Bernard finds himself in a cave in an isolated section of Westworld. He discovers Elsie Hughes chained up inside, having abandoned her there while operating under Ford's influence. They explore a hidden bunker in the cave and find an insane James Delos host.
A series of flashbacks reveal that William and James attempted to recreate James' consciousness in a host body to achieve immortality. However, the experiment repeatedly failed, and William shut it down. Bernard recalls that Ford had him retrieve the control unit of a second host-human hybrid but cannot recall for whom it was intended.
In the park, William and Lawrence return to Lawrence's home to find it overrun by Craddock and the surviving Confederados. Craddock torments the other hosts for sport until William and Lawrence overpower the Confederados and kill Craddock. Speaking through Lawrence's daughter, Ford warns William that one good deed does not redeem him. William rides west with the townspeople in tow where they meet Grace, who reveals herself to be William's daughter Emily.
Tropes:
- Abandoned Laboratory: The Delos underground lab, complete with Epileptic Flashing Lights.
- An Arm and a Leg: The barkeep of Las Mudas loses his hand after Craddock shoots the shot glass of nitroglycerin he had been forced to hold on the back of his hand.
- Aspect Montage: The opening tracking shot across the interior of Delos' room.
- Asshole Victim:
- Craddock and his men are all killed after seizing Las Mudas and terrorizing its inhabitants.
- After more than a hundred attempts, William leaves the 149th copy of James Delos to slowly degrade rather than ending his life. He bluntly informs James that no one is coming to save him, since James was an asshole in life, and they prefer his memory to the real thing.
- Badass Boast: William delivers one to Craddock before his Big Damn Heroes moment:"You think you know death, but you don't...you didn't recognize him sitting across from you this whole time."
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Though Elsie was confined to a cave for at least a few days, with nothing but protein bars to eat, a blanket to sleep on, and a bucket to do her business in (with no sign of toilet paper), she looks no worse for wear. She's not dirty, her hair isn't disheveled or tangled, and her clothes aren't rumpled. Even her makeup is still immaculate.
- Beware the Quiet Ones: Bernard proves in this episode that, when in control of his mental functions, he's not the ineffectual lab tech he usually appears to be. He takes down the crazed James Delos with relative ease, and even knocks him through a glass wall.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- Bernard succeeds in saving Elsie from the host version of James Delos.
- William saves the inhabitants of Las Mudas from Craddock and his men.
- Body Backup Drive: Delos is secretly doing research into this by uploading the consciousness of James Delos into a Host body. However, each attempt ends in failure as Delos's mind rejects reality itself in a matter of minutes, hours or days. There has been 149 such attempts in a span of 30 years.
- Book Ends: Old William's last visit to Las Mudas saw him slaughtering Lawrence's family, except for his daughter. This time he saves the town from the Confederados.
- Broken Record: Part of Delos's problem as a Host is that he has very little ability to improvise. Once he reaches the end of his script, he begins having difficulty speaking, and starts repeating earlier lines. This is emphasized in his final scene, where he is again repeating himself, and his turntable is broken.
- The Bus Came Back: Elsie, Lawrence's daughter, wife and cousins, the Las Mudas barkeep, and Craig and Lori.
- Bus Crash: William reveals that Logan overdosed years before the start of the series. William claims this was because he could no longer accept his reality.
- Call-Back:
- Delos's host duplicate spilling milk during his loop is one to the Host bartender programmed by Elsie who kept spilling drinks.
- William quotes Angela's line to James Delos."If you can't tell the difference, does it really matter?"
- Bernard wondering if he's really with Elsie or if she's a memory he's reliving calls back part of Dolores's storyline in Season 1, as she made her way to Escalante alone and flashed back and forth to when she walked the same path with William.
- Craddock dancing with Lawrence's wife is the same dance she and William did before he massacred the town in Season 1.
- Delos', or rather his Host clone, breakdown is the same Peter Abernathy back in the pilot: bonus is that it's implied the revelation that they're not real is what drives them mad.
- The Cameo: Craig and Lori, the guest couple from the series premiere, reappear, now imprisoned by the Ghost Nation.
