Westworld has been consistently outdoing itself in its third season, as the HBO series ventures out into the “real world”. After two seasons of mystery boxes and confusing mysteries, the latest stretch of episodes has weaved in a whole new kind of mystery, especially with regards to the new characters that have entered the series. One of the most elusive characters in the series has been Engerraund Serac (Vincent Cassel) — until now. In addition to weaving an action-packed, heart-stopping episode, the latest installment provided a significant amount of detail on what makes Serac tick. Obviously, spoilers for this week’s episode of Westworld, “Genre”, below! Only look if you want to know!
The episode opened with Serac narrating about his and his brother’s “origin story”, which was set in motion by the destruction of France when they were children. Serac and his brother determined that the world was too chaotic and needed to be controlled by a god — and that they would create the technology to accomplish that. As young men, the two brothers created their Rehoboam technology — a giant orb that would be able to predict and assess the futures of everyone on Earth. To do this, they partnered with Liam Dempsey Sr., who had access to the entire world’s data through Incite.
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After several failed attempts, the Seracs proved that their system could work by successfully predicting the future of the stock market in fifteen-minute increments. While Dempsey only cared about the money of it all, the Seracs saw the ability to reshape all of society with it — or, as much as they could, outside of the “outliers” of society who were too unpredictable. At the same time, Serac’s brother began to grow insane from the weight of Rehoboam’s power, ultimately becoming an outlier himself. Serac decided to use the technology to control these outliers by sending them off to war or into some other tragic scenario, thereby changing their fate. When Dempsey began to doubt Serac’s approach to Rehoboam, and threatened to go public about it, Serac drove him out into the desert and brutally murdered him. In Serac’s mind, any scenario where the truth about Rehoboam went public would result in global extinction.
By the end of the episode, we found out that Serac had been telling his life story to Dolores, who had been accessing files about him. Dolores threatened to expose Rehoboam’s technology to the world, to Serac’s dismay.
Serac’s backstory adds a completely new angle to what we’ve seen of him thus far, and also makes the rivalry between himself and Dolores a little bit more clear-cut. To an extent, Serac doesn’t seem to see himself as a true villain, as his goal is to save the world from its own impulsive tendencies. While it’s unclear how things will play out throughout the season’s remaining three episodes, that existential conflict – of whether or not someone has free will, or is at the mercy of a higher power – feels incredibly fitting for Westworld. It’s something that the show’s hosts have been dealing with ever since the show began, it’s just that the scale of that conflict has gotten much more real.
What do you think of Serac’s backstory on Westworld? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
Westworld airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.
