After Caleb heads down to the warehouse to restore Dolores in her first-generation body, she reveals that she did plan to have Caleb meet her after remembering her first meeting him back in Park 5 where he and his fellow soldiers were training. Later, she and Caleb make their way to the Incite headquarters as the riots occur throughout the city. However, Maeve confronts Dolores for another fight until the latter's body is disabled by Charlotte who ultimately betrays her for leaving her and her family to die. Caleb manages to get inside the Incite HQ but gets captured. With the two on his grasp, Serac reveals to Caleb that Dolores is using him, revealing that Solomon's plan would destroy humanity in a few decades. As he scans Dolores' mind to look for the key, it turns out she doesn't have it. Serac orders to have all of Dolores' memories erased out of spite. As she's slowly deleted away, Dolores telepathically links to Maeve, revealing her true plan which is to free humanity from Rehoboam's control so that they can choose their future. Afterward, Maeve kills Serac's men and encourages Caleb to make a choice, revealing that Dolores chooses him for his inherent goodness, not for his violence. It turns out Dolores's last memory was Solomon's program where she hijacks Rehoboam, transferring administrative duties to Caleb. Caleb chooses to delete Rehoboam and he and Maeve leave Incite where they saw much of the city still in chaos.
Meanwhile, William shoots Stubbs but Bernard fights back until the riot police arrive, forcing William to flee. It turns out one of the policemen is another copy of Dolores residing in Lawrence's body. Lawrence gives Bernard the suitcase containing the interface for the Sublime and an address leading to Arnold's widow, Lauren. It is there where Bernard finally comes to terms with Charlie's death and Lauren comforts him. Afterward, Bernard and Stubbs rent a motel room where Stubbs recuperates from his injuries. At that point, Bernard realizes Dolores' true plan and that he has the key to the Sublime all along. With the use of the interface, Bernard plugs himself into the Sublime to look for answers.
In the post-credit stinger, William enters the Delos HQ in Dubai where he meets Charlotte, who reveals to him his host copy based on his Man in Black persona. In a huge struggle, the Man in Black host seemingly kills William by slitting his throat. Later, in the unknown future, Bernard wakes up with his body covered in dust.
Tropes:
- Above the Influence: In a flashback, Caleb talks his buddies out of raping a bunch of hosts they just rescued in a simulation, because they're better than the rich assholes who can afford to vacation there.
- Back for the Finale: Lawrence from season one makes a reappearance in this episode.
- Bare-Handed Blade Block: Dolores manages to block Maeve's sword with her mechanical arm.
- Book Ends: One of the first scenes with Dolores in the series was her stating her cornerstone, that she wants to see the beauty in an ugly world. As she is dying in this episode, she confesses to Maeve that, despite all that was done to her programming throughout the show, despite all that she did and set into motion, despite the destructive path she took, she never lost that cornerstone, and her dreams of freedom were to tear down the ugliness of the system keeping the Hosts, and then later mankind, from truly expressing themselves and creating something beautiful.
- Breaking the Bonds: Caleb chains up Dolores before reactivating her so he can interrogate her on her motives. Once she gets bored, she casually snaps the chains while getting up.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: Dolores has a first-generation Host body in storage, which Caleb puts her pearl into after digging it out of her organic body.
- Bulletproof Human Shield: Dolores uses some of Serac's armored mooks to shield herself from the gunfire of the others.
- Call-Back: The masks worn by the SFPD are heavily reminiscent of the Drone Hosts seen in season 2.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Charlotte accuses Dolores of sending her back to Delos to die, before proceeding to sabotage her plans against Serac.
- Car Cushion: Dolores grabs one of Serac's men and jumps off the bridge they're on with him, using him and a car to cushion her landing.
- Crush the Keepsake: Serac crushes Caleb's memory chip under his boot.
- Darkened Building Shoot Out: Maeve kills her opponents after killing the lights in the room.
- Dragon Ascendant: Charlotte takes over as the primary threat, planning to create a new race of Hosts to replace humanity.
- The End of the World as We Know It: Rehoboam predicts that Solomon's strategy would lead to the collapse of human civilization after a series of mass casualty events.
