This article contains explicit discussion of Westworld Season 2, Episode 6, “Phase Space.” If you’re not all caught up, now is the time to leave.

Before we get to the big bombshell dropped at the end of this episode, let’s spend a few seconds unpacking the beginning. What we see is something that seems familiar, both from Season 1 and from the Season 2 premiere: Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Arnold (Jeffrey Wright) having a chat sometime in the past. But it would appear as though Westworld is once again pulling the wool over viewers’ eyes. Just as last season, the writers tricked audiences into thinking those Arnold scenes were actually Bernard scenes, this season, they’ve tricked viewers into thinking they’re watching Arnold scenes when, in fact, it’s Bernard. Kind of. Here’s how the scene from the Season 2 premiere, shot in a different aspect ratio, began:

The aspect ratio part is very important; we’ll come back to it. We got the continuation of that scene this week when Dolores also revealed that she was the one controlling the conversation. Telling the character played by Jeffrey Wright to “freeze all motor functions” she reveals that this is a conversation they’ve had multiple times and that she’s testing for “fidelity.” That, of course, is the same language William (Jimmi Simpson/Ed Harris) used on the glitching, synthetic version of his father-in-law, Jim Delos (Peter Mullan), in Episode 4, when testing how the Delos consciousness he had uploaded was functioning in its Host body.

We can assume, then, that Dolores has done the same. She’s implanted Arnold’s consciousness into Bernard’s robot body, and she’s trying to make the transfer stick.

This episode ends with Bernard in the Cradle, and his skull conveniently empty of the gleaming ball that holds his consciousness. A flashback just before his head is cut open also implies that the mysterious red version of one of those mind balls (or “pearls” as they’re called in the show) was recently printed out and brought to the Cradle by Bernard. It’s all massively confusing, sure—but the implication is that Dolores has built herself a robotic, immortal version of her beloved Arnold and, it’s very possible that this is exactly who we saw wash up on the beach in the premiere episode: Arnold’s mind in a Bernard body.

It would definitely help explain why he’s been so confused in the present-day story line.

But as confounding as all of that sounds, the truth is perhaps even more baffling. When that machine painfully extracted the pearl from Bernard’s head and rolled it into the interface of the Cradle, it would appear as though what we saw next—Bernard traveling on a train into Sweetwater before any kind of massacre had occurred—was actually him interacting directly with the Cradle.

“They’re all in there,” Elsie (Shannon Woodward) said ominously earlier in the episode. So Bernard “sees” Dolores and Teddy, but really, he’s just seeing versions of them stored in code. Then he sees Robert Ford as played by Anthony Hopkins, causing a million Westworld fans to cry out in confusion.

It would seem that the last red pearl that Ford had Bernard print belonged to, well, Ford—and he’s now living on in the code of his park. This would explain how Ford’s been able to control so much of the world from beyond the grave, such as giving instruction to William (Ed Harris) as he searches for “The Door.”

And it fits in beautifully with the final speech Ford gave in the Season 1 finale: “Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin never died. They simply became music.” Robert Ford has simply become code.

Elsie says: “It’s like there’s something in there that’s improvising. The Cradle’s fighting back.” Now we know who’s doing the fighting.

Thankfully, Westworld appears to have given us a clue to help anchor ourselves in this deeply confusing plot. How can we, the audience, tell if we’re inside the Cradle, or out in the real world? Here’s where we come back to the aspect ratio. You can see quite clearly that when the shot moves from Elsie in the Cradle to Bernard inside the Cradle, it goes from full to widescreen.

So any time you see the show go into a widescreen mode, that’s probably (probably) happening inside the Cradle. Right?

Which brings us back to the opening scene of both this episode and Season 2: Dolores and Arnold in a Bernard body. Guess what? It’s in widescreen.

So, where is all that happening? And when? I confess that as of now, it’s unclear. But it looks as though even though one aspect of this Dolores/Arnold/Bernard interaction has come into focus, we still have another mystery to solve.