(Warning: This post contains all the spoilers for the Season 3 finale of “Westworld.”)
“Westworld” ended its third season Sunday with a finale that brought Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Caleb’s (Aaron Paul) battle against Serac (Vincent Cassel) and Maeve (Thandie Newton) over the fates of human- and Host-kind to a close. Though it wasn’t as conclusive an ending at those that wrapped up seasons 1 and 2, feeling more like the halfway point of this chapter of “Westworld” rather than the actual end of it.
After it was over, Dolores was dead, Serac was alone, and Maeve and Caleb had teamed up to try to save both of their races.
So while this chapter of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s HBO sci-fi series may have revealed many things — Caleb’s full plan to shut down Rehoboam, the identity of the fifth Dolores (it was Lawrence, played by Clifton Collins Jr.), what Park 5 was, and the fact that Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) was actually the one with the encryption key to access the Valley Beyond — we were left with plenty of questions waiting to be answered in Season 4.
See our full list below.
1. Is Dolores really dead?
Dolores has died so many times over the three seasons of “Westworld,” but this one feels like it could be the real end. Remember, she opened the episode with narration that very much felt like an “I’m gonna die today” kind of intro.
Sure, there are still the Dolores copies out there, but this might be the end of the road for the original Dolores. Those copies surely still have parts to play, but it’s tough to guess how the original will survive having her mind completely wiped by Rehoboam.
2. How was Charlotte talking to Dolores? And how did she control her?
The copy of Dolores in the Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) body wasn’t around much in the finale, but she had a big impact. While Dolores and Caleb were doing their journey through Los Angeles on their way to Incite headquarters, Charlotte kept popping up to taunt Dolores. But she was visible only to Dolores, apparently broadcasting directly into her mind.
And then, after a couple scenes of this, she straight up just shut down Dolores’s body.
So is Charlotte like Maeve now with her mind control powers? Or was this something else, something related to the fact that they’re both Doloreses?
3. What is Serac going to do now?
When Caleb and Maeve bailed on him at the end of the episode, Serac was wounded but very much still alive. And since it generally feels safe to assume that a major character like this isn’t going to die offscreen and never be heard from again, it seems pretty likely he’ll be around for season 4.
But with the reveal that Serac was pretty much only doing things that Rehoboam told him to do, we can’t help but wonder how he’s going to deal with being off the leash. It’ll have been years since he had Rehoboam in his ear. He’s still got a controlling interest in Delos — what’s he gonna do with it?
4. And what are Caleb and Maeve going to do now?
Meanwhile, Caleb and Maeve, having achieved a sort of peace between them, wander out into the city and basically reenact the final scene of “Fight Club.” Like Serac, they have no path ahead set for this, aside from Maeve’s continuing obsession with her robot daughter. Caleb is now apparently the known leader of the “revolution,” but it’s pretty tough to figure what that means right now.
It feels like Dolores’s plan ended when Caleb made the choice to delete Rehoboam, but what happens now? Are he and Maeve going to put together some kind of better organized revolution? Are they even going to continue hanging out together?
5. Why did Hale kill William and copy his body? And who else is she planning on building in her underground lab?
In the post-credits scene, we got a tease for what’s coming in “Westworld” season 4, whenever that happens: William (Ed Harris) breaks into a Delos lab and finds Charlotte in the basement — with a host version of William. The host kills William, but what happens now? Is Charlotte going to just swap them out like she herself did with the real Charlotte?
Meanwhile, she’s got a big room full of host cradles at her disposal. So is she building an army? What’s her goal now?
6. Was the William host made using the human pearl that Bernard made in season 2?
This is a bit of a forgotten mystery, but in the middle of season 2 of “Westworld” there was a weird scene where Bernard and Elsie visited some old park facility, and Bernard remembered that Ford had sent him there to print out a host control unit that was made from a human mind. We never found out who that pearl was made from — it actually has never even been mentioned since that scene! But could this new William be the product of that pearl?
7. And is this the same William host that we saw at the end of season 2?
Oh yeah, and remember how the season 2 finale showed us a host version of William that was being tested by a host version of his daughter. We never got any potential context for that scene until this week. Though it’s only context if that actually was the same fake William back then that we saw here.
8. How much time has passed by the time Bernard wakes up after using the encryption key to unlock the Valley Beyond?
In the other bit from the scene after the credits, we follow up on Bernard, who presumably has been hanging out in the Sublime simulation with those hosts who made it there at the end of season 2. He’s still in that motel room, which is now covered in dust, and he wakes up. So how long was he in there, and what did he actually do? What was the purpose of that whole thing?
9. What is going to happen with the other Doloreses?
At least three of the four copies of Dolores are still at large. Charlotte, of course. Connells, whose pearl Charlotte nabbed from Serac a couple episodes back. And Lawrence, who only popped up for a single scene all season (what was he doing the whole time?). There’s also Musashi, whose fate is unknown — we saw him get killed but that’s hardly a conclusive ending since we didn’t see his pearl get destroyed.
We can’t dismiss the possibility that either the Connells pearl or Lawrence pearl is in William now, though we’d guess that’s not the case given the options we mentioned previously. And obviously Charlotte is up to something. But what happened to the Musashi pearl, and what was he actually even doing this season? And was that one scene with Lawrence his whole part in this story or will he be back?