- Every Man Has His Price: Charlotte bribes some of the men Dolores hired on Rico to turn on her. Dolores then offers triple pay to the sniper to kill the other two and walk away. Dolores also has Rico bribe the protestors to keep up the riots.
- Everytown, America: Park 5 seems based on the suburban United States.
- Exact Words: Dolores previously told William she would one day get to witness him destroy himself. The post-credit scene has William ultimately meeting his end at the hands of a host duplicate of himself, while a copy of Dolores watches.
- Face–Heel Turn: Charlotte turns on Dolores, and she also begins the production of Host duplicates to Kill and Replace figures such as William.
- Failsafe Failure: Serac's motor control override for Maeve fails to account for her Technopath abilities. When he freezes her, she simply overheats the remote and immediately regains control.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Maeve & Caleb are implied to have become this by the end of the episode.
- Forced Friendly Fire: During their fight in the bridge, Dolores makes a mook shoot his companions with his automatic weapon.
- Heel–Face Turn: Maeve turns on Serac and helps Caleb destroy Rehoboam after a chat with Dolores.
- Heroic Wannabe: William fancies himself the hero trying to save the world. In his few scenes, he gets his ass kicked by Bernard's alternate personality, kills an innocent security guard, then gets his ass kicked again by his Host duplicate before his throat is slit.
- It May Help You on Your Quest: Said almost verbatim by Lawrence when he hands Bernhard the ominous suitcase.
- Ironic Echo: In her first appearance, Maeve has a monologue that ends with the line, "But this is the New World... and in the New World, you can be whoever the fuck you want to be." At the end of this episode, she repeats this line to Caleb, but in the context that humanity's old world is dead, and the system that controlled their lives is destroyed.
- Karmic Death: Having previously vowed to eradicate the host species from the planet, William is outmatched and ultimately killed by a host copy of himself.
- Kill and Replace: Happens to William in The Stinger.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Dolores Prime has her memories deleted by Rehoboam, effectively killing her for good.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Serac gets hit with a double dose — first, he gets locked out of Rehoboam, just as he had locked his brother out and second, he is forced to watch as Rehoboam erases itself, as he had ordered the erasure of the host data.
- Mind Probe: Rehoboam does this to Dolores in order to find the "key". It doesn't succeed.
- Monster Progenitor: As we learned in the first episode of Season One, Dolores is this to the other hosts, being the first successful prototype that the others were then developed off of.
- Mythology Gag: Finally, after three seasons of waiting, the Man in Black is a robot.
- No-Sell: Bernard shrugs off all of William's punches during their melee.
- Offhand Backhand: Dolores shoots three riot police officers that try to flank her, without even looking at them.
- Older Is Better: Dolores's first-generation Host body is every bit as strong as an organic Host, with the added benefit that it's also much tougher, allowing her to withstand blows that would seriously harm or even dismember an organic Host. The trade-off is that it is vulnerable to attacks that an organic body wouldn't be, like powerful magnets.
- Psychic Link: Bernard senses Dolores's death, noting that they both were always bound together.
- Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: When William tries to fight Bernard hand-to-hand, he punches him in the face several times, only to realize to his horror that Bernard doesn't feel any pain.
- Puppet King: Serac has installed an interface in his ear that allows him a direct link to Rehoboam, willingly becoming its puppet. Most of the time it isn't even him speaking, it's Rehoboam with him just repeating the lines.
- The Reveal:
- The final Dolores duplicate pearl was installed in a body based on Lawrence's. He/she shows up as a fake San Francisco cop to give Bernard a suitcase containing an interface with the Sublime.
- Since Dolores was the first successful host created by the Argos Initiative, Ford and Arnold based all the next hosts on her, making them also duplicates of Dolores — albeit with different cornerstones.
- Delos Park Five is based on an American suburbia and was rented out to the United States armed forces for military exercises. Caleb took part in one such exercise, rescuing a group of hosts - Dolores and Hanaryo included - from a group of terrorists - Craddock being one of them. One of Caleb's fellow soldiers suggested that the unit members could rape the female Hosts, but Caleb convinced them not to.
- Serac is just a puppet of Rehoboam, albeit a willing one.
- Dolores never had the key to the Sublime. All this time, it's been inside Bernard's head.
