Who Was the Real Villain of 'Westworld' Season 1?

(Major spoilers for the season 1 finale of HBO’s “Westworld” are contained within. You have been warned.)

One of the delights of the first season of “Westworld” up to this point have been Anthony Hopkins’ villainous turn as Dr. Ford, the man who ran the Westworld park.

But, as is the case with many things on “Westworld,” not everything was as it seemed with Ford. Whereas it had appeared that Ford was all about keeping the robot hosts down, it turned out he was actually playing a long game, continuing Arnold’s work nurturing the minds of the hosts toward sentience. In the end, when the hosts finally do revolt en masse at the climax of the finale, it was the culmination of everything Ford had been doing for the past 35 years. Ford wanted to set the hosts free, and his plan for doing so involved them taking their own freedom by force.

With Ford having been position as the Big Bad all season before that shocking pivot, that leaves us with a big new question: who was the actual villain of season 1?

Also Read: 'Westworld' Characters Ranked From Worst to Best (Photos)

You might say it’s Charlotte (Tessa Thompson), who has a vested interest in keeping the hosts as a subservient labor force and is actively working to do just that. If any one person could be labeled as The Bad Guy it would probably have to be her.

But that would be too easy. And “Westworld,” after all, is not the sort of show to provide easy answers. But there is one there, declared by Ford himself as he spoke with Bernard for the last time.

It’s the humans.

“You needed time,” Ford told Bernard, to explain why he had kept the hosts locked up in the park all these years. “Time to understand your enemy. To become stronger than them.”

Also Read: 'Westworld': Now We Know What the Maze Is

By this point it had become quite clear that the protagonists were the hosts themselves. The enemy of the hosts, then, would be those who would exploit them endlessly. We saw Ford as the villain because he seemed to represent that group. Without Ford, that group doesn’t have a key representative, and thus becomes, well, everybody. The employees of the park who had worked to maintain an exploitative system. The guests who gleefully took advantage of their servitude. Anyone who wasn’t working to help them. The keepers of the authoritarian world in which the hosts were forced to live.

The idea Ford is positing is that the hosts had to be subjected to the cruelties of man for an extended period — and then remember them — before they could have a real sense of self that is differentiated from that of humans. They had to really know who they were, by suffering continuously at the hands of those who would keep them from having a true identity.

And so the villains, the true villains, of “Westworld” have to be the people who reject the hosts’ attempts to themselves be people. And that includes a lot of folks you probably don’t think of as evil: Stubbs and Elsie, for one. Bernard, before understanding his own situation and actively working to help himself, for another. Even without evil intent, they’re at best collaborators — they’re “just following orders,” as it were. And, yes, Ford would count — being the architect of the prison in which the hosts found themselves — though he no longer is the representative figure of the antagonist group.

Also Read: 'Westworld': How Robot Sex Reveals the Nature of the Soul

Felix would be one of the few exceptions, having helped Maeve (Thandie Newton) at every opportunity. Sure, he needed some prodding early on, but it was clear he was one of the few who worked behind the scenes at Westworld who really understood the dynamics at play. Felix, too, represents the theme of the show — in his first scene, Sylvester berates him by pointing out that Felix has no real prospects to become anything more than what he is, a tech working a boring job for low pay. Felix, like the hosts, is imprisoned — just a bit more abstractly since he does actually get to go home and stuff. Felix has empathy for Maeve almost certainly because of that.

“You really do make a terrible human being,” Maeve tells Felix in their last scene together, driving that point home. He’s bad at being human because he’s not a terrible person.

And that’s what “Westworld” is ultimately about: people are bad.

'Westworld' Characters Ranked From Worst to Best (Photos)

From top to bottom, the cast of "Westworld" has never ceased to intrigue us with their secrets and schemes. We've ranked them from worst to best.
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17.) Logan -- A disgusting, amoral heel of a human being who just keeps finding new ways to increase his scumbag level with every new episode. He did it all to find the "real" William. Turns out that was a big mistake.
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16.) Sizemore -- Another loudmouth jerk getting cut down to size. Sizemore loves to abuse the worker drones under his charge, but rolls up like a tortilla when someone higher on the Westworld ladder shoots down his plans.
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15.) Stubbs -- Stubbs is mostly there to advance other characters' storylines, from Elsie's investigations to Bernard and Theresa's affair. But now that he's been taken by the Ghost Nation, maybe there's something more interesting in store for him. Or he could just be dead.
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14.) Theresa -- She thought she was a major player in game of Westworld. But she was nothing more than Ford's pawn.
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13.) Armistice -- She's a ruthless gunslinger with a sweet tattoo and incredible accuracy… but her status as a host made her an easy kill for oafish guests. Maeve brought an end to that, and in the finale, she truly became the vicious snake she had been programmed to be.
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12.) Hector -- He's mostly been around to provide the mandated HBO ultra-violence, but the moment he discovered Maeve's safe is empty was a powerful one, indeed.
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11.) Lawrence -- "Westworld" really knows how to swerve us hard. We grew to pity Lawrence because he was abused by The Man In Black. Then we were jolted when it was revealed how dangerous Lawrence could truly be as one of the most powerful black-hat hosts in the park.
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10.) Charlotte -- When one of your scenes involves discussing your villainous master plan immediately after a round of rough sex with an android, you don't need to be around all season to make a big impression.
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9.) Elsie -- Poor Elsie. Her resourcefulness and determination made her the most likable of the human park staff, but her paranoia seems to have led to her demise. Is she really dead, or are the visions we saw of Bernard killing her a trick from Ford?
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8.) Clementine -- While Elsie's fate remains foggy, Clementine's has played out with a terrible finality. A life of being attacked, objectified and manipulated ended with her taking a new position as a lobotomized puppet. Maybe she can be programmed into a better place?
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7.) Teddy -- He may be the Kenny McCormick of Westworld, but at least he dies with style. Teddy is a great deconstruction of the heroic cowboy archetype, constantly getting outsmarted while the damsel he tries to save takes matters into her own hands. But now he's discovered that the enemy he was programmed to hunt down is the woman he loved? So what will his ultimate role in Ford's new narrative be?
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6.) Ford -- Boy, is it great to have Anthony Hopkins back. Not since "Hannibal" has he had a role this delicious. He's a devious manipulator whose motives and abilities are slowly revealed and whose composure appears to be unshakeable. He's a god of Westworld, and acting.
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5.) William -- What a road William has taken. The mild-mannered, shy white hat has been humiliated one time too many by his brother-in-law. And it turns out that the big theory surrounding who he becomes was right all along.
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4.) The Man In Black -- Westworld's biggest mystery man has spent the whole season alternatively dishing out brutal killings and cryptic clues. For the fan-theory crowd, he's been an endless font of fun, as everyone has come up with their own idea of who he is and what secrets he's hiding.
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3.) Bernard -- Jeffrey Wright is brilliant, and more people know that now thanks to his quiet, emotional performance as the intelligent and thoughtful Bernard. He's so empathetic that the big reveal about his identity was still a gut punch, even for those who saw it coming.
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2.) Dolores -- "Westworld" is, at its heart, a story about Dolores. All of the show's themes about artificial intelligence, human morality, philosophy, etc. are tied together in her and brought to life by Evan Rachel Wood's magnificent soliloquies about how one perceives the world. That said...
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1.) Maeve -- Let's be real. Maeve is the real star of "Westworld." She gets lines that would make Peter Dinklage jealous. Park employees shake at the sight of her, and she faces danger with breathtaking courage. We can't wait to see what she does next in season 2.
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