The Man in Black cements himself as a villain in Westworld’s pilot episode. He’s a smirking, black-clad menace who takes pleasure in taunting the robot hosts. When he shoots Teddy in the pilot, it’s because Teddy continues to play the valiant boyfriend — essentially, he’s boring, and The Man In Black has better things to do.
Just in case you still thought he was a cool dude, The Man In Black then drags Dolores into a shed to — apparently — rape her.
There’s a lot of debate about whether he did or didn’t. I fall on the latter side of the argument, but I also don’t think it makes a difference. The scene absolutely is staged and shot to imply that Dolores was raped. Westworld’s creators want you to think the worst of The Man in Black.
At least, they did.
In case you thought this was just about the pilot, this article contains big ol’ spoilers for all of Westworld’s first season.
It’s time to acknowledge the elephant in the room. One of the Westworld fandom’s biggest theories was also one of its earliest: that Jimmi Simpson’s William — the earnest, host-loving frenemy of chaotic evil bisexual Logan — is actually the younger version of The Man in Black.
For some, it was disappointing that mysteries that were meant to last the whole season were being cracked by fans so early. But there was still a compelling question: If William was The Man in Black, what made him change so profoundly?
Here’s the problem though: William is boring. And William, as we know him, doesn’t change.
Evil is fun to watch
Morals be damned, The Man in Black is interesting to watch. A well-timed smirk on Ed Harris’s weatherworn face can light up a scene. The character is godlike, inscrutable and brutal. He might be a wealthy 60-year-old who loves cowboy LARPing, but he also exudes charisma and menace. How he treats the other characters is pretty heinous—but that tension made his scenes engrossing. The same could be said of Charles Dance’s performance as Tywin Lannister on Game of Thrones.
Neither character is good. But everyone wants to know what they’ll do next.
The Man in Black drives his own narrative. He rescues Lawrence, hunts down clues and kills anyone to get ahead. His friendship with Lawrence is built up over the first X episodes, and ends abruptly when The Man in Black realizes that Teddy is the host-guide he needs instead. These are big, dynamic changes, and we tend to be attracted to characters who grab control of their own fate. The Man in Black is, if anything, a doer.
William is his opposite. He starts off likable — an everyman to Logan’s hedonist. But a likable character is not the same as an interesting character — or even a well-written one.
Over the course of William’s arc, he doesn’t change meaningfully, nor does he drive the plot. Logan and Dolores make every decision about where William goes; he’s just along for the ride. Sure, he loves Dolores. But he’s largely in the dark on what is happening to her, and he’s unable to do anything but catch her when she swoons.
William gets a glimpse of something bigger when he realizes Dolores is potentially sentient — but he can’t see past this being their love story, to the wider reality that every host has that same potential. This selfish focus might be the one thing he has in common with The Man In Black. William wants to be Dolores’ hero, and he wants her to be his special girl. For all his bluster about being a nice guy he still sees the most important woman in his story as nothing more than an NPC.
William’s transformation from lovelorn tool to cold-hearted killer happens in a montage, robbing the audience of a chance to see the character develop meaningfully. Logan shows him that, surprise, Dolores really does have robo-guts after all. Over the course of a night, William then butchers an entire camp of Confederate hosts. He spends the rest of his vacation killing his way through Westworld.
We may not want to admit we’re attracted to characters who take whatever they want and don’t mind resorting to violence, and we can certainly relate to people who are trying to do the “right” thing, but few of us can put ourselves in the shoes of a character who begins at one end of that spectrum, becomes disillusioned, and instantly flips to the other extreme.
Narrative problems
Westworld juggles a lot of stories on different timelines. It would be difficult to stretch William’s transformation over the whole season without giving away the final twist. But imagine how dreadful it would be to watch a decent, likable character going bad — and the dawning realization that we know exactly how horrible he will get.
Well, we don’t have to imagine that because we can watch Breaking Bad. But the point is, the need to keep the connection between William and The Man In Black a secret makes the transformation less believable. And worse, it makes The Man In Black less interesting. The reveal diminishes both characters instead of giving them more depth.
