I think they have really needlessly over complicated it and got a little lost in it themselves (the creators of the show i mean).
The part where Dolores went down into that lab to see young Ford and other tech running around, without anyone noticing her? what was that all about? I understand it was some kind of a memory - but it just didn't make any sense.

The church and the lab below are not the Delos lab. It's the lab from when Ford and Arnold and a small team of engineers were running the show, prior to the incident. We see what it looks like now (the robots bodies strewn around) and we see the glitched memories.

I think Bernard is gone but Jeffrey Wright will now be in the show as Arnold, the ghost in the machine directing the sentient hosts as they rise up.

So now we see Ghost Nation in the modern timeline and they appear to have broken their code (freeze all motor functions doesn't work).

Wyatt would appear to be either Teddy or Dolores. I thought it might be Teddy when Amanda is saying "Wyatt isn't back yet" - I got the impression she was waiting for Teddy to find the memory and remember who he really is but we also seem to be told that Dolores killed Arnold and that also fits the "killed the General" bit as Jeff said.

So Episode 10. Looks like Maeve and her outlaw are going to shoot up the modern tech lab in their bid for freedom. Very hard to see Logan living to see the end of that episode.

So, having thought about it a bit more - I reckon that the town massacre was some sort of incident where loads of hosts gained sentience and were either lead by Dolores or Teddy as Wyatt - I'm leaning towards Dolores. She kills Arnold and Ford essentially punishes her by putting her in a purgatory type loop where she gets her family killed and is raped/murdered.

What I'm not sure about is Teddy's role - i.e. if he was co-opted by the park to kill the sentient hosts or if he had also became sentient but killed them all for another reason (or a mixture of those two theories). Based on the blonde host, I'm guessing Wyatt's current followers are the hosts who were killed in the massacre.

You lot over think things too much

Yes one of them is Wyatt and the other is the Judas steer

Someone refresh my memory, but how did we get to Wyatt as the new big bad? For some reason (and most probably due to the multiple timelines confusing me), I had thought that Wyatt et al was part of a new narrative Ford had created. But Ford's new narrative is to come...so why all of a sudden has Wyatt and crew come into being?

It's likely the new narrative is based off of something Arnold created and which lead to the events surrounding his death. Wyatt is somehow connected to the maze which is all Arnold's doing, remember. We don't really know how much Ford knows about Arnold's ongoing influence and it may be he's trying to find out more by creating the reveries & resurrecting the narrative.

Wyatt is indeed Ford's new creation, which makes it likely that all the dangerous/rebellious hosts like Amanda in Wyatt's gang are also under Ford's control.

My two cents:

Arnold believed some of the hosts could obtain sentience through the memories and repetitions of their existence and he developed a test (the maze) for such an outcome. When we see the memory of Dolores descending into the lab and meeting Arnold, we are seeing the first instance of a fully sentient host completing this test. At this point, Westworld is not a sprawling theme park but a small laboratory experiment dedicated to the creation of intelligence.

Ford does not want sentient hosts. He wants obedient, pliable beings he can control like a God. 35 years ago he purges the park of sentient hosts via the massacre we have seen in Dolores and Teddy flashbacks. During this massacre, Arnold is killed (and possibly the other techs).

The park opens as a commercial venture, run by Ford shortly afterwards. William and Logan visit the park. Dolores begins to break her coding (i.e. complete the maze for a second time and gain consciousness). I expect Logan will die in the park, probably at the hands of Dolores. The scandal would doom the park given who Logan is but William helps Ford out by using his increasing influence at Delos to take it over and cover up Logan's death - perhaps the reason his wife / Logan's sister thinks he is a monster.

Delos have their own plans for what artificial intelligence might do beyond entertain gusts. Ford wants to keep his little kingdom for himself and keep the hosts in their controlled loops. To do this he creates Teddy to ensure Dolores does not repeat her awakening. Teddy is her jailer and he designs him to be something of a facsimile of William.

