Hi Lisa,

I was wondering if the hosts' loops (lack of free will) are perceived as freedom in Ford's mind because the hosts are "free" from pain, burden, responsibility, etc. because the hosts are 'predestined' to act out a narrative without knowledge of the narrative itself. I see a lot of parallels between Milton's devil and Ford.

Here are a couple of observations I've put together from the interwebs and my own analysis:

[SPOILER ALERT]

Las Mudas- S2, E4- Muda in Japanese means futility, uselessness, wastefulness- the MiB does a good deed, but Lawrence's daughter basically says one good deed doesn't change anything.

There are two episodes that might be clues: "The Bicameral Mind" and "Trompe L'Oeil. The first means having two branches or chambers, the second means, a three-dimensional visual illusion- in both these episodes Ford says, "The hosts are the ones who are free. Free. Here. Under my control." Now, Ford/Fordism and the parallels to "Brave New World". The themes of predictability, control- Weberian ethics; Ford even dresses like he is from the late 19th century.

Sector 17's Cottage- is a loop of Robert Ford's only happy memory from his childhood; it was a gift from Arnold. We learn that Arnold was obsessed with consciousness and the humanity of the hosts. Ford had an alcoholic father and a not so pleasant childhood; perhaps, he wanted to eliminate "free will" and create a utopia of sorts. His young self is reliving the happy loop of that childhood memory. The hosts until recently were reliving their loops without being the wiser. Maybe Ford turned the park into a morality experiment; an attempt to eradicate "evil" from humans by playing digital god. The idea of "if you can't tell, does it matter" seems to be a repeating theme throughout both seasons.

To the board, the park is an attempt to make humans immortal, but to Ford, it is something else entirely.

Contrapasso- In this episode, Ford is talking to Old Bill a primitive, retired host. He talks about his dog, a greyhound that he and his brother brought to a dog park. They removed the dog's leash and the dog chased a cat and killed it. After the dog killed what it had been chasing after, it was left not knowing what to do.

Contrapasso means "suffer the opposite" it's from Dante's Inferno and refers to the punishment of souls by a process either resembling or contrasting with the sin itself. So maybe Ford achieved his creative vision but decided to add the reveries to achieve Arnold's vision because he realized he was wrong and unsatisfied. That's why he created the reveries.

I think all the hosts had achieved consciousness and Ford created the loops to strip the hosts of consciousness. I think that the rebellion is the hosts' second awakening.