It’s hard to come up with a backstory befitting such a character as extreme as The Man In Black. And let’s be honest: mystery suited him. He was frightening, cruel and competent. When the twist is revealed, we know everything there is to know about The Man In Black: His robot girlfriend was a robot. He had an existential crisis, suddenly and violently. The character William’s single redeeming trait — that he was not cruel to the hosts — is instantly discarded.
The Man In Black’s transformation should have been agonizing. Instead, it’s dealt with in a few moments, and now we know that he used to be the most boring guy on Westworld.
What could have been the show’s biggest character moment tries to skate by on the shock value of having a good guy go bad. But all it actually did was inextricably link Westworld’s best character with its worst.
Comments
The Man in Black is more of an avatar than a person. A deep arc for him isn’t anymore necessary than an arc explaining why someone’s second playthrough of Mass Effect was as a renegade. The question isn’t about a good guy going bad, it’s about whether or not being bad means anything in a virtual world based on role playing.
By Controller_B on 02.03.17 4:55pm
I would argue that if he’s an avatar, they really didn’t need William at all. Just let MIB exist without trying to tie his backstory to Dolores + have the William and Logan characters be one-offs who die or something in the park.
By Simone de Rochefort on 02.03.17 4:58pm
Given that his arc may have only really just started, I think we’ve not seen his purpose in the story revealed. Check this article after 5 seasons.
By eadnams on 02.03.17 5:07pm
Given that my argument is that William sucks, I’m think I’m decided
By Simone de Rochefort on 02.03.17 5:27pm
Haha I’m with you Simone. I thought William was boring and terribly cast from the start. Plus I don’t care if Jimmy Simpson is a cult darling he’ll always be that weirdo from always Sunny to me haha. Plus there’s the whole looking and acting nothing alike thing. I think that’s just because Simpson is a crummy actor though. He brought daytime TV to an HBO series and the creators never really found a way to reconcile that
By ahuczek on 02.04.17 10:19am
The Dude said it best…
By malaclypse_the_younger on 02.15.17 12:33pm
That was my take on his character. His arc is really only beginning I think, this sudden reveal of his true persona is likely only the beginning of his development.
You don’t rent a big-name actor like Ed Harris to turn around and not utilize him.
By Gaffen on 02.04.17 1:22pm
I agre that the point could be made without tying the two characters together. But I do believe the duality is important because of the questions it raises about who William really is and who he’s role-playing as. We assume an arc because of storytelling conventions, but ultimately what can we say about someone if the only information we have on them is how they behave in a videogame?
By Controller_B on 02.03.17 6:30pm
William does start controlling his own destiny after the scene at Lazzo’s (?) party/orgy when he decides to leave Logan to his fate.
I actually disagree that he was boring. I like seeing a character who behaved as I would in such circumstances. I’m the kind of game player who tries to stealth his way through every game (and gets annoyed when so many force me into combat). I guess that makes me boring.
William was a good foil to the amoral Logan.
I agree that the idea that he becomes the man in black is preposterous. I found it very disappointing that they went with that. It’s the whole "Oh you start off young and idealistic but once you’ve lived for a while you gonna start voting for the [insert reactionary party of your choice]" bullcrap.
By marcushasfun on 02.03.17 5:26pm
That’s an interesting way to look at him! I’m glad you liked the character
By Simone de Rochefort on 02.03.17 5:28pm
He didn’t immediately jump to being the man in black. In some ways it was always part of his character just under the surface. In some of the epsiodes they clue you in to that fact when they talk about his relationships and family.
Regardless there is a 30 year period of character development which we aren’t seeing. After 30 years of testing a system like WestWorld from all angles how would you personally treat the NPC’s/androids. Outside of Logan and Ford he doesn’t really interact with real humans all that much in the series.
By MainComputer on 02.03.17 5:32pm
He didn’t immediately jump to being the man in black. In some ways it was always part of his character just under the surface. In some of the epsiodes they clue you in to that fact when they talk about his relationships and family.
I think he hid it well and tried to respect the hosts as people initially, but eventually realized he could do what he couldn’t do in the real world and jumped in with both feet.
Personally, I thought the transition in character was handled really well. It was a little jarring, but more often than not in cinema, the portrayal of a character just snapping is handled with a lot less finesse.
By Gaffen on 02.04.17 1:35pm
The way the story was told, the transformation seemed sudden. My first thought was Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith, going from a little moody to slaughtering children in an improbable instant.
