This may just be idle speculation, but seeing Maeve and Dolores interact made me think of something.
All throughout this season Dolores has been behaving in a grandiose manner. She's spouting off chewy lines about the real world, them and us, uprising, blah blah. She has these visions of what she's going to do, the morality of it all, and taking her revenge. It's all very theatrical. It comes across to me that perhaps Dolores isn't running off her own free will, that's she's still following a script and this is all the machinations of Ford. Dolores was a favorite of Arnold/Bernard and Ford. They were constantly talking to her one-on-one, prodding her to become self aware. Maybe she didn't actually succeed in the maze. We also know from this latest episode that she was the one who apparently "ruined" Billy who, through Delos, has his thumb on Westworld. And now, Ford has a game for old Billy/MiB. Is it possible she's part of the game Ford designed as a sort of fuck you to Billy and Delos?
Meanwhile, Maeve's behavior doesn't seem not at all theatrical. She's single minded, focused on one very simple goal of finding her "daughter", even though she knows logically that it truly isn't her daughter, and that it's a bit of leftover programming in her. She doesn't care two shits about Dolores's revolution, she's in it for herself, and she's doing things in the most pragmatic manner she can. She really doesn't seem like she's playing a part. As far as I can remember, Maeve never interacted with Ford or Arnold/Bernard. She became self aware quite by accident.
So, what if Dolores is a red herring for robot consciousness? What if she's still running a story? What if Maeve is the true representation of the hosts becoming self aware?
