I think Bernard's suicide is meant to set up the eventual rebellion since Ford is in a weaker position now that his trusted right-hand man is offline. Either someone has to step forward (Elsie as a host?) to buttress Ford or he's going to have to deal with an android uprising and Delos' plot to oust him all by himself (he also has to explain to them why Bernard is now also dead). Something is definitely up with Elsie. Either Ford is buying time for her host to come online with those Ghost Warriors or he's cordoning off that area to protect his research but Elsie's trying to get Subbs' to rescue her by transmitting signals.

It's kind of ironic that the "deeper" level ends at a basement.

It's unlikely that they went through all that trouble setting up the scene where Bernard shot himself on Ford's order and then bring him back to life as if nothing happened. He might bring Elsie back as a host? Just my guess.

You mean like how Theresa held up her tablet trying to deactivate Bernard? 😉

It could very well be that Stubbs is a host himself whose safety isn't guaranteed by the prime directive. So far we haven't seen any fatality resulting from host-on-guest assault, I'm more inclined to believe that the prime directive cannot be overridden until the Maze is reached.

You've got a good point about Maeve. I find her to be one of the most compelling characters in the show. Yes, it's exactly my point that Arnold's code has embedded in it something that can help the hosts "evolve" to be more human. Perhaps it's not a static code but rather something that's self-learning and self-correcting and that this process is triggered by certain experiences or imagery. I believe that Arnold really was trying to make hosts human but that they cannot be fully human till they've accumulated enough memory and "data" from interaction with real humans (perhaps that's the whole point of opening up the theme park).

This is just my conjecture but I believe memory and self-correction work in tandem to trigger the awakening code (funny ho...