- Character Death: The Las Mudas barkeep was presumably killed by the explosion of the nitro shot glass on his hand. Craddock explodes after William forces him to drink nitro and Lawrence shoots him. William mentions Logan overdosed at some point.
- Continuity Nod: Elsie tells Bernard his symptoms indicate he suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Bernard shot himself in "The Well-Tempered Clavier".
- Creator Cameo: Composer Ramin Djawadi is seen playing a guitar.
- Cruel Mercy: William decided to keep the 149th host version of James Delos alive instead of incinerating him, ostensibly so the techs can observe his deterioration.
- Damsel in Distress: Lawrence's wife, again, harassed by Craddock and forced to walk to Lawrence holding a shot glass full of nitroglycerine.
- Damsel out of Distress: "Grace" manages to free herself from Ghost Nation captivity and escapes.
- Do with Him as You Will: After forcing Craddock to drink nitro, William grabs one of the rifles and passes it to Lawrence, who has a much more personal stake in Craddock's death.
- Dramatic Irony: Delos Incorporated is researching into immorality, but can't get it right, with all efforts end in failure. However, Robert Ford not only figured out how to do something very similar with Bernard but did so at least 15 years ago.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Even though she knows Bernard is a host, Elsie still has trouble believing it because he has an ex-wife, a kid, a backstory... just like any host.
- Facial Horror: The 149th iteration of the James Delos host version has made cuts on his own face after undergoing a mental breakdown and being kept alive instead of being incinerated.
- Fake Kill Scare: Stubbs gets a fake throat slit scare.
- Feed It a Bomb: William forces Craddock to drink the nitroglycerin. This causes him to be Made of Explodium when Lawrence shoots him, resulting in "Pop!" Goes the Human.
- Feel No Pain: Elsie adjusts Bernard's code so he can ignore his injuries, at least until she has a chance to properly patch him up.
- Finishing Stomp: In a flashback, Bernard kills a wounded lab worker with a stomp.
- Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: Elsie is willing to help Bernard stay alive but is still wary of trusting him after he attacked and imprisoned her last season.
- Glassy Prison: William keeps the Delos hosts in a glassy home.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: William leaves the last copy of James Delos alive rather than incinerate him. By the time Elsie and Bernard catch up to him, he's gone fully insane and is cutting his face up.
- He Knows Too Much: Bernard tells Ellie that Ford forced him to lock her up because she knew too much.
- Human Resources: The railroad worker hosts, most of which are modeled after Chinese Coolies, use what appear to be captured guests as railway ties to build tracks. For extra horror, the humans are alive when placed on the track, but then have railroad spikes violently driven through their heads.
- Human Shield: When going against Craddock's forces, the Man in Black holds a baddie in front of him to shield himself from bullets.
- Immortality Immorality: Delos Incorporated is trying to achieve immortality through the use of human minds copied into host bodies, and they are willing to let everyone in the park die if it means preserving that research. William's own experiences in life seem to have made him realize this, as he intends to destroy the facility after spending decades observing all the time and effort put in to trying to save a man not worth saving.
- Internal Reveal: Elsie learns about Bernard's true nature as a Host and Ford's death.
- I Reject Your Reality: William tells the 149th James Delos host that this is the reason Logan killed himself. Similarly, each iteration of the Delos Host has suffered from the same condition and gone mad from it.
- Irony: James Delos reveals the disease that killed him was one that his company was doing research into curing before he contracted it, but that he defunded it before being diagnosed.
- Killed Off for Real: Major Craddock is blown to kingdom come by Lawrence after being forced to drink nitroglycerine...unlike with the other Hosts, its highly doubtful that he'll be coming back from this.
- Kill It with Fire: Each failed build of the James Delos host version is incinerated. Elsie does the same with the latest one to put him out of his misery.
- The Leader: Akecheta, the Native-American Host that pitched the Argus Initiative to Logan Delos alongside Angela, fills the role of the leader of the Ghost Nation in the present.
- Mercy Kill: Elsie incinerates the latest copy of James Delos, who has gone completely mad after being abandoned to Sanity Slippage by William.
- Mirror Monologue: The last Delos copy has a short monologue in front of a broken mirror before facing Ellie.
