I don’t know whether that episode fucked my theory or not because who knows what’s real any more? It’s still really pretty though.

Haha. You’ve met my first wife then.

I dunno. So far they’re selling it to us as ‘the military are augmented’.

I mean they’re cyborgs, not robots.

I’m with you on that. Loving this series so far, just wallowing in the lovely nonsense sci-fi. Really didn’t get on with season 2.

I do hope so, if only because that idea feels done to death now.

Not as drastic as previous seasons but definitely a jump or too in there

Bernard.

I'm also concerned that I suspect we still haven't seen Maeve in the real world yet.
In ep4, Serac tasks her with finding Dolores. The trail ultimately takes her to a Yakuza hideout, where it turns out that the head of the Yakuza is now the host samurai Musashi from season 2 (with the added kicker that it's actually a clone of Dolores inside him).
He initially tells Maeve that she abandoned him and left him trapped in the park, but this is not true. Maeve gave him the choice to either stay behind in the park or escape with her. He chose to stay. This suggests that this all maybe another of Rehoboam's simulations where it makes assumptions about events in Maeve's life that are incorrect, as it did with the simulation of Lee in the Warworld episode.
Perhaps also worth noting that Dolores never met, or had any interaction with Musashi in the park, so it seems odd that she would have created the Musashi/Sato Yakuza bot in the first place, let alone the question of how did she swap this random Japanese guy with the head of the Yakuza without anyone in the Yakuza thinking who the fuck is this guy?

There also appears to be more than one Charlotte Hale thread. There are many inconsistencies again, but perhaps the most obvious is that twice we were shown her watching on a tablet, the video she made for her son when she was being attacked in Westworld, but in both scenes, the video she watches is subtly different and conversely her character reacts differently each time.

So it seems likely that we're either bogged down with time-fuckery again, or they've swapped that out for alternate-reality-fuckery this season, or God help us and it's a combination of both...

Most likely? It’s a combination of both and the season shits the bed trying to explain it all.

But most hopefully, from what we know so far? It’s a story of straightforward reality/simulation fuckery with the exception of Bernard – and his timeline fuckery is actually all in his own broken psyche.

Episode 5 then...

Well, so far we've had what, four versions of Dolores? So there may be a real Serac and eleventy-billion virtual Seracs. Who fucking knows? Still good fun though.

This is great. It's like someone's hijacked Westworld to get a good sci-fi show, with a high budget, on TV by stealth.

So having now caught up and watched three episodes back to back it definitely helps. This is far better than season 2

Couple of things I've noticed.

There was mention of the system creating a copy of everything we are and do (Delores mentions this to Caleb). The Charlotte stuff that G references probably isn't either time or alternate reality but just this copy of the real world, so we are seeing the computer modelled choice versus the real choice maybe.

Serac (I keep thinking he's Ciroc like the vodka) has a meeting with the Brazilian president where he isn't plagued by flies so that is an obvious sign that he's not human. Or a JJ troll for internet geeks.

And I take it back from what I said in the TV thread. They are now obviously trying to limit the potential for everyone being something else so it may not be as bad as I initially thought.

And they are also following the Sci-Fi ideology of referencing the issues of the present. No one has mentioned this as far as I can see. Perhaps the show is too heavy handed with it, but projecting where data can be misused and massively impact society is obviously of the now and this show deals with that where shows like Picard or Discovery haven't. This is no different from Star Trek highlighting race issues or mysogny or the cold war. Or Gattaca highlighting fears over genetics. On the nail Sci-Fi with a great setting. Overall I'm happy.