Throwback Thursday: The best Westworld theory about Bernard

On Westworld, where all of the amusement park residents are androids, and all the managing entities are humans, it is inevitable that there would be an imposter hidden in one of their camps. With that said, let’s revisit one of the most talked about Bernard theories from the series.

During Westworld season one, Reddit was filled with finger-pointing theories on which character was going to be a host hidden in plain sight. Many even guessed Bernard Lowe was a host before the episode exposing his secret aired. Discovering that Bernard is a host is arguably the most astonishing surprise that the Westworld creators gave the fandom.

It wasn’t that Bernard couldn’t be a host that caught viewers off guard, it was that his background made it extremely unlikely. Memories and flashback scenes featuring Arnold, the human Bernard is based on, established the illusion that Bernard had a life outside of Westworld.

Several scenes show Arnold speaking to his wife or son Charlie, and without knowing that Arnold and Bernard look alike, it was easy to believe that these were Bernard’s authentic experiences.

It was also hard to believe that the person in charge of programming the hosts was a host too. Add in the fact that Theresa was sleeping with Bernard, and you figure that there are too many variables proving that Bernard was flesh and blood to believe that the host theory is plausible. Bernard, however, is indeed a host and it was confirmed during the first season in the episode “Trompe L’Oeil.”

In the episodes leading to the Bernard host revelation, Theresa is the one that had earned the title of “most likely to be guilty of something.” She had helped Charlotte Hale in staging Clementine as a corrupted host capable of causing harm to others.

And it was all to push the Delos board members agenda to send Ford packing. Theresa was also covertly transferring data out of the park claiming it was on the Delos board members orders. She was telling the truth, but we didn’t find that out until later.

So, it was Theresa who looked like she had something to hide, not Bernard. When Bernard guided her to the off-site lab to share Ford’s secrets, there were a few immediate signs right before Theresa discovers Ford’s host designs that outright announce that Bernard is a host.

In the elevator at the Mesa, Bernard says he is beginning to understand hosts more than humans. It’s merely an elbow jab but nonetheless a good foreshadowing of what was to come.

A more obvious sign was when Theresa shows Bernard a door in the cottage that leads to the offsite lab and Bernard couldn’t see the door even though he was standing only a few feet away from it. Hosts can’t visually see what they can’t comprehend. But in this case, Bernard couldn’t see the door because it was set up to be hidden from hosts.

And finally, Theresa finds the blueprint for Bernard’s host body and shows him. Bernard looks at the drawing of his android body and replies with the same response for everything in Westworld that is out of the hosts’ scope of knowledge: “It doesn’t look like anything to me.”

Even now, this episode stands out as the most memorable. Granted that a host living among the humans was imminent, finding out that Bernard was a host the whole time sucked the air right out of your chest.

It was a theory that actually came true, and it dumbfounded even the most well-informed fans. May the future seasons of Westworld be filled with an abundance of hidden brainteasers as incredible as finding out that Bernard is not a human but another one of Westworld’s creations.