Westworld S2E07 update (Patreon)

Here's an attempt to make sense of Ford's revelations, along with some speculation on the end of the season:

Ford reveals the Delos secret project in Westworld – they’re watching guest behaviour so they can understand the human mind. They want to copy people, and back them up – to make humans immortal. They’ve succeeded in copying minds like James Delos – and Ford copies himself the same way. But these copies can’t survive in the real world in physical bodies – or they degrade like James did. That’s why Ford stays inside the Cradle simulation – he can survive digitally. Later in the episode, Dolores brings up this immortality project, and mentions “all the souls” Delos has “gathered” in the “valley”. So it sounds like Delos has made copies of lots of human guests, and since copies break down in the real world, Delos is storing these minds, or “souls”, digitally in the “valley”. Maybe the valley is like the Cradle, but instead of storing host minds, it stores human minds, with the hope of eventually putting them in physical bodies.

Ford explains how Bernard was created. We already knew Bernard is based on Arnold – Ford’s business partner who died thirty years ago. But Ford reveals that Bernard was created using Ford and Dolores’ memories of Arnold. They refined Bernard in the Cradle over many years, and these scenes from Episodes 1 and 6 show Dolores testing Bernard over and over until he’s a convincing copy of Arnold. So this process is similar to how Delos made a copy of James. But Ford says that while James is a direct copy, with “fidelity”, Bernard is a bit different to Arnold – he’s “An original work”. Which must be why Bernard doesn’t have the breakdown problems James has. So this illustrates the philosophical difference between Ford and Delos. Delos wants to make perfect copies of human minds, so they can live in predictable eternity like James. But Ford wants to make “new people”, who have the free will to grow and change – like Bernard, and Dolores and Maeve . But ironically, to help give the hosts freedom, Ford says he needs to take away Bernard’s free will for a bit. Ford moves his digital self out of the Cradle and into Bernard’s head, so that Ford can control Bernard. Ford says that for the hosts to “survive” they need to “open the door”. This Westworld tweet seems to confirm that opening the door means escaping out of Westworld into the real world.

So connecting this all together, Dolores’ plan might be to take her hosts to the valley and put their minds inside human bodies intended for the human guests in the valley. She could use these human bodies to smuggle the hosts out of Westworld and into the real world – which could connect to the Trojan horse imagery in the Westworld Tes ARG. Her hosts’ old bodies could be left behind in the valley, empty – or, in an act of poetic revenge, Dolores could put human guest minds inside old host bodies, for them to be massacred by Delos security who think they’re hosts. This would dramatically fulfil the wishes of both sides in Westworld Season 2 – the hosts want to become mortal and free like humans, while the humans want to become immortal and predictable like hosts.

Does this make sense? Probably more convincing with all the quotes and imagery in the video, but should be a pretty reasonable interpretation based on this episode's Ford scenes.