Introduction

Great seeing the show return, and enjoyed the episode thoroughly! Figured I’d do a Lets Watch of the season so I could join in the theorycrafting that’ll inevitibly happen, and it should hopefully tie in with the updates of in-unverse sites that I’ve been following in the ARG and Viral Marketing side of the site.

General notes

Now this ep started with a short “Previously on” segment showing snippets of the first season.
The episode shows us the start of several plotlines:

• Delos coming back to Westworld to reclaim the park, and try and re-establish control.
• Maeve is back and trying to find her daughter
• The Man in Black is continuing his jorney
• Bernard (who remembers he’s a host) and Charlotte looking for the package/host (Peter Abernathy from cold storage) that was supposed to be sent out.

I did get the feeling that this season is still keeping elements from the original film. This was boosted by two elements, the main one being Bernard, Charlotte and the execs coming across the vehicle with the staff member(s) in white outfits. The second, which is minor, was Maeve and the guy staffer (whose name I forgot) heading into the control room that had the big map in.

Few things I liked about this episode:

• We got to see what a hosts brain looks like
• Maeve made the staffer helping her strip completely in front of her and another host in one of the behind the scenes rooms with the glass walls. This was a nice role reversal, and helped cement the fact that the hosts are now in control.
• We got on-screen evidence of another park connected to West world: a tiger from Park 6, though we don’t know what the name or theme of this park is.

Theories and questions

So there’s a few things I’d like to get answers on and I already have some ideas:

Question: Why are they collecting guests DNA (and biometrics?)?
Theory: Delos is planning on replacing people in the real world with hosts, and want to make the hosts as convincing as possible.

Question: Bernard: Since we were shown Bernard with Delos folks and with Charlotte (yet Charlotte wasn’t with the Delos people), what’s going on with that?
Theory: Multiple timeframes (which is more accurate than the “timeline” talk), like season 1. Bernard/Charlotte is just after the anouncement at the end of season 1, and the Man in Black seems to be in this timeframe, and Bernard/Delos istwo weeks after (stated near the start of the episode, not long after Bernard was found on the beach). Plus, maybe, the occasional flashback to original!Bernard and Delores talking.
Follow-up questions: Where’s Charlotte in the later point in time? When does the MiB’s scenes occur? How did Bernard get washed up on the beach?
Note: I did concider multiple Bernards, but that seems unlikely, as it’d mean the executives they were with were managing to hide from the hosts for two weeks.

Question: Why did Ford build a sea that no-one knew about?
Theory: ?????????????

Question: Why did young-host-Ford’s voice glitch when talking to the Man in Black?
Theory: No idea, and we’ll probably never get an answer since the MiB shot the poor thing dead.

Conclusion

So there’s plenty to speculate on. I’m looking forward to seeing where things go, and seeing how my theories pan out.
I’d love to hear what you think, over on Twitter or in the Discord.