Arriving in Westworld, Bernard discovers that Stubbs (head of park security) is a host; a sleeper agent who was created by Ford to help him "protect" the hosts as part of his control over the park. They go down to the cold storage to find Maeve, who is potentially the one who can stop Dolores. However, to their surprise, her pearl is missing. After failing to find Maeve, Bernard decides to find Liam Dempsey Jr. who is Dolores' target, and reprogram Stubbs as his bodyguard.
Maeve quickly discovers that she is trapped in a World War Two-themed park (Warworld) and that Hector has been reprogrammed to be her lover in the new scenario. Her attempts to escape again are complicated when her two human accomplices Felix and Sylvester don't recognize her. Though help comes from a still alive Lee Sizemore, his confession towards having fallen in love with her leads Maeve to discover that Lee is a host and worse, that she is trapped in a virtual reality simulation being controlled by a Frenchman named Serac. Serac seeks to find the key to the "Sublime"; which is where Serac believes that Dolores hid the data of the Westworld park guests. He orders Maeve to track down Dolores and kill her.
Tropes:
- Aspect Ratio Switch: After Maeve finds out that the park she's in is actually a virtual simulation half-way through the episode, all scenes involving her are shot in 2.35:1 format, indicating a shift in perception.
- Ate His Gun: The state Bernard discovers Stubbs in upon his return to Westworld. Stubbs was trying to shoot the explosive in his spine but missed. Being a host, this left him partially paralyzed but still alive, allowing Bernard to repair him.
- Back from the Dead: Lee makes a reappearance to cover for Maeve and help her escape Warworld, despite last seen being gunned down by security. It turns out, however, he is just part of the simulation she's trapped in.
- Bound and Gagged: Maeve's storyline in Warworld has her interrogate a German soldier tied to a chair.
- The Cameo: Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss make an appearance as two technicians working on a dragon host in Medieval World.
- Cyanide Pill: Hector hands Maeve one so she can kill herself if captured. Maeve instead finds another, more creative use for it as an impromptu weapon.
- Dead All Along: Lee Sizemore.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Hector dies in Maeve's arms at the airport. Maeve also "dies" in the simulated Lee's arm's after her sphere is unplugged from the simulation.
- Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: A minstrel host plays the show's theme to two monarch hosts down in the Medieval World maintenance area.
- The Dragon: Bernard reprograms Stubbs to serve as his protector. Stubbs is annoyed, as Bernard could have at least asked first.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The simulation's creators couldn't believe Sizemore would actually help Maeve simply because it was the right thing to do and guessed that he was in love with her, allowing her to discover the truth.
- Evil vs. Evil: From Serac's perspective at least, he wants to recruit Maeve to stop Dolores, since he can't do it himself.
- Eye Scream: Maeve shoves the cyanide pill into the eye of one of the Nazi soldiers.
- Forced Friendly Fire: When combatting the German guards on the bridge, Hector makes one mook shoot the other with his machine gun.
- Foreshadowing: When Maeve wakes up during a standard repair sequence in the maintenance department, she once again encounters Felix, and later Sylvester. Both of them give no sign of recognizing her or remembering their shared experiences together, which is an early clue to the fact that Maeve is not operating in the real world.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: Maeve experiences this in the Warworld simulation where she wakes on a chair with a gun on her hand as Hector walks into the hideout. After realizing where she's exactly in, she begins to exploit this loop so she can go to the Mesa.
- Kansas City Shuffle: Maeve is initially led to believe that she has been reset and is again regaining her memories and self-awareness. This causes her to try to subvert the system again by contacting her allies and finding a way to break out of the facility. The goal is that she will then reveal what happened at the Forge and whether she still presents a danger. She realizes that she is being conned because the creators of the simulation got a few key details wrong.
- Logic Bomb: Once she realizes she's in a simulation, Maeve asks two techs the square root of negative one. As they argue in a loop, it disrupts the simulation because the system doesn't have the processing power to keep up. The simulation eventually resets the characters but Maeve simply increases the disruption. She grabs copies of the plans being searched for in the Warworld narrative and plants them on every soldier while also making every tech outside Warworld discuss the same looping question. This freezes the entire simulation and allows Maeve to hack into the main system.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: By assuming Lee only helped Maeve out because he desired her, the park techs inadvertently allowed Maeve (and subsequently Lee himself) to realize the man she'd been talking to throughout the episode was only a copy of the original. This leads to Maeve corrupting the simulation from inside out.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Stubbs manages to take out two security guards and then chases off a whole group with an axe despite having been shot several times. Justified, since he's a self-aware host.
- Proscenium Reveal: When Maeve gets Lee to question his own reality, it not only causes him to glitch out, but everything around him starts to glitch.
- La Résistance: The Hector duplicate in the Warworld simulation is a member of the Partisans, the Italian anti-fascist resistance movement in WWII.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Bernard makes it back to the church in Westworld to find it burned and blackened. This was due to an on-set fire that happened at the shooting location.
- Refuge in Audacity: Lee saves Maeve from the guards by convincing them that she's acting in character.Maeve: To put it in terms you'll appreciate - I understand the nature of my reality, lying to you is practically second nature, and I would most assuredly hurt a living thing.
- Restraining Bolt: Serac has a remote to freeze Maeve's motor functions so she can't attack him.
- The Reveal: Stubbs is a Host, and a self-aware one at that. This was softly hinted at in the first season and later implied in the second season's finale but not outright confirmed except by Word of God, until now.
- Rustproof Blood: At the Mesa, Maeve spots a huge, red-colored patch of blood on the floor stemming from Dolores' massacre. It should have turned brown by that time. Justified, as Maeve is in a simulation and not in the real world at all.
- Shout-Out:
- Drogon, one of the dragons from Game of Thrones, makes a cameo appearance as a host dragon being worked on for Medieval World. The technicians working on him are played by Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
- One of the techs working on the dragon talks about wanting to join a biotech startup in Costa Rica.
- Spotting the Thread: Maeve realizes that Lee is a recreation when he tries to seduce her as a reward for his help, when the real Lee died for her because it was the right thing to do. By making him question his own reality, she exposes the fact that she isn't in Warworld at all, but a simulation.
- Super Powered Robot Metermaids: The maintenance drone that Maeve hijacks is strong enough to smash open the case containing Maeve's pearl, able to kill several guards without much effort, and take sustained automatic gunfire for several seconds before eventually failing. Not to mention an apparent riot control protocol. Pretty hardy for a "maintenance drone."
- Thinking Out Loud: When Maeve discovers Warworld, the Mesa and the Forge to be a simulation, her thoughts are conveyed via a lengthy monologue.
- Time Stands Still: When Maeve overloads the Warworld simulation, all action comes to a hold.
- Villain in a White Suit: Serac, from Maeve's point of view anyway.
- Wham Shot: When Bernard and Stubbs find Maeve's body in cold storage, with her "pearl" removed.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: When Maeve manages to view a feed from a camera in the real world, they find that everything in the real world is moving in slow motion. Maeve explains that it only appears that way from their perspective because the simulation is running faster than real time.
