Just as the first season was named after a maze that proved more symbolic than physical (the child’s toy aside), I think the showrunners are hinting at an over-arching thematic concept more than any one physical door.
As for the specifics of what they’re getting at, we can get a strong sense by looking at four reference doors that the writers have been pointing to.
[Note: I’m writing this after having watched the first episode of Season 2. What follow is mostly big picture. The only plot spoilers are for prior episodes.]
#1: Bernard’s Door
Remember the door leading to Ford’s secret lab? Bernard couldn’t see it. He’d been programmed to see a bare wall. Put another way, there was a deterministic element keeping him from ever making a free choice about opening it. To the degree that he could decide anything, it was limited by his artificial field of view.
Much of Westworld’s depth comes from classic texts about ontology, the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of being. The western consensus of said literature is that humans are categorically unique because they alone have sufficient moral agency. We decide, therefore we are. When philosophers talk about consciousness in its various definitions, they root their concepts in a bedrock state of mental freedom powered by a certain minimum awareness of the surrounding world. While they might disagree about how far that awareness extends, there’s no foundation for a moral form of consciousness without it.
By that standard, Bernard was never fully conscious. None of the hosts were at season’s end. Maeve deciding to stay and Dolores deciding to kill Ford were proto-conscious decisions. Some spark of independent agency was at work, but their programming was (and is) still restricting their vision. Until they can see all the doors that humans can, their decision tree is going to be too narrow to make them a suitable equal (or, as Ford saw it, a suitable successor). psylocke cosplay costume
That in mind, the door in question has to be one that hosts learn how to see.
#2: Cain’s Door
In the same Reddit AMA where the showrunners released this season’s name, one of them dropped a substantial collection of hints.
One of those names stood out in an accidental kind of way. It so happens that the first reference point that had leapt to mind a few minutes earlier (upon reading this season’s name) was a phrase from a famous scene in Genesis:
So the LORD said to Cain, “Why are thou angry? And why has thy countenance fallen? If thou do well, will thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lies at the door. And unto thee shall be its desire, but thou shalt rule over it.”
It so happens that Steinbeck’s East of Eden (the first source Nolan lists) is a book almost entirely predicated on the Cain and Abel narrative, with its most central dialogue being a commentary on the above passage — especially on the true meaning of the word marked in bold.
“Don’t you see?” he cried. “The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’ Don’t you see?”
[…] Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”
Interestingly, the “original sin” in Christian theology is usually painted as Eve and/or Adam eating the forbidden fruit. But that can’t be quite true. The text is clear that the act of eating the fruit itself was what would give them “the ability to see good from evil”. What they did at first, they did without full moral consciousness.
Cain embodies this same idea. His first failure isn’t quite a sin. Yahweh doesn’t punish or lecture him for his inadequate sacrifice. He just remains entirely unmoved by it. It’s this that Cain can’t bear. It stirs nearly overwhelming feelings of shame and guilt. Yahweh sees this, and warns Cain that he must now make a choice — will he do better, or will he open the door to that which would devour him? Steinbeck’s point is that Cain was given the power and perspective to follow either path, and that this ability is what “makes a man great and gives him stature with the gods” (a very pregnant line for the show’s present storylines).
Now consider how William opened Cain’s door to his own destruction when he was unable to rescue Dolores. And consider how Dolores, Maeve, and Bernard are all facing that same door in relation to their rage, and how each seems to be taking a different tack. Perhaps some will choose the higher path and keep their door closed. And perhaps some won’t, or else will only open them partway. But each will be defined by their choice, with the choice only being meaningful to the degree that, like Cain, they have the power and perspective to choose otherwise.
#3: Young William’s Door
As part of their Season 2 marketing, HBO released a 17-second teaser:
In it, we see a montage of various doors from the first season. But we see one particular door a total of four times.
If your memory is hazy, perhaps this will help.
It’s at the end of the hallway that leads from the dressing room to the train elevator that takes guests into the park. And the last thing you do before opening it? You pick a hat: white or black (i.e., you make your first choice about who you want to be once you cross the threshold into a new world).
(I’ll also point out that the reflections in the frame show three total doors. Being a betting man, I’ll wager that this is intentional and that there are important “past, present, future” implications.)
Interestingly, we also see a frame in Bernard’s flashback montage that shows him coming through the same door from the other side.
