The hosts in Westworld are starting to remember their past. In the third episode, "Stray", we open again on Dolores in a meeting with Bernard. He hands her The Adventures of Alice and Wonderland and her reads a passage and she notices that he has her read books about change. Things that people want the most and experience the least. She asks, “Was I the same as I got up this morning?”
Dolores wakes up in Westworld and finds the gun she had dug up before. Dolores is remembering previous nights dealing with the man in black and makes sure the gun stays hidden. As the team investigates the hosts, they are realizing seem to remember past stories. Elsie goes after a stray host who carves and chops wood, who is carving the constellation Orion into various carvings. They find the host in the rocks stuck. He might have had the idea on his own. Be was in sleep mode but he wakes up and then bashes his own head in. Maeve also seems to be remembering that she saw the hosts being cleaned up. The glitch is manifesting in ways that Bernard cannot anticipate.
Dolores wants to go exploring with Teddy away from her town. She wants to leave not ‘someday’, but now. He teaches Dolores how to shoot a gun, but she can’t pull the trigger. Teddy gets a new backstory from Ford, which sets him off in pursuit of a new villain, Wyatt. The tidbit of queerness in this episode is presented when a woman going through Teddy's new story line goes to have sex with a female prostitute.
Ford and Bernard discuss the glitch. What if they are treating symptoms than the disease. They were talking to the same imaginary person, Arnold. Ford had a partner at the beginning, Arnold. He was scrubbed from the history of Westworld before Bernard or any of the team started to work there. Arnold wanted to create consciousness within the hosts as a permanent thing. They would hear their programming as inner dialogue, but they believed they were hearing the voice of God and went crazy. It seems like when the hosts are remembering previous incarnations of themselves they're accessing a part of Arnold’s code. According to Ford he died in the park; Ford hints at suicide, but is he still in the park? Is it possible that Arnold's consciousness is somehow making the hosts remember?
Bernard meets with Dolores again and he wants to make her forget again. He also thinks there are two version of her, but she says there is only one. When she is back in Westworld, she remembers past versions of her dad and past versions of her story. As the bandit comes to attack her she pulls out a gun. She still can’t squeeze the gun initially but she hears a voice and then is able to overwrite her initial program and shoots him. Was the voice Arnold. As she remembers more and runs off, finding William and Logan.
“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.’