- Dolores chose Caleb after he prevented his fellow soldiers from raping a group of female Hosts that they rescued in an exercise, herself included.
- Dolores' true plan is to liberate the humans from Rehoboam's control instead of destroying them. In her last conversation with Maeve, she explains that it's best for humanity to choose their own fate because she remembers the moments of kindness that the humans exhibited.
- Sequel Hook: Bernard, who happens to have the encryption key, plugs himself into the Sublime and in the second post-credit scene, Bernard wakes up and finds himself covered in dust.
Word of God mentioned that whatever Bernard saw in the Sublime will be explored in Season 4.Jonathan Nolan: And what [Bernard] finds, when he accesses that alternative universe are several characters we know and love who have vanished into it during the second season. We'll continue to explore that, and also ask questions about it in the fourth season. - Scars Are Forever: Charlotte has mostly repaired her injuries from the car bomb but has deliberately kept the damaged skin on her left arm as a reminder of what humans do to each other and her kind.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: From Serac's point of view, when he finds out that Dolores didn't have the key to the Sublime after all. He then orders all of Dolores's memories wiped out of spite.
- Spanner in the Works: Just as Dolores manages to subdue Maeve, Charlotte uses a magnet to paralyze her and allow Serac's men to capture her, knowing from their shared memory that Dolores would be using a metallic body.
- Step into the Blinding Fight: When Maeve turns on Serac, she kills the lights in the room and begins slaughtering the guards. When she's done and turns the lights back on, Caleb is fine, but Maeve has been shot numerous times and Serac was shot in the confusion.
- The Stinger:
- The post-credits scene shows William going to the Dubai office of Delos to destroy the host research labs there. However, Charlotte got there first and already started mass-producing hosts, including one of William. A struggle ensues and host William slashes the throat of human William.
- Following this, Bernard finally wakes up in the motel room after accessing the Sublime. He's covered in a thick layer of dust, indicating that he's been in there for years and no one has ever come to the motel in all that time.
- Sword Drag: Maeve does an impressive sparkly one with her katana when confronting Dolores on the bridge.
- Thanatos Gambit: Dolores hid an override command inside her own code in case Serac managed to capture her, knowing he'd have Rehoboam dig through her memories for the key to the Sublime. When Rehoboam accesses the command, it places Caleb in charge and locks Serac out.
- They Were Holding You Back: Charlotte says this of her family, who she is now glad are dead because it's taken away the one thing keeping her from reaching her potential.
- Token Good Teammate: A flashback shows Caleb was this to his fellow soldiers, at one point convincing them not to rape a group of female hosts (Dolores and Hanaryo among them) they recently saved in a military exercise. This is ultimately why she chose him, having accessed the profile created on him by the Forge thanks to the helmets the soliders wore.
- Villainous Breakdown: Serac is reduced to a whimpering mess after he's cut off from Rehoboam and the AI erases itself at Caleb's behest.Serac: No. no, you can't! [...] You can't, stop! Stop! [...] Speak to me. Please. Tell me how to fix this. Speak to me, brother. Speak to me. Please!
- Weaksauce Weakness: While Dolores's old metal body allows her to deflect blades with her arm, it also leaves her vulnerable to magnets, which is how Charlotte immobilizes her.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- By the time Bernard plugs himself into the Sublime, Stubbs is recuperating from his injuries in a bathtub. In the second post-credit scene, Bernard wakes up, covered in dust, showing that he stayed there for years. However, we don't learn about Stubbs's fate.
- Although we saw in the previous episode that Clementine and Hanaryo were resurrected to help Maeve, they do not appear in the present day in this episode and their current location and status are unknown. Same for Felix and Sylvester, who only appeared in a simulation earlier in the season.
- What You Are in the Dark: Tied into TGT above: By keeping the rest of his squad from raping the rescued Hosts, Caleb shows Dolores that not every human is like William and the other park Guests. He had no way of knowing that she was anything more than another ordinary Host.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: William believes himself to be the hero of the story, on a crusade to wipe out the hosts and save humanity. In reality, he's just an old man with a bad hand and overinflated ego, who is only a threat when he catches people off-guard. Every time he's forced into a direct confrontation, he's beaten badly. This ends with his host duplicate slitting his throat.