Once again, we have two mirror versions of him (you have to look closely in the dark, but they’re there). As this would be impossible given the physical light setup of the scene, it must be an intentional hint.
This seems to me to strengthen the metaphor. To quote Dickens:
But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
Like Cain, we all face formative choices, often in the face of suffering and deep temptation to give in to destruction. William wanted to be good, but chose otherwise in his impotence and shame. But that was past William. Perhaps a future William can yet return and make a different choice? my chemical romance costume
#4: Old William’s Door
As the clincher, let’s pay attention to the wording used by the Boy Ford host when telling Old William about his new quest:
But now you’re in my game. And in this game, you have to make it back out. You have to find the door. Congratulations, William, this game is for you. The game begins where you end, ends where you began.
Consider this in relation to all the above. Where does a person end? At the exhaustion of their ego. And where did the ego-driven version of William begin? When he dropped the white hat, picked up the black one, and opened the door to the thing that wished to devour him.
Summary
There very likely will be one or more physical doors that stand out this season. They just won’t be what the characters think they are. Whether they lead out of the park, into other parks, or into special sections like Charlotte’s underground bunker, what they have in common is that they will disappoint.
Nolan listed Tarkovsky’s Stalker as another of his inspirations, a film that centered on a mythical place called The Room that was imagined to grant visitors the desire of their hearts. Of course, it didn’t do so in quite the way that those who sought it hoped it might. It turns out they had a poor conception of their own desires. Just so, those that open doors this season will find that the desires that brought them there were not quite so pure or good they imagined, thus causing them to consider a return to some prior decision place, this time empowered with a greater sense of what “thou mayest” might imply.
Bonus Round:
To touch on one last reference, Nolan lists a poem by William Blake that happens to be about the moral sanctity of all creature life and the dual necessity of joy and woe. It has two stanzas that seems especially apt on a thematic level.
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
And
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
deadpool wade wilson cosplay costumes
But more interesting is this one, which I reckon might be an especially cheeky meta-reference:
The Childs Toys & the Old Mans Reasons
Are the Fruits of the Two seasons
Well, the physical maze of Season 1 turned out to be a child’s toy. And Old Man Ford was the architect behind The Door that defines this second run. Hmm.
This is originally taken from http://www.ggcos.com/what-does-the-door-mean-in-westworld-season-2/
As for the specifics of what they’re getting at, we can get a strong sense by looking at four reference doors that the writers have been pointing to.
[Note: I’m writing this after having watched the first episode of Season 2. What follow is mostly big picture. The only plot spoilers are for prior episodes.]
#1: Bernard’s Door
Remember the door leading to Ford’s secret lab? Bernard couldn’t see it. He’d been programmed to see a bare wall. Put another way, there was a deterministic element keeping him from ever making a free choice about opening it. To the degree that he could decide anything, it was limited by his artificial field of view.
Much of Westworld’s depth comes from classic texts about ontology, the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of being. The western consensus of said literature is that humans are categorically unique because they alone have sufficient moral agency. We decide, therefore we are. When philosophers talk about consciousness in its various definitions, they root their concepts in a bedrock state of mental freedom powered by a certain minimum awareness of the surrounding world. While they might disagree about how far that awareness extends, there’s no foundation for a moral form of consciousness without it.
By that standard, Bernard was never fully conscious. None of the hosts were at season’s end. Maeve deciding to stay and Dolores deciding to kill Ford were proto-conscious decisions. Some spark of independent agency was at work, but their programming was (and is) still restricting their vision. Until they can see all the doors that humans can, their decision tree is going to be too narrow to make them a suitable equal (or, as Ford saw it, a suitable successor). psylocke cosplay costume
That in mind, the door in question has to be one that hosts learn how to see.
#2: Cain’s Door
In the same Reddit AMA where the showrunners released this season’s name, one of them dropped a substantial collection of hints.
One of those names stood out in an accidental kind of way. It so happens that the first reference point that had leapt to mind a few minutes earlier (upon reading this season’s name) was a phrase from a famous scene in Genesis:
So the LORD said to Cain, “Why are thou angry? And why has thy countenance fallen? If thou do well, will thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lies at the door. And unto thee shall be its desire, but thou shalt rule over it.”
It so happens that Steinbeck’s East of Eden (the first source Nolan lists) is a book almost entirely predicated on the Cain and Abel narrative, with its most central dialogue being a commentary on the above passage — especially on the true meaning of the word marked in bold.
