The man in black (Ed), is timid William, who we meet in episode 2.

There's subtle hints they're showing 2 timelines.

MiB mentions he's been coming for 30 years.

Slightly different and updated logos between scenes.

The intro into town shows an evolution of how they arrive even down to in one variation the sheriff is recruiting a posse to chase down an outlaw bandit.
Fast forward and now they've got an army man recruiting.

Billy quickly takes a liking to Dolores.

The MiB clearly has a history and issues with her in the past for some reason to stray from his agenda and attack her...
like falling for her the 1st time he saw her only to find she will never remember him from his previous visits since she has her memory wiped routinely...

Except that the hosts are starting to remember their previous histories...

He says, you could practically say I was born here or grew up here.

Given his age, he couldn't have been a kid, but he could be patient zero for the update glitch and one of the original hosts that Hopkins in secret turned loose with a fake human profile.
Remember the 2 techs check in on him and one asks if they should slow him down. The other guy says no and intimates he can do as he wants and has some type of special arrangement or status.

If Harris is a robot, the obvious direction is that he's become self aware and seeking to meet "the creator" and move into the "real" world. My guess is he's searching for the hidden access points within the park, and more specifically one of the unknown / secret ones that Hopkins uses that aren't monitored and possibly the maze leads to a point where he can confront Hopkins directly and bypass all the security on the other side?


That still doesn't explain how the other robots have the information he's looking for.

I also get the feeling that the young boy Hopkins talks with is a robot version of him as a young boy.

Which makes you wonder if the glitch is beta testing for transferring memories?

One man facing old age and death trying to escape his reality by transferring his consciousness and live forever artificially. His creation evolving and trying to break out of the reality that was his artificial origin.

Escape and transcendence.

It doesn't necessarily have to be THAT big of a secret. The manic f-bomb dropping story-line dork was talking to corporate lady about what the real purpose, or next step, of WestWorld would be. He couldn't come up with it. Off the top of my head I had thought that the easy answer would be developing other complexes like the original movie (Roman World, Medieval World, etc.) but the more interesting one would be developing consciousness transference for the 'rich assholes' once they developed hosts complex enough to handle sentience. She never gave him the answer because he couldn't come up with it himself.

No way its to open up new places. Its either the rich guy angle or soldiers for the military.

Yeah, the whole super soldier thing occurred to me, but it's so cheesy and obvious. That would take the show from interesting and modern to Knight Rider.

it would be the biggest and best way to make the company rich