop these early so I can’t really see what the fan theories are before making them but I can imagine that there will be people who think he’s actually still alive.
If the stasis theory about William was right before then he could have been captured by Hale, healed and then put on ice.
However, I don’t think this is the case as Hale refers to him as the 278th version of Caleb.
Still though the original could be locked up somewhere like William as we know you don’t have to kill someone to copy them.
Thought I’d just explore that in case it’s something people are wondering about.
We learn that Hale found that the older the person the more difficult their mind was to alter with the parasite. However, infecting children allowed them to grow in symbiosis with the parasite and within a generation, Hale had control.
Big head f**k moment and we cut to Caleb coming to whilst Bernard brings Maeve’s head out of the sand. Over the top of this is the demolition sign which we saw when she and Caleb entered the area.
Might be a reach but Maeve being brought out reminded me a lot of her being built by Serac in the real world in Season 3.
New Park?
Caleb ends up fleeing into New York in an almost Captain America-esque man-out-of-time scene in which he escaped Shield Headquarters and fled into the street. As he exits the Lobby we see that he passes the Olympiad sign which you might remember us pointing out in the first episode had a lot of similarities to the Delos logo.
As he exits the building we can actually see that this is the same one that Christina went to work at in the first episode potentially showing how their paths might cross.
We did have theories that this might indeed be its own park but I feel like this kinda negates all that. However, there was that weird conversation in Episode 1 in which people talked about it being one of the group’s first times so f**k knows really.
Another weird thing is that there are no kids in this New York which might have some significance with Hale not allowing people to breed.
This idea of it being the beginning of a new one is seen when Caleb shoulder barges someone which was something that always happened whenever people entered one.
It popped up in Westworld for Teddy and William and in Temperance when Caleb got off the train.
The entire city is frozen like the programme being paused in The Matrix and it shows that Hale has complete control over absolutely everything.
She’s won, big W and I kinda hope that Caleb ends up pairing up with Christina to take this all down. If our theory about Maeve being used as a weapon to destroy the tower is true then this could be how Frankie and Bernard are brought in and it’s such a good ending with so many possibilities.
This could honestly be the end of the season it’s that big of a cliffhanger and I can’t wait to see what happens next week. I genuinely think this was one of the best Westworld episodes ever and it’s one of the biggest oh s**t moments in the show for me. It’s up there with realising Bernard was a host and yeah, really really good twist to show that Hale has already won and Caleb is just going through a fidelity test.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.