An illustration of a coin representing Janus, the Roman God

Janus

Rather than truly touching its mirror image, however, the host’s finger reaches a liquid surface. The mirror image is revealed to be a reflection, which only becomes clear when the host’s hand passes through the surface and distorts the reflected image.

As the host’s face approaches the surface, the reflection returns. A subtle but powerful camera trick occurs here: while the rising face ascends, the camera is below the liquid surface, angled up. It depicts the rising face touching the surface from below. In the exact moment the face and its reflection pass through the surface, however, the camera rises above the dividing line and moves to the other side of the surface. It’s now above the liquid surface, angled down.

With the perspective now flipped, the faces pull back from each other. Since the camera now resides above the dividing surface, the face on the top half of the screen (previously the reflection) has now become the subject. The face on the bottom half of the screen (previously the subject) has now become the reflection. The showrunners cleverly use this perspective shift to add ambiguity to this meeting of faces.

This perspective shift and two-faced imagery allude to Janus, the Roman God of all Beginnings and all Ends.

To the Romans, Janus’s two faces represented the past and the future, the beginning and the end, and the two directions inherent in any passageway. Westworld’s depiction of a face piercing a liquid surface, then un-piercing it on the other side, is a perfect representation of the ambiguity of passageways. Are we entering or are we exiting? Are we moving forward or moving backwards?

By considering the references to “Creation of Man” and Janus together, we reach a dilemma: who is the creator and who is created?

Once again, Janus provides an answer rooted in the idea of duality. If we factor in Janus’s other alias as dios dioum (“god of gods”), we realise that a picture with only humans and hosts is incomplete. There’s also a God above humans. Since humans are the creators of hosts, and God is the creator of humans, God functions as the God of Gods (just like Janus).

This interpretation also complicates the idea of “closing the gap” between Creator and Created. On one level, the gap is closed between hosts and humans as hosts have gained sentience and free will. On a second level, the gap is closed between humans and God: humans have gained the ability to create life in their own image, just as God created Adam in His.