Westworld: Should we feel sorry for the Man in Black?
The Man in Black is one of the most complicated characters on Westworld, corrupt and tragic all at once. Does he deserve our sympathy?
The tale of young William and his transformation into the Man in Black is arguably Westworld’s greatest tragedy. He’s endured significant suffering and loss, but also committed some of the darkest deeds in all of Westworld.
This begs the question of whether audiences should feel bad for the Man in Black, or if his actions and their devastating consequences mean he is not worthy of sympathy.
Should we feel sorry for the Man in Black? Let’s take a look at both sides of the arguments.
Warning: Major spoilers from season 2 of Westworld will follow.
Yes
Coming from low beginnings, young William tried to prove himself. He married into the Delos family and tried to prove his worth in helping to run the family business. His brother-in-law Logan forced him to go to Westworld, placing William in an uncomfortable position, urging him to give in to his basest desires.
William finally opened himself up to the possibilities of the park, falling in love with Dolores in a manner more passionate and authentic than he’d ever loved Juliet. He became more confident and proved himself in many situations, becoming the hero and the man he always wanted to be.
The next time he saw Dolores, it was as if that none of that had ever happened. Their epic love story–which allowed him to come to terms with his true self–felt like a lie. He didn’t let this destroy his newfound ambition or confidence, though. Convincing James Delos to more deeply invest in Westworld allowed it to not only stay open but to thrive for many years to come.
Delos continued to be a highly successful, powerful company under William’s management. It was also through William that the project to immortalize humans as hosts began, a project that could immortalize his father-in-law and possibly countless others for years to come, a truly game-changing development that could allow people to exist beyond death. This could preserve individuals the world desperately needed, from those who inspire hope and create peace and prosperity, to those who died prematurely and tragically.
William’s annual trips to the park indulged his darkest whims, but he remained a dedicated family and businessman in the outside world. Despite his best efforts, Juliet committed suicide and for a while, his daughter Emily blamed him for it. Utterly alone and without solace, he felt empty and struggled to find meaning and purpose.
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Eventually, he latched onto the Maze, believing it was meant for him to find its center in order to make the stakes real. Yet, the Maze was only meant for the hosts, suggesting the Man in Black’s whole journey in season 1 had been for naught.
When Dolores killed Ford and the stakes were changed, one of his first actions was to save Lawrence and reunite with him. He ended up saving Lawrence, his wife and daughter, and the entire town of Las Mudas from the ruthless Major Craddock and his band of Confederados. Meanwhile, he had also decided that the project he’d started all those years ago to immortalize humans as hosts needed to be destroyed.
He reunited with Emily along the way. She’d forgiven him and wanted to give their relationship a second chance. William couldn’t forget how she’d blamed him for her mother’s death, lashing out and then abandoning him in his time of grief. Unable to accept his daughter could actually forgive him and after all the mind-games and manipulation from Ford, he was convinced she was a host sent by Ford and under his control, leading William to kill her.
Now he’d lost the person he cared about most, and it was his own fault. He couldn’t even finish his quest to reach the Forge, destroy it and the entire immortality project as Dolores took that for herself. And after all of that, the post-credits scene shows William will end up as a host in the future, trapped in a nightmarish loop with a host version of his daughter.
This sounds like a character we should feel sorry for, right?
No
Even young William was a despicable person. He kept asserting he was better than Logan, accusing his brother-in-law of being disgusting. William was the one that fell in love with a host even though he was married in the outside world, though. He brutally slaughtered an army of Confederados.
He took Logan captive, sent him off into the desert strapped to a horse, naked and helpless. William ousted Logan from becoming the heir to Delos. Because of what William did to Logan, James Delos lost any shred of respect he had for his son, even turning his back on Logan in his worst moment. Without William, Logan wouldn’t have spiraled into a merciless drug addiction that would eventually lead him to a lethal overdose.
William’s whole love story with Dolores is also a classic case of toxic masculinity. As the “nice guy” that respected Dolores and saved her on several occasions, he felt that she owed him sexually and romantically. First, he used searching for Dolores as justification for slaying hosts and asserting his dominance over Logan.
When he saw Dolores again–talking and smiling with a new guest, her memories of her time with William wiped away–he was enraged. From his perspective, he was a “nice guy” to her and she owed him for that, but now it was like he never existed at all. For William that justified his transformation into the Man in Black.
His relationship with Dolores remained deeply unsettling in that aftermath. She played the piano at James Delos’ retirement party, William admiring her while Juliet and little Emily were nearby. Thirty years later in the park, he raped her, and it’s certainly suggested that was an ongoing occurrence during his annual trips to the park.
From a business standpoint, William made himself even more irredeemable by being the one responsible for starting the immortality project and creating the Forge, secretly collecting the guests’ most intimate information without their knowledge for many years.
He could spin a tale of how no matter what happened in the park, in the outside world he was a good and faithful family man. That’s just a lie he told to comfort himself while the secrets and lies drove his wife to alcoholism, making her feel like the crazy one when her husband was the real monster. It’s his fault she committed suicide.
In his emptiness, he murdered Maeve and her daughter as they lived out their peaceful homesteader narrative. He murdered them because of their innocence, just to see if he’d feel something when committing such a heinous act.
While searching for the center of the Maze, he did all sorts of unspeakable things like draining Kissy of as much blood as possible while keeping him alive for interrogation and then scalping him.
In season 2, the young Robert Ford host clued the Man in Black into the next game–this one supposedly meant for him–in finding the Door, and William thanked him by shooting the host in the face.
In Las Mudas, he betrayed Lawrence’s trust and made a deal with Major Craddock. He only turned on Craddock, saving Lawrence and his family and the people of Las Mudas because he thought he needed to play the hero as part of finding the Door.
When his daughter Emily found him in the park, she extended her forgiveness and offered their relationship a second chance. He seemed to accept, only to double-cross and abandon her, believing her to be a host sent by Ford.
Despite this backstabbing, she tracked him down and freed him from Akecheta and his promised suffering for the Man in Black. She extended the olive branch again and an escape from the madness, but his paranoia persisted and he ended up killing his own daughter. He couldn’t take responsibility for his own actions, so he dug into his arm, hoping he was a host and could blame killing his daughter on someone else’s programming or a glitch.
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Regardless of all the horrible things he’d done to her, Dolores didn’t attack the Man in Black when she came across him and let him join her in the quest to destroy the Forge. He thanked her in kind by trying to kill her, something she’d anticipated, causing the gun to backfire on him.
From this point of view, he deserves to live in the future hellish loop teased in the post-credits scene.
Now take a step back from both perspectives. Do you think we should feel sorry for the Man in Black? Let us know in the comments below!