There is no other show on television quite like Westworld when it comes to keeping an audience guessing until the last minute. The entire first season of the show was predicated on not knowing who certain characters really were, when certain events were happening, and what all of its cryptic philosophical catchphrases really meant. The second season is more of the same.

While some of the lingering questions of Season 1, like “what is the Maze,” “what happened to Elsie,” and “why do the welcome hosts insist on making guests pick a hat before they enter the park,” have been answered over the course of Season 2, each answered question has spawned several others. With the season finale of Westworld Season 2 approaching next Sunday, here are the questions the show will hopefully answer before the season’s end.

1. Are any of the human characters actually hosts? Are any of the hosts humans?

Season 1 ended with the reveal that Bernard, a character who was assumed to be human in the show, was in fact a host facsimile of Arnold, Ford’s long-dead partner. As the line of consciousness between human and host gets blurrier this question may be less important, but showing that William, Charlotte, Stubbs, or any of the other humans in the park aren’t what they seem could still change the game.

2. Is the Maze a metaphor or a code?

Episode 8 showed that Akecheta, the Ghost Nation warrior, was exposed to the Maze after Dolores’s first massacre in the park and used it as a symbol to gently awaken his brethren to the idea that their world is wrong, but his process in coming to that conclusion was markedly different from Dolores’s season-long journey to the same conclusion. Is the visual symbol of the Maze just a metaphor for the hosts’ cognition to work with, or does it function as a QR-type code that unlocks the potential for free will? What would happen if someone sky-wrote the Maze symbol and told every host to look up?

3. Which hosts are truly “awake” and which are still obeying Ford’s final orders?

Westworld faked audiences out last season when Maeve’s insurrection turned out to be a pre-written narrative by Ford. Maeve later disobeyed her programming to return to the park, but the surprise that Maeve’s counterintuitive behavior wasn’t actually free will should make every other host’s awakening suspect. Is Dolores operating on her own conscience or is Ford subtly guiding her to the violent ends of his park’s delights? Was Teddy close to free will before Dolores overwrote him? Since free will is the name of Westworld’s new game, answering this question could force audiences to reevaluate some characters’ actions after the fact.

4. What does Dolores actually want with the Forge in the Valley Beyond?

It took many episodes for Westworld to say what the oft-mentioned Valley Beyond actually is — a repository for the uploaded minds of every guest who visited the park (and wore a hat). The uploads are a part of what Ford calls “William’s Project” and probably show a lot of rich and powerful people doing messed up stuff, but how does that help Dolores at all? Is she planning to blackmail guests? What will her terms be?

5. What happened to the cerebral profiles of guests who didn’t wear hats?

No really, I’m very interested in learning what that park expected to do if someone didn’t choose a hat at the beginning of the game. People in Shogun World don't necessarily wear hats, what about them?

6. What is the relationship between the Forge and the Park, and why did it sour?

Episode 9 of Season 2 showed an interaction between real-life Ford and Old William several months before the start of the Man in Black’s timeline in Season 1. In this conversation, they mention an agreement they had, one that Ford says William violated by letting his “project” interfere with Ford’s narratives. Since audiences know that William’s project was to drag-and-drop human consciousnesses into host bodies and achieve immortality, one way it may have interfered is if human consciousnesses or human-based hosts slipped out of containment and mingled with true hosts and guests. Or, knowing Westworld, it’s something entirely different.

7. What’s William’s deal with his “inner darkness?”

Episode 9 also delved into William realizing that he had an “inner darkness” all along, one that he unsuccessfully hid from his wife to the point of gaslighting her into a death by suicide. What does that inner darkness mean? Is it just “I’m a bad guy pretending to be a good guy,” because that seems a little low on the shock factor for a show like Westworld. With all this buildup to William being the big bad wolf, here’s hoping there’s more going on than him being miffed over Dolores and breaking bad on vacation for thirty years straight.

8. How do the hosts (and the tiger) end up in the sea?

It’s now clear that Season 2’s opening shots of Bernard waking up on a beach take place after most of the action seen in the rest of the season (Dolores’s Episode 9 mini-speech to a Ghost Nation warrior was seen on a tablet in Episode 1, with the note that it took place eleven days before the beach scene). Some theories point to a flood that carries the hosts’ bodies to the Westworld sea, but there hasn’t been any direct connection between the past and present narratives to explain exactly what causes it. Or why. Or if it’s important at all.

The odds of all of these questions being answered in the finale is low, considering that Westworld has already been renewed for at least one more mind-bending season, but that shouldn’t stop fans from speculating on these answers now. Good luck with that, everyone.