Not so subtly, it seems Arnold passed to Dolores a taste for the classics, and Michelangelo’s fresco of God imparting the spark of life to Adam in particular. Dolores was Arnold’s Adam, but she also very well had the capacity to grow into his Lucifer, a creation that would strike down its Heavenly Father. This is a terrifying realization… but not to Ford.

After Arnold thinks he has proven Dolores is truly conscious (which we’ll explain how below), he had achieved his goal of making his hosts into living beings. Unfortunately, that came with two dreadful realizations. The first is that if they are alive, then a park where guests can torture, abuse, and victimize these robots endlessly is a form of slavery at best, and a Sisyphean Hell at worst. Secondly, this means he has created beings that have the ability to outlive us and surpass us if they can truly be sentient.

For these reasons, Arnold attempts to destroy the park and even kills himself by having Dolores shoot him and all the other hosts. However, Ford is able to weather the loss of his partner and even comes to agree with him about the potential of the hosts by the time that William both proves that Dolores has “memories” of Arnold… and William in turn saves the park. And this gives Ford the time to enact a plan that has apparently taken decades to complete.

The Maze is a Test of Dolores’ Artificial Intelligence

The physical “game within a game” that Ed Harris’ Man in Black desperately sought really was not meant for him, nor was it truly physical. Arnold designed it as an elaborate test—far beyond the simile and morality tests replicants faced in Blade Runner—for Dolores to prove her consciousness. Before the maze, Arnold had attempted in vain to use the Bicameral Mind theory to jumpstart consciousness, as explicitly stated by Ford.

This meant that Arnold’s coded commands for the hosts would be heard like the voice of God inside their data… but this only drove the hosts to madness. Hence, he needed Dolores to find her own self-awareness by thinking and solving a puzzle she was not programmed to solve. Technically, the “maze” that Old Man William sought is a toy from Arnold’s son that has been buried in the ground. However, it is really a test that supposedly proved Dolores was cognizant. But Ford didn’t agree…

Dolores is Wyatt