William comes back to the park after the death of his wife. The incident with Maeve reminds him of the incident with Dolores all those years past- of the capacity of the hosts for sentient life. He sets off in his quest for the maze essentially to gain a better understanding of Arnold's work and perhaps unlock the hosts potential. Given who William is, Ford can't just stop him. So Ford, knowing what William is up to, begins his new narrative, which is essentially his first narrative and will culminate in a massacre of all sentient hosts. He adds the reverie code, knowing it will induce sentience in some of the hosts. I think the reverie code is Arnold's from 35 years ago, like a missing ingredient that has allowed smooth running for three decades. Ford has Teddy be William's guide with the backstory of Wyatt so he can keep tabs on William. In diverting Teddy from the loop he sets Dolores free from her purgatory to again begin retracing her steps to the maze.

The end game for Ford is to lure those hosts who achieve sentience out into the open, led by a Judas steer (Dolores, Teddy) to a point and place where they can be de-activated and Ford's control can be reasserted. I would guess Ford sees William as another Arnold (a robot sympathizer who believes the hosts have a right to sentient life if they can develop it) and he wants to repeat the same victory over Delos / William as he did over Arnold.

I think the wrinkle this time is Maeve. I'm guessing her awakening is outside of Ford's control (remember it began with the phrase "these violent delights..." and seems somehow linked originally to the picture of Logan's sister) and that ultimately history will not exactly repeat and that a significant group of sentient hosts will escape Westworld, allowing season 2 to be more like Bladerunner. Androids loose in a futuristic society and hunted down by concerned authorities.

Interesting thoughts. I read an article the other day with Jeffrey Wright where he states that this season is essentially a 'prequel' to the overall series. If that's the case, then your suggestion that there are breakouts could well be where the story goes next.

I think it'll lose something if it leaves the park though. There's a timeless quality to proceedings at the moment (as in, we don't know where we are in the future, and that sort of adds to the mystery). There's also the western story lines that are finally starting to make an impact. When they are out in the big bad world, Ford's storylines are going to feel tame by comparison.

However, once the maze has been complete, I don't see where else the story can go within the park.

Perhaps I'm a cyborg/host/replicant/plum but I'm unmoved by anything on this show so far. Can't believe something with the acting talents of Hopkins, Wright and Ed Harris can be so tedious.

Might be better as a binge watch. Week-to-week is just waiting for something of genuine dramatic interest to happen, it all seems more like a diverting thought experiment than an absorbing tv show. Not even Thandie Newton's hubcap nips can save it

You're just a palestinian and there's nothing that can be done for you.

While that's certainly true, I blame the creators. It's there job to entertain palestinians like me, and they're failing. Even with a higher boob and blood count per episode than Game of f**king Thrones, probably!

Anyway I'll leave the fanboy theorising to you experts.

So its going to be like Prison break season 2

PLEASE GOD NO!!!!

The characterization in the show is shit so it's hard to get emotionally invested, of course the hosts are by definition not fully formed characters anyway.

Anytime Sir Anthony and Bernard are on the screen I'm just engrossed. Brilliant brilliant acting.

Sadly the rest is dull as ditch water.

Ed Harris is awesome imo

It's the conundrum of tv. By stretching things out we get the amazing things for longer but also the shit parts as well.

will the original movie tie into this? maybe Arnold died during that?

He is, but doesn't have much to work with in the script:

"I'm looking for the maze" - shoots 11 hosts; "I'm looking for the maze" - shoots another 11 hosts.

I read somewhere that there will be a big reveal at some point. The robots take over the park and break free, only to realize that they are on Mars and have no where to go to.

The location of the park is kind of something I'd wondered about. I think at one point they said it was 500 miles across which would be a ludicrously big area for a private corporation to own, let alone a couple of maverick scientist types like Ford & Arnold when they started out. But maybe they said 500 square miles which would be more believable.

I have picked up on a couple of people (Logan & Charlotte) implying it was pretty remote which given futuristic travel tech perhaps does suggest it's not in the US and could conceivably not be on Earth.

I read a thing that suggested its an island. Would make sense.

Do we know if this is actually on Earth?

