Writer’s Note: This is the season finale and will include spoilers for this episode and every one before it. If you want to catch up, go watch the previous episodes and check out my episode recaps before reading this one.
!! Spoilers Start Now !!
Quick Synopsis
- Caleb’s (Aaron Paul) ear piece directs him to a warehouse with Dolores’ (Evan Rachel Wood) backup body and he inserts her pearl unit into it. Dolores explains how she chose Caleb after the military conducted exercises in the Delos park, she had access to his data and realized humanity was capable of making a choice, but that it’s extremely difficult.
- They make their way to Incite, escorted by paid RICO guards, when they are intercepted by Halores (Tessa Thompson) who wants to disrupt Dolores’ plans and has hired her own squad to take them down. Caleb and Dolores split up. Caleb continues to make his way to Incite with more hired RICO guards while Dolores encounters Maeve (Thandie Newton) and her Incite agents.
- Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and Ashley (Luke Hemsworth) narrowly escape William’s (Ed Harris) holdup as Bernard activates his violent mode to disarm William and is stopped by police officers, led by the final Dolores clone in the body of Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.). Dolores-Lawrence gives Bernard a package with an address and tells him, despite Bernard’s concern that Dolores hid code inside him, that he’s a part of Dolores’ plan regardless.
- Dolores dispatches the armored guards with Maeve and disarms her, but doesn’t kill her, stating that she still has a choice ahead of her. However Halores intercepts her again and this time shuts down her systems, allowing Maeve to capture her and send her to Serac (Vincent Cassel).
- Bernard follows the address, which is home to Lauren (Gina Torres) the elderly ex-wife of Arnold. Together they bond over their son Charlie’s death and Bernard is able to better deal with that part of himself.
- Caleb is able to push through the riots and police barricade with assistance from Giggles (Marshawn Lynch) and Ash. He attempts to use the code that Solomon gave him, but he’s quickly intercepted by Maeve.
- Serac has Dolores attached to Rehoboam and starts to delete her data in order to find the encryption key. Maeve realizes that Serac has been allowing himself to be fully pushed and moved by Rehoboam, even letting it dictate what he says.
- As Dolores is slowly being deleted away, Maeve meets inside Dolores’ mind to chat. Dolores reveals that she is giving Maeve a choice to help the humans who showed her the beauty in the world. She then overcomes Serac’s programming, freeing Caleb and explaining that her final memory was actually from Solomon to hand control of Rehoboam over to Caleb. With control in his hands, Caleb orders the AI to delete itself.
- With an injured Ashley in tow, Bernard heads to a motel room where he promises to patch him soon. However, he realizes that Dolores gave him the key to the Sublime (Valley Beyond) and he wants to go there to find answers, stating that he “misjudged” Dolores.
- In the post-credits scene, William arrives at a Delos facility and finds Halores producing more hosts, one of which (a William clone) attacks and slashes his throat. Back at the motel, Bernard wakes up from his trip in the Sublime, but a significant amount of time has passed as he’s covered in dust.
Dolores’ Actual Plan
“Some people choose to see the ugliness in this world. The disarray. I choose to see the beauty… To believe there is an order to our days, a purpose“- Dolores (The Original, Season 1, Episode 1)
These are Dolores’ first words when she wakes up in the park and gets up from her bed. I can’t tell you how many times Dolores said that in the first season, but somewhere towards the end, with the Wyatt scenario and her rampage through season two, we sort of forgot who the real Dolores is. Yes, her consciousness was emerging, but it was still tied to this original idea that was implanted in her a long time ago.
Trust me, we clearly saw in season two that Dolores has anger towards humanity. She also has anger towards any perceived false choices or fake worlds, which gets her killed by Bernard at the end of season two. But that choice she made to shut off the portal to the Sublime, her understanding of humans in the park, and her initial narrative all lead to this point. The reminder of her beliefs made her realize that her anger was wrong and helped her change her mind. I think that moment was overshadowed and, as audience members, seeing her with the Hale counterpart and giving Bernard a new body felt like the show creating sinister overtones when, instead, she had secretly turned over a new leaf and we didn’t know it yet.
When she has this moment with Maeve, it’s honestly not forced. It really felt like a piece of a character we had forgotten about that Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan wanted to remind us of. It’s also possible the idea of a robot uprising was so tempting to us that we thought that it was the only way forward. Yet, our Westworld writing crew found another way.
So what was the master plan? Choice. It was to give two people the option to take charge of their lives. It was to give Caleb and Maeve the ability of choice that either have never really had. It was a gamble, but it was a sacrifice that she chose to make. It was a growth in her character that she kept closely guarded.
Well… one thing wasn’t a gamble. Dolores getting uploaded to Rehoboam to disable it means that regardless of what happened last week, so long as Serac believed she had the key, she was always to disable it. The question just becomes how to get Caleb and Maeve in the room at the same time, which we see, is where part of the gamble came in.
Hale Is The New Baddie
Hale’s growth this season (from here on out, I’m going to stop referring to her as Hale-Dolores/Halores, because she has clearly become her own thing) has perfectly represented the difference that can happen regardless if you’re cloned or copied from the same person. In the same way that Dolores’ season two change had lasting effects on this season, Hale’s experience of a near-death moment and choosing to shed a part of herself is already having consequences on themselves, and potentially the world, as she readies an army of hosts. We’ll have to wait until next season to truly see what her goals are, but I think it’s safe to say she’s the one to worry about.
This growth did come at the expense of William’s arc, but their swap out for a new Man in Black still gives Ed Harris a lot to do next season while putting a bow on William’s story…at least for now. I can’t confirm that he actually died yet…
What Did Bernard See?
Given the post credits scene, I’m guessing season 4 is going to flash back to Bernard’s moments in the Sublime because dang he was in there a very long time. It’s possible he got sidetracked by whatever the hosts have created during their time there. I also have a sneaking suspicion that time may work differently, possibly running faster than what we experience here. It’s entirely possible Bernard has had a long time to contemplate humanity and host future during his time there.
Loose Ends
- I jumped off my couch when I saw Lawrence take his mask off. This was such a nice touch here at the end of the season.
- Military doing exercises inside Delos really should have been a no-brainer but once Dolores said it, I slapped my forehead. Honestly, it’s an answer to the “how did she pick Caleb?” thread that’s so obvious in hindsight that umm yeah, it hurts.
- Serac being Rehoboam’s puppet isn’t surprising in the slightest. To be fair, I didn’t call that particular wrinkle, but I did suspect that the AI was going to play a larger part than original telegraphed.
- I really hope next season gives us more Marshawn Lynch and Lena Waithe. Their moments were small, but I always enjoyed their moments on screen.
Final Thoughts
Honestly, that finale was a lot of fun. Season 3 was very up and down for me, with solid revelations each episode, but a wide range of emotions regarding how William, Bernard, and Maeve’s storylines were handled. Ultimately, I like the torch pass that Dolores has effectively given to those characters to shape the world with their own choices for the first time.
Once you realize the plan wasn’t to destroy humanity and what Dolores’ true motivations were, there was a lot of anxiety with this season that melts away and really makes a lot more sense. I’ll be eager to go back and watch a few moments in season two that showcase this the best and see what else I may have missed this season. I somehow doubt we’ve actually seen the last of Dolores or at least in this form. We know her clones are still out there kicking and may join forces to take down Hale when the time comes.