“Westworld” is transforming its audience into conspiracy theorists to a degree we have not seen since “Lost.” Sure, “Game of Thrones” fans can argue that once the series overtook the timeline of the books, the amount of prognosticating eclipsed that of any other show, but that is not what the story is about. “Westworld” is made to be a puzzle in a way “Game of Thrones” is not.

The first premise of the “Westworld” puzzle is that you do not know immediately whether a person is real or a host — a robot. The show implies that all the recurring characters inside the park who do not enter the outside world are hosts, while the wide-eyed tourists within the park and all the workers in the labs outside the park are humans. However, as the show progresses, hosts and humans become indistinguishable from one another. Could there be real humans staying in “Westworld” pretending to be hosts? Or, more importantly, are there hosts outside the park that pose as real people?

There is also a lot of evidence to suggest that there are multiple timelines going on within the show. There seems to be two sets of characters that do not ever interact with each other on screen. This has become a harder idea to follow in recent episodes, especially as hosts start to become more self-aware and cognizant of the world around them.

One of the best aspects of “Westworld” so far is the Easter eggs hidden throughout the show, like the fact that the park’s logo changes between different scenes, or that some hosts appear as different people throughout the story. Every little detail like these create a new fan theory, a new possible set of ways the show can progress.

Lots of people have compared “Westworld” to a video game, and the similarities might hold clues for what is about to come. The way the hosts act on their timelines, in loops of storylines and interactions that can react to visitors, is almost identical to games like “Skyrim.”

However, the video game comparison has stronger credence with the back-end plot. The engineers and writers, the construction, the park management and the bureaucracy behind Westworld the park — these all feel like they came out of a game developer’s studio, albeit a much more elitist and dramatic one. The show feels like a human experiment the way video games aspire to.

Just as “Lost” did, “Westworld” has a strong presence on social media, specifically Twitter and Reddit, where everybody loves sharing their own theories about what will happen.

One of the biggest similarities of the shows so far is that each episode introduces more questions than it answers. This works well when you have an ensemble cast with no clear main character, but as we saw with “Lost,” it can create a monster too big to kill. The mysteries can get so big that no answer could ever satisfy the fans, especially the diehards who spend too much time trying to figure it out. Those diehards are the early adopters of “Westworld,” and ultimately they will be the ones to lead public opinion as the story unfolds.

My worry is that once we finish the puzzle of “Westworld,” we might realize that it did not mean anything more than being a jigsaw puzzle. That idea is far away though. For now, we’re still trying to find the edge pieces.

Kyle Stevens is a junior advertising major. His column appears weekly in Pulp. You can email him at ksteve03@syr.edu or reach him on Twitter at @kstevs_.

Published on November 13, 2016 at 10:12 pm