After Westworld’s lead programmer Elsie Hughes headed to the mysterious Sector 3 in “The Adversary” to try and figure out who was smuggling host data out of the park, it didn’t look like she’d get out alive. But an easter egg on Westworld’s viral Delos site hints that we’ll see Elsie alive and well in Season 2.
Spoilers for Westworld ahead.
In “Trace Decay” we saw that the person who attacked Elsie on her clandestine mission was none other than boss-turned-host Bernard, but we never see her specifically get offed onscreen. Fans thought she was a goner since she wasn’t seen again.
But, if you head to the Delos Incorporated site, you’re met with a bunch of code nonsense meant to reflect the major host breach seen in the first season finale, “The Bicameral Mind.” But at the end of the string of commands, there’s a block of numbers and letters:
235 [ 675.371511] Code: 61 48 52 30 63 44 6f 76 4c 32 52 6c 62 47 39 7a 61 57 35 6a 62 33 4a 77 62 33 4a 68 64 47 56 6b 4c 6d 4e 76 62 53 39 32 61 57 52 6c 62 79 39 70 62 6e 52 79 59 53 39 30 59 57 4a 73 5a 58 51 75 62 58 41 30 44 51 70 6f 64 48 52 77 4f 69 38 76 5a 47 56 73 62 33 4e 70 62 6d 4e 76 63 6e 42 76 63 6d 46 30 5a 57 51 75 59 32 39 74 4c 32 46 7a 63 32 56 30 63 79 39 30 63 6d 46 75 63 32 31 70 63 33 4e 70 62 32 34 75 62 58 41 30
As pointed out on Reddit, these are hexadecimal numerals used in computer programming, which translates out to a binary-to-text code called Base64.
That in turn translates to a link to a quick video that allegedly shows Elsie’s whereabouts.
Elsie looks to be somewhere in Sector 20.
It indicates her diagnostic tablet is located in Sector 20, the same area that Stubbs went to investigate in “The Well-Tempered Clavier” to find her when he was notified of the same GPS ping sent from her device. Unfortunately for Stubbs, he was captured by the Ghost Nation tribe, or maybe it’s for the better.
It also links to a brief audio clip of her saying, “Hello?”
It’s possible that Ford spared Elsie and Stubbs from the robot massacre in the finale because they were actually kind of good people. We’ll have to wait for Season 2 to find out.
