The Man in Black’s determination to prove that he is indelibly himself, that no machine can tell him who he is, is a strangely hopeful note in Season 3. Yes, William is a monster who has done terrible things. But he wore a white hat before he ever put on a black one, and now he seems to wear no hat at all. William is, after all, one of the few Westworld characters we’ve seen who has proven capable of breaking out of the predetermined loops they’re in. Even Maeve and Dolores, despite their best efforts, often find themselves repeating patterns and loops we’ve seen before. (Just look at how many visual call backs to season 1 are sprinkled through season 3’s first episodes.)
When we first see the Man in Black this season, viewers can immediately see the breadth of William’s mental deterioration, from his visions of his dead daughter to his fractured awareness of who and where he is. As he struggles to maintain his grip on reality, there’s a quick glimpse of season 1 Dolores in her blue dress—clearly his preferred way to remember her since that’s also the way she appears to him at the end of the episode. We also see William visualize two key moments from previous seasons; one a strange self-insert recreation of his wife’s suicide complete with overflowing bathtub, and another in the form of scenes from season 2 episode “The Riddle of the Sphinx.”
That particular installment is notable for many reasons, but mostly for the fact that it’s the first time we see the Man in Black purposefully decide to break his own loop. On his second trip to Las Mudas, he becomes the hero instead of the villain, rescuing Lawrence’s wife and family from a murderous Craddock, who just so happens to be filling the very same role William himself performed once before. Right down to the very same lines and positioning.
In recalling these moments, Westworld clearly wants to remind us that even though William is the series’ designated villain, that was not always the case. He was once a boy who loved a girl, and a man who tried to do good, and both those things remained true, even as he lost himself to the darkness inside him, and told himself it was simply part of who he was. Until he didn’t. Until he tried something else.
Thanks to the flash forward at the end of season 2, we’ve already seen that there’s a host version of William who’s still reliving his season 2 trip through the park in an attempt to find a path that doesn’t result in Emily’s death. We know that somewhere, some version of William may yet spend hundreds of years trying to fix his worst mistake. He will never achieve this, of course. But the fact that he’s trying matters.
