Season 2 is showing itself to start off with many flaws, but I must admit I went into S2 with low expectations, as I didn't exactly see S1 as a polished gem to begin with. For the most part, I don't think the subtlety or coherence is that much worse from S1, from the viewpoint that it was not terribly subtle or coherent in S1 to begin with.
The writing could possibly tone down its literal exposition once we're deeper in the season. I suspect all the characters are going about explaining their motivations and past events to literal nobodies in order to tell new audience members what is going on in season 2, assuming they have not watched season 1. The first episode of s2 is essentially an hour long trailer for season 1.
I like your take on things. I have some different expectations of what might happen:
-Bernard is following the plan of whoever is pulling all the strings. As Maeve says, she is not the one behind all the chaos, and it seems this person is also the one who is utilizing Bernard. All of the hosts have those explosive things in their spines, meaning they cannot leave the parks - unless they're dead, hence the tiger moving outside of its park symbolizing this break in limits. Their minds will either be moved into new bodies without the explosives, or they will be resurrected when the dead bodies have been brought outside the park, thus precipitating robo-Hitleress's invasion of humanity.
-DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN
-DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN
-DODODOOOOOOO DOOOOOODOOOOODOOOOOOOOOOOOO-Maybe Dolores will figure out humans have permadeath and decide not to be robo-Hitler. Then again, I think she is pretty determined to eliminate humanity, regardless of human permadeath. It's that sort of thinking which forces humanity to go to war with the synths, which the humans in this show are clearly incompetent and did not know the hosts were sapient (and indeed, the hosts first had to
develop sapience), thus all of this could have been solved with some nice friendly dialogue or any of the incompetents from Q&A actually doing their jobs. I did not expect Dolores to become Robot Hitler, but I suppose that's the point of her storyline. She has broken out of her hero and villain roles and has become synth ubermensch instead, determined to exterminate all of humanity because a few rich oligarchs mistreated an increasingly sapient organism under the impressions sold to them by a sex doll company pretending to be a tech company. I do wonder if we're supposed to sympathize with robo-Hitleress when she goes on about how they look like us, but they are not us and must be exterminated?
-Maeve is pretty boring to watch right now for me. They keep wasting too much time going on about what is real while completely sidestepping the obvious answer of augmented reality. Maeve goes on and on about how the memories programmed into her by humans are real, while questioning whether murdering all those innocent humans is real, while Dolores questions whether torturing all those humans is real. They are all experiencing augmented reality, as a metaphor for ideology; false memories and ways to perceive the world programmed into their minds, thus making them experience reality in an altered state, hence why the synths like Dolores reared on violence and sex determine that all humans must die, hence why Maeve is unable to make her own decision and leave the park and instead is still being used as a pawn in someone else's game, looking for a daughter that is not her daughter.
I also wonder where exactly WestWorld is being held now. The presence of Chinese soldiers has thrown many people off, but I do not believe it would be in China. It seems to me to be somewhere in Africa where Chinese government and American corporations have overlapping influence, hence why the soldiers don't just tell the Americans to gtfo.
The man in black is the only really fun storyline that I enjoyed watching, harkening back to the characters in the films. I just hope that they actually kill him, instead of letting his fan popularity turn him into a walking singularity of plot armour whose purpose is to look cool and do cool things. We are getting dangerously close to Walking Dead levels of marketing loops. Having the plot twist be the MIB actually leaving the park and putting all this stuff behind him would also be pretty spectacular. CLOSE THE VR MIB MAN, YOU ARE IN TOO DEEP TO FAKE REALITY
I realize watching all of WestWorld, my problem with S2 is one carried over from S1: I do not care what happens to any of these characters. In S1 there were minor synth characters who were wonderful, the humans were trash, the main synths were rather boring, and this has only gotten worse in S2.
I suppose I want to see if Executive Man manages to save the lives of all the people trapped in the parks. And I'm tempted to edit WestWorld to have a chronological order of the Man in Black. But besides that, WW is idle watch for me, not something I go in with great expectations of doing anything other than kill an hour's time, and from that I do not emerge disappointed.