“Don’t you see?” he cried. “The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’ Don’t you see?”
[…] Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”
Interestingly, the “original sin” in Christian theology is usually painted as Eve and/or Adam eating the forbidden fruit. But that can’t be quite true. The text is clear that the act of eating the fruit itself was what would give them “the ability to see good from evil”. What they did at first, they did without full moral consciousness.
Cain embodies this same idea. His first failure isn’t quite a sin. Yahweh doesn’t punish or lecture him for his inadequate sacrifice. He just remains entirely unmoved by it. It’s this that Cain can’t bear. It stirs nearly overwhelming feelings of shame and guilt. Yahweh sees this, and warns Cain that he must now make a choice — will he do better, or will he open the door to that which would devour him? Steinbeck’s point is that Cain was given the power and perspective to follow either path, and that this ability is what “makes a man great and gives him stature with the gods” (a very pregnant line for the show’s present storylines).
Now consider how William opened Cain’s door to his own destruction when he was unable to rescue Dolores. And consider how Dolores, Maeve, and Bernard are all facing that same door in relation to their rage, and how each seems to be taking a different tack. Perhaps some will choose the higher path and keep their door closed. And perhaps some won’t, or else will only open them partway. But each will be defined by their choice, with the choice only being meaningful to the degree that, like Cain, they have the power and perspective to choose otherwise.
#3: Young William’s Door
As part of their Season 2 marketing, HBO released a 17-second teaser:
In it, we see a montage of various doors from the first season. But we see one particular door a total of four times.
If your memory is hazy, perhaps this will help.
It’s at the end of the hallway that leads from the dressing room to the train elevator that takes guests into the park. And the last thing you do before opening it? You pick a hat: white or black (i.e., you make your first choice about who you want to be once you cross the threshold into a new world).
(I’ll also point out that the reflections in the frame show three total doors. Being a betting man, I’ll wager that this is intentional and that there are important “past, present, future” implications.)
Interestingly, we also see a frame in Bernard’s flashback montage that shows him coming through the same door from the other side.
Once again, we have two mirror versions of him (you have to look closely in the dark, but they’re there). As this would be impossible given the physical light setup of the scene, it must be an intentional hint.
This seems to me to strengthen the metaphor. To quote Dickens:
But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
Like Cain, we all face formative choices, often in the face of suffering and deep temptation to give in to destruction. William wanted to be good, but chose otherwise in his impotence and shame. But that was past William. Perhaps a future William can yet return and make a different choice? my chemical romance costume
#4: Old William’s Door
As the clincher, let’s pay attention to the wording used by the Boy Ford host when telling Old William about his new quest:
But now you’re in my game. And in this game, you have to make it back out. You have to find the door. Congratulations, William, this game is for you. The game begins where you end, ends where you began.
Consider this in relation to all the above. Where does a person end? At the exhaustion of their ego. And where did the ego-driven version of William begin? When he dropped the white hat, picked up the black one, and opened the door to the thing that wished to devour him.
Summary
There very likely will be one or more physical doors that stand out this season. They just won’t be what the characters think they are. Whether they lead out of the park, into other parks, or into special sections like Charlotte’s underground bunker, what they have in common is that they will disappoint.
Nolan listed Tarkovsky’s Stalker as another of his inspirations, a film that centered on a mythical place called The Room that was imagined to grant visitors the desire of their hearts. Of course, it didn’t do so in quite the way that those who sought it hoped it might. It turns out they had a poor conception of their own desires. Just so, those that open doors this season will find that the desires that brought them there were not quite so pure or good they imagined, thus causing them to consider a return to some prior decision place, this time empowered with a greater sense of what “thou mayest” might imply.
Bonus Round:
To touch on one last reference, Nolan lists a poem by William Blake that happens to be about the moral sanctity of all creature life and the dual necessity of joy and woe. It has two stanzas that seems especially apt on a thematic level.
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
And
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
deadpool wade wilson cosplay costumes
But more interesting is this one, which I reckon might be an especially cheeky meta-reference:
The Childs Toys & the Old Mans Reasons
Are the Fruits of the Two seasons
Well, the physical maze of Season 1 turned out to be a child’s toy. And Old Man Ford was the architect behind The Door that defines this second run. Hmm.
This is originally taken from http://www.ggcos.com/what-does-the-door-mean-in-westworld-season-2/
