SCENE: Sector 22 Bunker
Jim Delos is seen going about his day in a contained space that looks like a modern apartment, when a Young William visits with alcohol to announce that Delos’ observation period is nearly over, and that the next step is an interview. We find out that Delos is dying from a disease, and that he defunded the research that was supposed to cure the disease. William commences the questioning, which irritates Delos, then slides a piece of paper.
SCENE: Westworld, Railroad
An older William is seen riding through the park on horseback with Lawrence. He appears to be on the site of an Asian railroad narrative. As he rides along the tracks, he observes dead bodies on the ground. He finds out that the workers are building the bodies into the railroad track.
SCENE: Sector 22, Cave
Clementine drags Bernard to the opening of a cave, leaves him her gun, unties him, and leaves. Bernard navigates through the cave with the gun, and stumbles upon Elsie, who has been chained up and starving. He shoots the shackles off of her, but Elsie takes the gun and turns it on Bernard, angry for the events that transpired last season. Bernard tried to explain that it was Ford who forced him to do that. She’s missed the host rebellion. Bernard suddenly malfunctions, and tells Elsie to manipulate the cognitive lock on his tablet. It’s then that she learns that Bernard is a host. She puts Bernard in safe mode. As Bernard is having visions, Elsie shoots him in the arm so that he dies slowly. As she walks away, Bernard tells Elsie that no one is coming to save them, and that they’re trapped because there’s something in the park that they’ve been working on for a long time, and they won’t send in a rescue squad until they know it’s safe. Elsie concedes.
Bernard starts envisioning himself walking into the cave. He starts to suspect that Ford had Clementine bring him to the cave for a reason. We learn that Bernard’s hallucinations may be memories. He reveals a secret lever within the rock wall of the cave, which opens an elevator door. The elevator is marked “12.” He and Elsie get into the elevator.
The elevator takes them to a lab, which had been attacked. The lab workers have been brutally murdered. They see a control unit printer that has been destroyed. Bernard has more flashbacks. Meanwhile, Elsie spots one of the drone hosts and shoots it. Bernard suspects that the lab workers were watching the guests, then goes into shock from lack of cortical fluid. Elsie then injects him with more cortical fluid.
SCENE: Ghost Nation Camp
A group of guests are tied to a tree trunk and being guided by members of the Ghost Nation. One of the female hostages is Grace from Colonial India world. She gets dumped by Stubbs, who is tied up by a tree. A member of the Ghost Nation whispers to Stubbs that “something is coming.” We learn that Grace can speak and understand the Ghost Nation. We also learn that she’s not looking to escape from Westworld.
SCENE: Las Mudas
William and Lawrence arrive at Lawrence’s home, the town of Las Mudas. It appears to be empty. They sit at a table and order drinks from a shaky and nervoud host bartender. Suddenly, William and Lawrence get ambushed by Major Craddock and the other Confederado soldiers that Teddy banished from Fort Forlorn Hope instead of executing. They find out that the Confederado has been holding the town’s inhabitants hostage in a church, including Lawrence’s family.
Major Craddock asks for a village elder. A man steps forward, and Craddock shoots him. He then proceeds to go up and down the aisle talking, and shooting townspeople at random. Meanwhile, Lawrence and William hatch a plan to obtain the town’s weapons while the Confederado are drunk. But Lawrence tells William where the weapons are, and William offers the Confederado a deal. He tells Major Craddock that the weapons are in a graveyard, and offers his assistance in guiding the Confederado to Glory, which is presumed to be the Westworld Mesa Hub.
SCENE: Sector 22 Bunker
We see Jim Delos dancing gleefully. The effects of his debilitating disease appear to have gone away. William visits again. The same scene from the episode opening plays out, including the following conversation:
DELOS: “What is the purpose of these questions?”
WILLIAM: “Trying to establish a baseline.”
DELOS: “For what?”
WILLIAM:“Fidelity.”
We finally get to see what’s on the paper. It turns out to be the script of their entire conversation, from the moment William enters the apartment. Delos finds out that his previous body did not recover from the disease, and has died. He also learns that he’s been dead for seven years, and that he’s not actually in California.
William echoes a line from Season 1, Episode 2: “if you can’t tell..does it matter?”
