What was the true nature of Emily?

Question

In Westworld there are a number of - almost certainly - deliberate discrepancies with Emily's character, for example:

• She goes to considerable lengths to ensure that a sex partner is really human, yet later states to William that she went to the pleasure palace in Raj-world and "rode for a couple of days there"
• She states that she never saw the music box again, yet she has the memory card that Juliet placed inside it
• When William asks how she found him, she just said she "searched everywhere". But a more obvious explanation was she learnt tracking at the same time she learnt Lakota...
• Her body is stacked with the others (tho' admittedly it is not clear in which pile)
• She appears in the post-credits scene of the finale

So was/is she a host or not? Or could there be one of each?

Answer 1

It is not certain

Westworld makes it fairly difficult to tell who is a host and who is a guest. This seems to be on purpose, as a large part of the show is questioning what it is that even makes you human in the first place.

The ending of the Season 2 Finale, to me at least, seems to imply that the Man in Black is being forced to run through a loop to create a perfect copy of him, hence Emily answering him that she is asking questions for "fidelity".

This echoes the scenes of the Westworld system trying to create a perfect copy of Delos, with the program assuming the form of his son.

We'll most likely have to wait until season 3 to know for certain, though.

Answer 2

TLDR

• So, we don't know for sure when everything is really happening...
• The real Emily died in a manner just as we saw.
• The host Emily is merely just the baseline to verify William's "host body" state.
• It seems likely that the events we are seeing are the actual events in real time with a real Emily and William, prior to any testing of William's "host body".

So, we don't really know for sure, but I think we can make informed guesses here regarding the timelines we have been allowed to put together. I have also unfortunately lost my HBO subscription due to the current HBO/AT&T scandal going on right now so I merely running off my memory right now. I will edit in sources if needed when I get a chance...

Regarding grown-up Emily, there is really only a handful of different scenes/situations we see her. Outside the park we see her at the the dinner party with her parents and back at the family home after the dinner party. Then in the park we see her in the in the few scenes at The Raj, when she meets up with her father in Westworld, and the final scene with her testing William.

The scenes from the dinner party and her mother's suicide both happened the same day/night, but obviously prior to Emily's death. Clearly this is the real Emily.

The last time we see her is when Emily is testing William in the Forge, now a very decrepit place. This is after Emily has died and she is a host.

The events in between is where things get dicey. Without knowing William's current status we can't really know Emily's. Emily tells William down in the forge that they have been testing many times and that his time outside the Forge, as the host revolution was happening, was his baseline test. Everything he did during the revolution was their guide to ensure his 'programmed' actions were the same and in line with who he really was.

Given the time we see of Emily in The Raj as 'Grace' I am more inclined to believe all the events we are seeing are 'real time' as they happened and both William and Emily are real. She is with Nicholas at the palace, with him in the camp, then chased over a cliff by a host tiger and later awakens in Westworld captured by the Ghost Nation. All those events would not be necessary for William's testing and they are the explanation we have as to why/how Emily was in the park at the start of the revolution to begin with.

The events following are what they would have used as the baseline for William's testing. Fast forward she meets up with her father, they do stuff, and then he kills her in his confusion.

However there are a lot of events that happen in between that lead me to believe that entire sequence was not recreated for William's testing. A lot of that testing could have been made on the software side prior to printing his body as was done for James. Otherwise there would have been a slew of other resources (ammo, hosts, bandages, alcohol, etc.) that needed to be gathered and put into his testing; as well as ensuring the park itself was refurbished/reset each time to restart the test. It is possible these events were recreated with a host Emily, but that does not seem likely to me.

After seeing things the first time I was under the impression the elevator was his 'starting point' and his new body print began its live testing. We also do not know why or who is trying to print William, but given the state of the Forge it is not likely a sanctioned Delos operation. As well, during James Delos' testing there was an operator there overseeing and recording everything for future review. The testing of William seems to be a Forge/host thing without human involvement...