- Neck Lift: One drone host does this to a lab worker before impaling him on a metal hub.
- Neck Snap: After they've killed the Delos techs on Bernard's orders, the drone hosts snap their own necks.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the previous episode, Teddy spares Craddock and his men from execution. In this episode, Craddock and his men have headed to Lawrence's village to terrorize the townspeople and kill and torment a good number of them before William intervenes.
- Nitro Express: Craddock forces the barkeep in Las Mudas to walk 12 steps holding a shot glass full of nitro on the back of his hand, only to shoot it when the barkeep finishes. Later, he forces Lawrence's wife to walk to Lawrence holding another one, but William interrupts this by killing most of his men and force-feeding the glass to Craddock.
- Out of Focus: Maeve and her group don't appear in this episode, so the cliffhanger at the end of "Virtù e Fortuna" is only resolved in "Akane No Mai".
- Out-of-Genre Experience: Delos's scenes play less like an episode of the mysterious drama series we've come to know, and more a slow-build Sci-Fi Horror story that could easily have come out of the likes of Black Mirror or early seasons of Lost.
- Pet the Dog:
- Ford didn't have Bernard kill Elsie, instead merely imprisoning her in a cave to keep her out of the way so the Journey Into Night narrative could be implemented.
- Unlike the rest of the Hosts, the members of Ghost Nation aren't killing guests, merely capturing them and taking them to Akecheta.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Old William gives one to Major Craddock and in a flashback, to James Delos's 149th host duplicate.
- Redemption Rejection: William's response to Robert's accusation that one good deed doesn't change the lifetime of awful things he's done:"Who said anything about a good deed? You wanted me to play your game. I'm gonna play it to the bone."
- Red Herring: Due to his memory blackouts, Bernard begins to question — and so does the viewer — if he's really with Elsie at the lab or if he's reliving a memory and Elsie has been Dead All Along. This gets answered when he easily beats up the Delos host to save her.
- Remember the Dead: Akecheta mentions this to Stubbs before the Fake Kill Scare.Akecheta: You live only as long as the last person who remembers you.
- The Reveal:
- Bernard didn't kill Elsie. He just imprisoned her in a cave to keep her from interfering with Ford's plan.
- Lawrence is beginning to remember tidbits of past loops.
- William's secret project is a means of uploading human minds into Host bodies, but it's never been successfully tested. All the minds degrade after a time.
- Logan died of an overdose.
- Bernard is still carrying out some of Ford's commands, apparently.
- "Grace" is Emily, William's daughter.
- In a more subtle one, the flashback to Juliet's death has her bleeding out in the bathtub when William had said last season, she killed herself with a drug overdose (and the line was even put in the Previously on… sequence, so we were definitely meant to notice).
- A minor one mentioned in passing but Delos is revealed to be a biotech company which researched, among other things, medical technology and development. This in part explains why the Hosts were slowly moved towards Artificial Humans with William saying once that it was "cheaper" than making them fully mechanical.
- Rule of Symbolism: The chamber where James Delos's clone is housed has a goldfish in a bowl. This could be a reference to his memory powers, which are as fickle as a goldfish's (though it was proved to be a myth and untrue), and also to his own situation, living in a relatively small circular space observed from the outside.
- Shoot Out the Lock: Ellie shoots out the lock to the secret Delos lab.
- Shout-Out: A subtle one, but Grace is revealed at the end of the episode to be Emily, or more accurately Emily went under the alias Grace.
- Spoiler Opening: The opening credits spoil the reappearance of Elsie, who is portrayed by Shannon Woodward, and whose fate had been left ambiguous last season.
- A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Major Craddock is forced to swallow nitroglycerin by William and is killed by Lawrence, in precisely the same way that he attempted to kill him.
- Wham Line: "Hi, Dad."
- Wham Shot: Several:
- Delos reading the document William gave him. It's the transcription of their entire conversation up to this point.
- The final time William visits Delos. He's at least 15 years older than the last time Delos saw him and played by Ed Harris.
- Bernard remembers he led the massacre in the Sector 22 secret facility and personally killed one of the Delos techs, implying he may still be under Ford's control. He also took one of the cores manufactured there, which houses someone's duplicated consciousness.