Delos, thinking that he’s successfully inhabited a new body, is excited to leave the facility and embark on his new life, including reuniting with his wife. William breaks the unfortunate truth that Delos’ wife suffered a stroke and passed away, then William notices that Delos is still suffering from tremors and cognitive issues.
William leaves the apartment, and we see that it’s in a lab. He gives an attendant the command to terminate Delos and the apartment, and we see it go up in flames.
SCENE: Las Mudas
As the Confederados prepare to leave for Glory, they torture the nervous bartender by making him balance a shot glass of nitro on his shaky hands, before shooting him.
SCENE: Ghost Nation Camp
The Ghost Nation are leading the hostages through the night to be judged by their leader. Grace breaks free and uses a torch to fight fight off a Ghost Nation guard. While she escapes into the woods, a member of the Ghost Nation holds a knife to Stubbs’ throat and says, in English: “you live only as long as the last person who remembers you.”
SCENE: Sector 22 Bunker
Bernard wakes up in the secret lab. Elsie is trying to figure out how to access a computer in the lab, but the information is encrypted. Bernard announces that he recognizes the encryption scheme from Peter Abernathy’s head. He still thinks that Ford led him to the secret lab but he doesn’t know why, because his memories are scrambled. Elsie observes that Bernard’s memories aren’t addressed – or mapped to anything – in his head; but rather, floating around, so he’s having a hard time telling when anything happened.
Bernard breaks through the encryption. He remembers that they weren’t building hosts. They were using the same hardware, but the code is different. They hear banging from behind a door, and Elsie goes to investigate. Bernard realizes that he’s in a memory. Elsie shoots the door open.
SCENE: Las Mudas
It’s raining, and the Confederados are still tormenting the townspeople, including Lawrence. William is getting anxious to leave, but Major Craddock pours a shot of nitro and picks Lawrence’s wife to deliver the shot to Lawrence. William considers the situation, cracks the bottle of alcohol against the table, and smashes it into Craddock’s face. He then goes on to shoot the Confederado soldiers. Then he retrieves the shot glass of nitro from Lawrence’s wife and forces Major Craddock to drink it. William hands Lawrence a gun and allows him to shoot Major Craddock, causing his body to explode from the mixture of gunpowder and nitro.
SCENE: Sector 22 Bunker
We witness the same scene unfolding in Delos’ apartment. The assistant is new, and an older William walks into the apartment this time. A slightly different dialogue is playing out. Immediately, Delos recognizes that his original body is dead. But then, the same old dialogue resumes. William realizes that Delos is experiencing a cognitive plateau – that his mind is not just rejecting the new body, but the new reality. William announces that it’s the 149th time that he’s been back, and that Delos has lasted 35 days before degrading. William is starting to doubt that the project might ever be successful, because “people aren’t meant to live forever.” William also reveals his distaste for Delos. After Delos accuses William of sleeping with his daughter Juliet, William breaks the news that Juliet killed herself. In addition, Logan overdosed. William exits the observation room, leaving Delos in outrage, and tells the attendant to leave him be.
SCENE: Sector 22 Bunker
Elsie and Bernard make their way through the door to find Delos’ observation room in ruins. The attendant from the previous scene is dead on the floor. They find Delos on a stationary bike. He is deranged. He attacks Elsie with a glass shard, but Bernard is able to successfully slit his throat and take him down. Delos utters: “He said there were two fathers: one above, one below. They lied. There was only ever the devil. And when you look up from the bottom, it was just his reflection laughing back at you.”
Elsie terminates the experiment, burning Delos and the apartment. Bernard remembers that he was working on another experiment for another human. When Elsie announces that she’s going to return to the Mesa Hub, Bernard begs to accompany her.
In a memory, Bernard remembers taking one of the small brown spheres from the lab. He also remembers commanding the drone hosts to kill the lab technicians, then kill themselves. Bernard kills one of the surviving lab technicians.
SCENE: Las Mudas
Lawrence’s wife thanks William with a kiss on the cheek. Lawrence says that his cousins want to accompany him on his journey to “Glory.” William cautions Lawrence that they won’t all make it home alive.
Lawrence’s daughter Izabella approaches William and says, “They might not remember, but I know who you are, William. One good deed doesn’t change that.”
William responds by saying “You wanted me to play your game. I’m gonna play it to be bone.”
Izabella replies by pointing out that William still doesn’t understand the game. “If you’re looking forward,” she says, “you’re looking in the wrong direction.”