11 'Westworld' theories every fan should know

This one might hurt your brain a bit. Some people believe the events we're watching are actually taking place in two different time frames depending on which set of characters are involved.

The "present" would be every scene with the Man in Black (Ed Harris) and his mission to find the maze. The "past" (approximately 30 years ago) is everything you see involving William and Logan, the two guests who were introduced in the second episode.

Dolores exists in both timelines.

If you want to learn more, we've already written a rundown of everything you need to know about this theory, plus an analysis (or debunking) of the evidence presented in episode five.

This ties into the William = Man in Black theory, since William would have to drop the photograph at Abernathy Ranch in the past, and then Dolores' father finds it in the "present."

The photograph may never surface again on the show, but the scenes including it were significant enough to lead some fans on Reddit to believe that we will see it again. How did it get there? Who is the woman in the photograph? Was it left there intentionally?

All these questions are up in the air, but people think they found the answer with William. We know he's engaged to Logan's sister, but seems oddly taken with Dolores. Perhaps he decides to leave his "real world" love, and will bury her photograph at the "home" of his new love?

This is one that cropped up right after the pilot aired. Since the audience was led to believe that Teddy Flood (Dolores' robot love interest) was human, only to reveal otherwise, we can probably assume there are other hosts hidden well in disguise.

If another character who's currently presented as human turns out to be a robot, we're leaning towards it being Bernard. He has an unusually close relationship with Dr. Ford, and a few key moments of dialogue hint at a deeper secret. It would have to mean that his son's death and video chats with his wife are an elaborate "backstory," which might be the biggest flaw in the theory.

We'll have to wait and see on this one.

An extension of the Bernard theory is that EVERYONE is a host, with the exception of Dr. Ford. This would mean that Ford not only created Westworld, but also created an entire network of employees to help him run the park.

This sounds like a terrible idea for a number of reasons, so we're not giving the thought too much credence. But you can't deny that the set up of not being able to discern human from robot by appearance alone is a major trapping for fan theories.

We've learned about Arnold in bits and pieces, mostly from Ford but also from the Man in Black and Logan. The "legend" says that he died inside the park just before it opened, but what if that was somehow a cover up?

The maze drawing we keep seeing over and over has a humanoid figure at its center. People believe Arnold himself is inside the maze, and whoever reaches him will be "set free" and finally learn the truth about what happened all those years ago.

Combining the "Arnold is alive" and "Bernard is a host" theories, this one postulates that Arnold's consciousness is existing in the host currently operating as Bernard. This one started when Redditor gbtolax discovered that "Bernard Lowe" is an anagram for "Arnold Weber."

The issue with this theory is that we don't actually know Arnold's last name — Weber is just a common surname you can make with the leftover letters of Bernard Lowe. Perhaps it was just a lucky guess, though, and we'll see more clues about this in the future.

For those who think Arnold definitely died, many are wondering what the context of his suicide in the park was. In the fifth episode, we learn that Dolores spoke with Arnold the day he died, and the last thing he told her was that she would "help him destroy this place" (meaning the park).

Perhaps Dolores was involved with his death somehow, a death made to look like a suicide by Ford and the other park runners? According to Logan, Arnold's death "sent the park into a free fall," so maybe Arnold planned it as a way to prevent Westworld from opening to the public.

The idea of Westworld being on another planet is born from the fact that we currently don't know anything about the park's location. Co-creator Jonathan Nolan told Entertainment weekly that if you pay close attention, you'll know where the park is by the end of season one.

Fans have been trying to guess ever since. One popular theory is that Westworld is actually on another planet, like Mars, or even on the Moon.

Thanks to the flooding in the lower levels we saw in the pilot, plus other clues gathered by fans online, some people believe the entire park is actually built underwater. This would mean that either the surface of the Earth was eradicated by global disaster, or perhaps underwater construction becomes easier in the future?

The logistics that would have to be involved are a bit too much for us, though. Creating a realistic bio-dome underwater that can mimic the surface of the earth (down to weather, constellations, and the sun/moon) seems like an enormous undertaking.

For the first five episodes, many people have been wondering how Dolores is managing to get from the park to the facilities so quickly. She has conversations with Bernard and Ford that seem tied to what she was just doing during the day, but how would William have not noticed?

Perhaps there are just more secret entrances and underground tunnels than we realized, or maybe there are multiple copies of Dolores. Bernard would simply put the "Park Dolores" into sleep mode, and then transfer her programming into a second copy for their conversations.

A quick search of "maze + consciousness" will bring up dozens of Reddit discussions on how the maze doesn't actually exist — instead it's a drawing of a brain and getting to "center" means becoming self-aware and breaking past the coding.

This ties into moment when Lawrence's daughter gave the Man in Black the next clue to finding the maze, but she warned him that "it wasn't meant for [him]." If it's not meant for the Man in Black, perhaps that's because it's only meant for hosts? And Bernard told Dolores to try and find the maze because it might set her free.

Perhaps these clues mean that Dolores' maze quest is really an internal struggle of achieving true consciousness, and the Man in Black's search is futile.