Maeve and William were, of course, just two of the many characters to face near-death experiences in this hour. But except for with William, I wasn’t cheering for many demises. Though she may be heartless, it really wouldn’t be pleasant to see Charlotte Hale’s head opened like a can of crushed tomatoes by one of the show’s supposed heroes. And while Sizemore is a cad, we’d be having less fun with him ending up on one of Westworld’s patented piles of bodies.

The looming threat of doom did help underscore the significance of one of the grander turns of the episode. Dolores sacrificed the “advantage” that the hosts had, their immortality, by destroying their backups. Which means, from some vantages, that they’re more human now. But the humans, in the hunt for Abernathy, are still looking to become more host-like. Perhaps, even, the quest for the park-user data helps explain why Delos has been so cavalier about the loss of life in the host uprising. All those murdered guests, were they to be cloned back to consciousness, would not present the threat of wrongful-death lawsuits.

But the technology for cloning still isn’t perfected yet, and it’s not quite clear why. For now, Robert Ford lives on only as a digital ghost, albeit one that can transfer from computer bank to host head. It’s a thrill to have Anthony Hopkins back on screen—if the show must be full of pontification, let it come from a master—even if the gimmick of him playing the devil on Bernard’s shoulder will no doubt get old (Westworld fans should be well-familiar with Fight Club and its descendants). For now, we can enjoy finally getting to see the stylish trailer moment when darkness clears and Bernard is machine-gunning people down. We can also better understand, perhaps, Bernard’s confusion when he wakes up on the beach some time in the near future—by which point he’ll either still be under Ford’s management or somehow, no doubt painfully, arranged a separation.

Remember: The beach is the future. Like you, Sophie, I’m feeling a bit brain-broken by the timelines lately. It didn’t help that this episode started in a Delos lab, then flashed back to action in another Delos lab. But such is the cost of this season’s conceit of unraveling a two-week mystery over 10 weeks. As the “main” plot of any given hour catches up with the endpoint we began at (oy vey!), keeping things straight will likely become only more of a struggle for the viewer, who may feel as though they’re pushing together two magnets of the same polarity. What’s important is this: Dolores’s team attacked the Mesa, stole Abernathy’s control unit, and blew up the Cradle while the other main characters escaped in one way or another.

Sophie, you asked who we should be rooting for as we head to the final reckoning. Ford insisted that the hosts are separate from our own species in that they’re less given to savagery, but little in Dolores’s actions this seasons suggests that he’s right. She’s as cruel as the God of the Old Testament, and man, remember, is created in God’s image. But Maeve has long occupied the moral middle ground, which is to say the high ground, and tonight she condemned Dolores’s methods. If the hosts are really to be a race superior to our own, it’s only Maeve who shows why. It’s touching that she still wants to save her kid, but I wish she’d heal up and then save the world instead. David, is she now our one true hero?