u/InvestedFan

Spoiler warning: this rewatch assumes you've seen all of Season 1, and the comments will discuss its biggest twists. Watching for the first time? Go in unspoiled and join us once you've finished. Please spoiler-tag anything from Seasons 2–4: >!like this!<   Ten years ago today, HBO aired "Chestnut". Episode 1 showed us the park from the inside. Episode 2 lets the guests in, and quietly sets up the long con the whole season is built on.   Rewatching, just remembering, or catching up later: all welcome, and every thread stays open. The Ep 1 thread has the full schedule and where to watch.  

Ep 2: a few things to talk about  

• Why "Chestnut"? An "old chestnut" is a story told so often it's worn thin. Maeve tells her "little voice" story three times in this episode, tweaked each time, until it finally lands. Fans have also pointed to the old fable behind "pulling someone's chestnuts out of the fire": taking the risk while someone else gets the reward. So who in this episode is doing someone else's dirty work?  
• Black hat or white? William picks white. On the train, Logan tells him the park is "the answer to that question that you've been asking yourself": who you really are. At the end, Ford says guests "already know who they are. They're here because they want a glimpse of who they could be." His speech plays as William picks up Dolores's dropped can. Who had William right, Logan or Ford?  
• Hiding in plain sight. As they leave, Logan calls out "Billy! Let's go." Earlier, William bumps into the man Teddy bumps into every loop, and apologises. A Union recruiter stands where the Sheriff was rounding up a posse for Hector in Ep 1. And when a tech offers to slow the Man in Black down, Stubbs says: "That gentleman gets whatever he wants." What else jumps out on a rewatch?  
• Maeve's bad night. Dolores passes on the phrase: "These violent delights have violent ends." Maeve's pitch starts to slip, she's marked for recall, and Elsie quietly saves her with a 1.5% tweak. That night she dreams of the Man in Black coming through her door and uses her own trick, counting back from three. (Elsie had used the same "three, two, one" to wake her earlier.) She wakes on the table mid-surgery, grabs a scalpel, and finds a room of hosts being hosed down, Teddy among them. Was this when the show really had you?  
• "The maze isn't meant for you." The Man in Black tells Lawrence he's been coming for 30 years and "in a sense, I was born here." He kills Lawrence's wife and says "when you're suffering, that's when you're most real." Then the daughter speaks in a voice that isn't hers. Knowing who he is now, how do those lines sound?  
• Ford and the boy. Ford makes a boy hear a church bell that isn't there and stops a rattlesnake mid-strike with one finger: "Everything in this world is magic, except to the magician." The boy whirs, drops his stick and walks off. Then, back at HQ, Ford takes apart Sizemore's big pitch and asks only: "What size are those boots?"

 

Ten years on  

• In the original Ep 2 discussion thread here ( https://www.reddit.com/r/westworld/comments/569pcm/westworld_1x02_chestnut_episode_discussion/ ), a top comment was that boots line. Close behind came "That gentleman gets whatever he wants", and a lot of sympathy for the old man with a fork through his hand.
• In that same thread, one commenter already wondered whether William might be a younger Man in Black, because the train and the station looked different. Others guessed the boy was a young Ford. When did you first suspect?
• Critics were mostly impressed. EW reckoned that if the premiere intrigued you, this episode hooked you. Mashable compared the hats to the good/evil choices in games like Mass Effect. Some found it slower than the pilot. Did week two hook you, or test your patience?
• The player piano plays Radiohead's "No Surprises" as Maeve's loop starts to fray. Ramin Djawadi on getting the brief: "When Jonathan says, 'Do a Radiohead song,' I say, 'Great!'" Were you trying to name that tune every week by now?

 

Ep 2 in a nutshell  

William, a nervous first-timer, arrives with Logan, a regular who can't wait to see who William turns into. William picks a white hat, turns down Clementine because he has "somebody real" waiting at home, and watches Logan put a fork through an old man's hand. Dolores sees Sweetwater full of bodies and passes her father's words to Maeve, who starts to unravel, is saved from recall by Elsie, and wakes mid-surgery in the body shop. The Man in Black cuts Lawrence down from the gallows and tears through his village looking for the Maze. Ford rejects Sizemore's gory new storyline and promises the board something "quite original", standing by a lone black steeple. William picks up Dolores's dropped can, and Dolores digs a buried gun out of the ground by the barn.  

Rewatched or remembered, what stays with you from Chestnut? Thoughts, memories and favourite GIFs all welcome.