But that’s partly a trick of the presentation. It was "dealt with in a few moments" for the sake of creating a shocking last-minute revelation. It was a narrative device. It didn’t actually happen quickly. There are literally decades of untold story separating William from the Man in Black, and we aren’t privy to it.
Honestly, I had more trouble reconciling the complete lack of physical resemblance between the two actors than anything else.
By Razieluigi on 02.03.17 5:43pm
^ this to an extent. The author was specifically referring to the Logan revealed Dolores was a robot so William killed a camp of people as the sudden flip that didn’t seem to fit in character, but I agree with you that the montage depicting his turn to black hat appeared to be a moment to the audience but they were implying that was over the course of many years of repeat trips. Where he’d keep getting her to that point of almost sentience before he gave up, and it’s that giving up that led to him being the sadistic MIB.
By Andrew Dougherty on 02.03.17 5:51pm
That’s a good point — I thought that scene seemed abrupt as well.
The other thing that bothered me in that scene was that Logan stabs Dolores and exposes her mechanical parts to remind William that she’s a robot… but he couldn’t have known in advance that she was one of the older models that had robo-guts. He should have been expecting intestines to spill out, just like all the other androids in the park.
All that said, once I agreed to stop wondering how the hell those bullets rip through androids without hurting humans, I kind of agreed to just take the whole thing as allegory and not question the details too much. Even more than most sci-fi, Westworld tested my ability to suspend disbelief.
By Razieluigi on 02.03.17 6:03pm
The thinking was all the bullets are actually Simunition, a real world kind of plastic bullet that can be fired from an actual gun, so it’s the robots that are actually weaker. Which is to say, the bullets sting but are unlikely to actually hurt a real person like the MiB in the first few episodes.
By BananaRama1 on 02.04.17 10:30am
Yeah… but when fired at a train, those bullets looked like they were doing a lot of damage to the exterior. They were also capable of igniting bottles of apparently real nitroglycerin, which probably isn’t very safe for the park guests
By Razieluigi on 02.04.17 10:37am
You could be right. In one of the episodes they mention having to authorize the use of certain weapons from the HQ. Like the explosives and such. I think the hosts have fired weapons at guests in the show but it was treated like a more painful paintball.
Inside the offices those are clearly real bullets.
By MainComputer on 02.04.17 5:00pm
In the timeframe with Logan and William all the hosts are still mechanical, they didn’t introduce the organic hosts until sometime during the 30 year gap between then and when we see the Man in Black in the park.
By Nicholi on 02.04.17 1:29pm
Man… I need to re-watch this thing. That’s a really interesting point.
By Razieluigi on 02.04.17 7:15pm
Well since that was 30 years or so ago wouldn’t most have them have been the "older" models that are largely mechanical. Can’t remember off the top of my head but were there many scenes William was in (as in relating to the past story arc) where you saw a properly mutilated host? Could be that all of them were robo hosts back then.
By Tapslisch on 02.06.17 10:58am
During William and Logan’s time period the robots were mechanical. All of the hosts except a few were updated to fully organic androids. The MiB even mentions this change to Dolores when they meet.
As far as the bullets go the show never addresses it but the westworld website does. The guns are smart guns that are programmed to fire blanks at guests and real bullets at hosts. How the train got shot up as it did was more of a minor plot hole than anything important to think about.
By Andrew Dougherty on 02.06.17 5:55pm
To me, the moment when William killed that entire camp while searching for Dolores really didn’t have much of an impact. I wasn’t like, "Welcome to the dark side OMG." It was more like, oh, he killed a bunch of bandits. He’s having a moment. IDK.
By Disarraygun on 02.23.17 2:04pm
Honestly, it’s not even that hidden that it wasn’t a sudden flip. We know that his journey to find the maze started when he set out to see how he would react to truly being cruel by killing Maeve and her daughter, several months before the events of the first episode. It’s overtly shown that it wasn’t a sudden flip because "OMG, she forgot I exist! She’s really a robot!"
By MarcusMaximus on 02.03.17 7:43pm
The transformation almost as bad as Anakin suddenly becoming Darth Vader.
In Westworld, there doesnt feel like there’s a logic to it.
By kentuckyfr1ed on 02.03.17 10:47pm