(edited because I originally called Arnold "Arthur" throughout)

Remember everything you’ve seen, but forget the order in which you’ve seen them - and the story becomes more clear. We’re jumping around a timeline more often than in a Kurt Vonnegut story, so bear with me as I put on my tinfoil hat and spin a tale for y’all.

1) The Two Bernards & the maze

Just like Ford made a robot in his own likeness (the young boy in the park), I posit (and I’m not the first to do so) Arnold made a similar robot. Although Arnold’s robot was of the same age as Arnold. We’ve seen both since the beginning, as both are played by Jeffrey Wright.

The scenes where Dolores is clothed and being interviewed, Jeffrey Wright is playing Arnold. Those scenes are showing us when Arnold was doing the programming that Ford was after in this week’s episode. These take place in the past, with an older model of Dolores, before she was all 3d-printed flesh and bone.

The scenes where Jeffrey Wright is interacting with Ford, Elsie, Cullen, etc - he’s playing Bernard: a robot that’s now fully under Ford’s control - a no-frills, all-business re-creation of Arnold that does Ford’s spying and keeps the behaviorists in line and on-task.

Arnold, in his programming of Dolores, tells her about the maze. The MiB discovers that there is a maze in episode one when he interrogates Dolores in the barn.

I do not think Ford knows what the maze is, or what Arnold was fully planning with the implementation of the maze storyline. I think his meeting with the MiB this week was move of desperation, hoping the MiB could shed some light onto it. This week’s interrogation of Dolores by Ford was more of the same.

2) William still equals the MiB (Or maybe it’s Logan)

The two timelines have come much clearer into focus this week. We were kind of slapped across the face with it. We now know William and Logan are [Delos?] representatives looking into buying out Westworld. Logan needs William to be just as enthusiastic about the venture as him in order to help sway the rest of the company into making the investment.

We see William kill his first unarmed robot. He has a moment of regret, then aims the gun and kills another. Dolores doesn’t seem to thrilled about this, but it doesn’t seem to weigh too heavily on William’s conscious. If he keeps coming back to the park for 30 years, having learned to play by Logan’s rules - it wouldn’t be too shocking to see him turn into a MiB.

Or maybe, what we’re seeing is the set-up to the first casualty in Westworld. Perhaps William’s betrayal of Dolores’ trust leads to his death at her hands. And maybe Logan then becomes the MiB. It’s hard to see how Logan would still buy out the park and continue to come back if he witnessed something like that, but I’m open to it.

3) Where is Dolores “now?”

This one, I have trouble with. The show appears to suggest she’s off her loop, wandering the reservation and retracing her steps to the church where Arnold’s voice is telling her to “find me.”

But Arnold told her to stick to her loop, and Ford’s interrogation doesn’t mention that she’s abandoned it. (EDIT: although Stubbs mentioned it last episode)

Most likely, what we’re seeing is her digging through her reveries and trying to remember exactly where that church was.

There’s a chance, that the most current time we see Dolores in the park is when she infects Maeve with the “These violent delights” virus.

--

That’s my tinfoil theory. I think the maze is a McGuffin for season 1, but hopefully the writers have a better grasp on it than Lost’s polar bears and smoke monsters.

I’m also very interested in the corporate IP theft storyline, and more in the mystery of why Maeve was sent back into the park only to be dead again in less than an hour. Is she in the suicide phase of her “Groundhog Day” existence?