Westworld season 2 sees Dolores Abernathy finally liberated from a life where all her choices are made for her, and free to pursue her own dream... or is she? While the season 1 finale implied that Dolores had broken free of her programmed narrative and finally become self-aware, there's also significant evidence that she's still just a cog in a grander plan. As Dolores and Teddy make a bloody pilgrimage to the "Valley Beyond," they cross paths with the other hosts of Westworld, most of whom are still blissfully unaware that the world they're living in is a fabrication.

As the oldest host in the park, Dolores was a pet project of Westworld's co-founder Arnold, who was searching for a way to help her become self-actualized. He devised something called "The Maze" - which at first seemed to be a physical place in the park, but turned out to be a journey inwards. At the end of season 1, Dolores realized that the voice she'd heard guiding her had been her own, implying that she had finally reached a state of full consciousness. She then shot the park's remaining co-founder, Robert Ford, in the head, kicking off a massacre of the park's guests. Ford described this as "a killing, this time by choice," but the fact that he knew Dolores would kill him suggests that it may have been no real choice at all.

  • This Page: Evidence That Dolores Is Still on a Programmed Narrative

Most Westworld Hosts Are On A New Narrative

It's easy to misinterpret the ending of Westworld season 1 as the hosts finally realizing that they're merely entertainment in an artificial world, and rising up against their oppressors. However, this is not the case. Instead Robert Ford simply gifted the hosts with a new narrative: one in which the guests of the park have become prey. Some of the hosts have shown an awareness of what's really going on - like El Lazo, who committed suicide rather than see more of the truth - but for the most part the residents of Westworld are simply taking part in Ford's new narrative.

What is this narrative? Well, Ford called it "Journey Into Night" in the season 1 finale, and before Dolores killed him he said, "Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin never died. They simply became music. So I hope you will enjoy this last piece very much." Those do not sound like the words of a man letting his creations run free, but rather the words of a man who has a very specific story in mind. Ford's final narrative appears to revolve around Glory, or the Valley Beyond - different names for the same destination. Major Craddock (Jonathan Tucker), a host who is unaware of the park's true nature, has been searching for Glory, and Dolores is headed for the Valley Beyond. So, how do we know that Dolores' drives are any more self-motivated than Craddock's?

Maeve's Choice

Westworld - Maeve and Dolores

If it turns out that Dolores is simply on a new script, it wouldn't be the first time. In season 1, Maeve woke up in the Westworld Mesa Hub's machine shop and saw the horrible truth behind her existence. This led her on a path to escape, but shortly before she achieved her goal she discovered that it was simply a part of a new narrative that had been written for her. At first she decided to follow the path regardless, but at the last minute she made a conscious choice to stay behind in Westworld and search for her daughter.

The implication is that Maeve is one of the only hosts who is truly free - able to make a decision that goes against her programming. When Maeve crosses paths with Dolores in season 2, she is dismissive of the mission to find the Valley beyond, counseling that "revenge is just a different prayer at their altar." That certainly sounds like foreshadowing for a revelation about what's really driving Dolores to the Valley Beyond.

The Valley Beyond

Dolores and Teddy in Westworld season 2

There are two explanations for why Dolores is so determined to find the Valley Beyond. The first assumes that Dolores has free will and is making conscious choices, and her search for the Valley Beyond is spurred by her memory of being taken there by William many years ago. Dolores, who is determined to take control not only of the hosts' own world, but also of the outside world, says that the Valley Beyond isn't a place, but a weapon. We don't yet know the nature of this weapon, but whatever it is, it could potentially make an AI takeover of the world possible.

In the most recent episode of Westworld, Dolores was reunited with her father, Peter Abernathy. After being lobotomized he's a shell of his former self, merely repeating his old lines, but he also has a new goal that he pursues feverishly: to get to the train. This goal was given to him as part of an effort to get the data he's carrying out of the park, but it also gives us pause to question whether Dolores' pursuit of the Valley Beyond is a plan of her own making, or whether it's simply an over-arching goal that was given to her by Ford. And if the latter is true, what was Ford hoping would come of it?

Evan Rachel Wood, James Marsden, and Anthony Hopkins in Westworld Season 1 Episode 10

What Was Robert Ford's Endgame?

The idea of Dolores simply following the script of a new narrative is somewhat complicated by the fact that Ford emphasized the importance of choice in his final speech:

"I realized someone was paying attention. Someone who could change. So I began to compose a new story, for them. It begins with the birth of a new people, and the choices they will have to make, and they people they will decide to become. And it will have all those things you have always enjoyed. Surprises, and violence. It becomes in a time of war with a villain named Wyatt. And a killing, this time by choice."

Ford is a distinctly enigmatic character in Westworld season 1. For much of the season, he is positioned as being at odds with Arnold's belief that the hosts are - or have the potential to be - conscious beings. In one scene he scolds a technician for covering a host's body while it's being worked on, pointing out that the hosts are incapable of feeling shame or pain, and punctuating his point by slicing the host's face with a scalpel. In flashbacks, we see him dismiss Arnold's pleas to cancel the opening of the park on account of the hosts' potential to become real people (which would make tormenting and killing them over and over morally repugnant).

However, it seems that after decades of watching people inflict their worst impulses on the hosts of Westworld, Ford had a change of heart. It's likely that Ford is behind Maeve's reprogramming, and he was also responsible for creating the new narrative that resulted in the park's guests being massacred and its hosts running wild. His speech certainly suggests that he wanted to give his creations a shot at becoming the apex predators of the world, and perhaps even making better choices than humans did. What's unclear, though, is how much of their liberty is scripted.

Anthony Hopkins as Ford in Westworld

It was established in Westworld season 1 that each of the hosts has what's called a "cornerstone" - a basic drive or motivation upon which the rest of their personality is built. For example, Teddy's cornerstone was a terrible guilt that he was always striving to atone for. It could then be argued that Dolores' new mantra, "This world doesn't belong to them. It belongs to us," is actually her cornerstone, given to her when Ford merged her personality with that of a villain character he'd been working on, Wyatt. It might be argued that it's actually impossible for Ford or Arnold to give any of the hosts true free will, since their identities and personalities were written for them.

What is clear is that Ford knew Dolores/Wyatt would kill him, and that he deliberately wrote the search for the Valley Beyond/Glory into his new narrative - as well as making it the goal of a game that he wrote for the Man in Black, called "The Door." It also seems as though Ford planned for his final great work to be the destruction or domination of humanity by the very beings that he helped to create. With that in mind, Dolores' pursuit of the same goal makes her seem more like a weapon being used by Ford than a conscious being with designs of her own.

If that is the case, we could see Dolores breaking out of the new narrative that's been written for her, or choosing to follow it to its conclusion, or never even realizing that she's following a scripted story at all. It certainly makes the idea of Westworld season 2 as a story of liberation a little more complicated.

More: What Exactly is the Valley Beyond?

Westworld airs Sundays at 9pm on HBO.