Cupcakes in 'Westworld' Season 2 Episode 4 Are the Show's Biggest Twist Yet

If you are a hardcore Westworld fan, then you will probably agree that episode 4 of season 2 is the best episode of the new season so far. “The Riddle of the Sphinx” presents an exciting story that not only moves the Westworld story forward but also feels self-contained enough to be its own thing. We learn a lot more about Bernard’s programming, plus, what happened to Old Man Delos. Oh and cupcakes too! Yep, those robots carrying around freaky cupcakes in a nutso flashback might be the most pivotal thing in this season so far.

Spoilers ahead for Westworld, episode 4, “The Riddle of the Sphinx.”

1. It’s hard to focus on the biggest news of the newest episode, but it basically boils down to four things:
2. Elsie is back.
3. Yes, Grace is the Man in Black’s daughter.
4. James Delos (Logan’s dad) was almost robot-cloned.
5. Bernard’s memories are all over the place and he maybe had something to do with “the weapon.”

And it’s in that last big reveal, the stuff about Bernard’s memories, where where the cupcakes come in.

When Bernard and Elsie find themselves in a secret lair, Bernard starts having flashbacks to some weird stuff that went on the last time he was there. At one point in the memory, it looks like Bernard is creating some tiny gizmo, which may or may not be the mysterious “weapon” Dolores is looking for. Also, in this memory, Bernard orders some robot Hosts murder a bunch of people, presumably to prevent them from ever talking about what they’re working on. In the relative present to this memory (which is also, technically, a flashback) Elsie and Bernard are only seeing the aftermath of this slaughter.

Elsie explains that when she was digging around in Bernard’s code, she noticed his memories weren’t “addressed” meaning his memories are just “floating around” and he doesn’t know if one memory “comes before or after the others.” This conveniently explains Bernard’s confusing timelines which started up in the very first episode but also seems to suggest that Bernard’s robot brain might be more similar to the failed project of trying to create a robot duplicate of James Delos.

Which leads to the only viable explanation for the cupcakes: these are (maybe?) the robot brains of the advanced Hosts; the Hosts that Bernard says aren’t “hosts at all…same hardware…different code.” Thinking of the cupcakes as robot brains, makes a little bit of sense, only because the only other thing we see the other Hosts organizing are rows of robot eyes. Maybe it was a robot body-part organizing party? One robot’s job was to line up the eyes, the other one had to put the brains in those little trays. Right? Best Westworld fan theory ever?

Assuming all of this make sense (ha! That’s a little Westworld humor right there) the next question then is a little trickier: were all those red cupcakes/brains and rows of eyes all intended for the various attempts at making the James Delos robot, or were these prototypes for a variety of different advanced Non-Hosts? And, do all of those advanced Non-Hosts constitute “the weapon?” or something else entirely?

Or — and this is easily the most chilling possibility — are those just actually cupcakes?

Westworld airs Sundays at 9pm eastern on HBO.