This show is....meh. I watch it and it has its moments, but it has the reek of Lost about it. Making it up as they go, always a mystery around the corner. What are they going to do next season? The same thing all over again, i can see it getting dull very quickly.

What gives you the impression it's made up on the fly? So far, all the reveals have had a lot of foreshadowing and clues. Don't let Abrams involvement scare you off, he's not actually writing it.

That might explain another thing that seems odd to me..the lack of 'real' animals. It hasn't been explicitly stated, but it appears that every animal on the park is a robot. That would surely be an impossibility if it were on earth as various critters would find their way into the park from outside.

The only other option I can see comes from Ford's chat with Bernard in the last episode where he seems to intimate that mankind killed off everything (as proof that as a species we are utter bastards). I may have misheard him though.

Right from the start I've been a bit worried that the show will disappear up its own arse.
It's certainly skirted around the er... rim, but hasn't done so yet. It certainly wouldn't take much for it to turn into a steaming pile of pretentious crap though.

This is HBO though not ABC so there is that going for it

There has been suggestive flaunting of the bum cheeks storywise on too many occasions for sure.

I've been enjoying it once I parked up referencing the original.

It has it's weaknesses. The yanks do struggle with story arcs whilst trying to have "complete" episodes to keep the short attention span audience in. Rarely do they make a great job of this:
- Babylon 5
- Fargo

It's unnecessarily graphically violent. It's that problem they have with confusing realism with gore altho', maybe, this was a decision to try and draw in some of the zombie aficionados. I think it's a mistake because it probably has alienated more intelligent viewers than splatter audience it gained.

The cross-over between organic and metallic is inconsistent. It's almost done to convenience depending on scene. When Delores is opened up, you see some pretty "Terminator" type pistons. When high explosives blow body parts everywhere or William single-handedly carves up the rebel encampment**, you see no metal or wires from severed/obliterated parts.

Time will tell, but I get the impression the directors are struggling to articulate (well..... it's largely, god fearin', yank audiences after all) the moral and philosophical quandary that distinguishes life and ownership (slavery undercurrent).

**This is the most screaming flaw for me. All the hosts have mass telemetry relayed back to HQ and yet no-one is picking up these swathes of abnormal behaviour.

You're being more than a little unfair to the audience for this type of show. This is HBO. The home of the most complex and genuinely original tv in recent years (The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood etc). It's not some dumbed down network pandering to the lowest common denominator.

I'd imagine most subscribers - who tend to be literate types - are more than willing to go down whatever philosophical path the creators might wish to take. The trouble is that this show isn't compelling enough to take anyone anywhere interesting at the moment.

The "twists" seem a little bit obvious also. Even a dumb-dumb like me picked up that Jeff Wright was a wrong-un as soon as the gave him a flashback "memory" framed exactly like the flashbacks of the other hosts.

Haven't seen the latest episode, maybe it's better.

That's because the robotic models are earlier generation, as shown in the exchange with the Ford family group earlier in the season, whereas the newer ones are 3D Printed. When Logan cuts open Delores and William goes postal on the Reb encampment, it's an earlier timeline, hence the robotics.

Yeah, they specifically addressed the metal parts vs organic hosts in a conversation with the MIB & Lawrence. The older models are metal, the newer ones are synthetic flesh & it's been stated that Dolores is the oldest host unit still in service.

Hang on: William and Logan are humans. How can that be an earlier timeline without them recalling it in the current one? In fact, although Logan is a repeat visitor, William is a virgin.

Thx: on other point.

Well, for all we know Logan's been dead for 30 years and William is the Man in Black, who seems to be basing his whole quest around recall of what happened in that prior timeline when he was a noob.

You should be a script writer.

As long as we don't get any deus ex machinas!

Thought we'd pretty much established that William and Logan are in an older timeline so not sure what you mean. Also, with regard to your telemetry point, that's in the 'present' while the massacre is in the 'past'.

Really? Not been on this thread but if they are on an older timeline, then the bodies after William's "massacre" would not be the synthetics?