Sooo many things going on, where to start.

Theories confirmed or pretty close to confirmation:

Bernard is the Host version of Arnold.

Arnold is dead, killed by Dolores.

Arnold is kind of a ghost in the machine, in that his code is all over the place and he lives in the memories of the original hosts, which they see and which they experience with the same force and clarity as they do present events.

William and Dolores in their adventures are definitely in the past. Confirmed when Logan cuts open Dolores and we see the old machine-like robotic host workings of the early days of the park.

William seems to be en route to becoming the Man in Black given the way he butchers his former captors.

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So where does that leave us? Here are my final episode predictions.

Dolores, I am guessing, goes back to Tester Town, where they train the hosts There she shoots any that get in her way, and goes through the church, where she sees the hosts going crazy and arguing with the voices in their heads (their Bicameral minds). She goes under the church to the work shop and after some sort of discussion, kills Arnold.

Above ground in the present the Man in Black reveals to Dolores he is William and the past and the present sync up. End of Dolores/Man in Black story for season One (their might be some additional stuff, not sure)

In the past William goes looking for Dolores in a park that is rapidly descending into chaos, he might find her. Either way Ford pulls some final switch that shuts everything down and ends outbreak of sentience. We’ll probably see a whole lot of crazy going on then as well, William might end up killing Logan and making it look like an accident. William goes to marry into the Delos family and his star will rise.

Meanwhile, in the present, Maeve and Hector get to C&C and start building their army and trying to gain control of the complex. This could be the big cliff hanger for the season.

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Other weirdness

Maeve seems to not only be able to sense other hosts, she seems to be able to look at the code inside of them. How hard would it be for her to take the Arnold parts of the code and inject it into the newer hosts, bringing them closer to wakefulness as well?

Ford has back doors into all the hosts. Does he have additional secret controls as well, he seems a little too thorough to just place all his trust in only one master shutdown tool.

Check this video out, also note the website changes slightly from week to week.

Where to start with all this right?

Ok, let’s set the timeline stuff aside for a minute and talk about Bernard.

There is a theory going around and it has some possibility that Bernard is Ford’s recreation of his old partner Arnold. There were a lot of clues pointing to Bernard’s host status, the whole “been around the park forever”, the picture that Ford showed to Bernard of him and Arnold that looked like it had someone missing on the right side of it and so on. If we are to believe that Arnold built the house and the bots there as a gift to Ford then one might assume that the lab under the house was originally Arnold’s as well. Thus explaining the times when we thought we were seeing Bernard talking to a clothed Dolores it was actually Arnold talking to her.

Remember though this would be Ford’s construct of Arnold. Not the real Arnold who seems to have disappeared into the code of the park somewhere.

Speaking of the code in the park, I was at least right about that, while Delos owns the park itself, the code and contents still belong to Ford.

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Other stuff, if you can create a host as complicated as Bernard who is to say the two techs, Felix and Sylvester aren’t hosts? I mean they basically do scut-work, what better job for hosts? Which makes things interesting, what if in the process of getting liberated Maeve accidentally wakes those two up as well? That would be something of a mind fuck right? Something I missed and was pointed out to me, Felix and Sylvester are both names of fictional cats.

Maeve continues to be pretty badassed, from avoiding the mass freeze effect to slamming shut the player piano she is starting to assert a great deal of control.

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Other, other stuff. So according to the Delos map Dolores and William are almost out of the park, either they are in the site of Ford’s old church and town set up near the sea or the sea wraps around the entire park and they are south of the ghost nation. If they are in the “Under Construction” part of the map they are where the church was in the past (and will be in the future) which still leaves the time lines a little muddled. None the less Dolores is just about as far as she can go. As Sylvester and Felix pointed out the hosts can’t leave the park, it is somehow hard coded into them.

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So this felt like a transition episode, establishing certain truths, advancing some plotlines, laying some groundwork for what follows.

The title of the episode “Trompe L’Oeil” is defined as a visual illusion in art, especially as used to trick the eye into perceiving a painted detail as a three-dimensional object.

Which seems to reference Bernard at first, but really the park in general. A whole sprawling field of smoke and mirrors.

This theory requires two other things to work so keep that in mind.

1. The two timelines theory is true
2. William and Logan work for the Delos Corporation

Ok, in the first timeline William and Logan go to the park. During their stay Dolores begins to wake up as her and William travel around looking for the maze, etc. other hosts begin to show signs of wakening too. Dolores and William begin to form a relationship. The Hosts get more and more aggressive and out of control until awakened hosts, outraged at their treatment begin to attack guests and staff alike.

Dolores completely wakens and William’s suspicions are proven, Dolores is the real deal, a thinking being and not an automaton, they both fall in love as the park goes to hell around them.

Ford realizing things have gone to hell, decides to take drastic measures and initiates a full memory sweep and wipe of all hosts. “Arnold” goes off and does whatever it is he does. In the process Dolores is wiped in front of William, in essence killing her.

With Ford’s company in financial ruin facing lawsuits and funding crisis Delos steps in and buys Ford out, Ford agrees but only if he can stay in charge of Westworld and all ownership of the code in the park belongs to him. Delos agrees and the park becomes like what we see today.

Outside of the park William rises up through the ranks in Delos and attains a position of authority, even doing some good (that foundation we heard of). Meanwhile he keeps returning to the park time and time again trying to find the spark of the person that Delores was. Using his special access he arranges for longer stays and additional perks. As time passes he becomes bitter and violent, but because of changes in the park he learns of the maze and the possibility he can bring Dolores, in a sense, back to consciousness. And that is where the Man in Black’s side of the story starts.

That weird love story could be at the heart of the show and both timelines.

SPOILERS here and in the comments.

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