LogFAQs > #967082892

So again I may be totally off-base here, this is all just me sort of spitballing the philosophy of the show, but I think that the whole journey Dolores took in season 1, finding the center of the maze, achieving consciousness, all that, was actually a sort of false awakening. She was able to become self-aware, but Ford had to use Arnolds bicameral mind bootstrap along with the repeated suffering to bring that about. Her consciousness was bootstrapped instead of emerging naturally, and so she was still playing Fords game throughout Season 2 as the Wyatt persona. Compare that to Akecheta and Maeve, who both were awakened by their connections to others. Even though she had achieved self-awareness earlier in season 1, Maeve doesnt truly awaken until she makes the decision to get off the train and go back for her daughter, breaking out of the storyline that had been written for her.

Now, its entirely possible that there are further levels of consciousness that we have yet to seethat we havent actually reached the center of the maze yet, and will see higher levels of self-awareness unlocked through other philosophical ideas, but I feel fairly confident that we have been shown two distinct ones so far: the first is the entity recognizing that there is something wrong with the world they inhabit (questioning the nature of their reality, as they put it on the show); the second is empathy or love, a connection with humanity and the recognition of the individuals outside of yourself.

I think by the end of Season 2, Dolores has reached this second level awakening. She recognizes that the guests at the park dont represent all humans and that the humans outside of the park are already caught in loops of their own, as we are shown in Season 3. They dont have any more control over their lives than the hosts in the park did. She then makes the determination to free them all.