The Season 3 finale of Westworld came a lot quicker on HBO TV than fans might be used to, as the eight episode run was shorter than the usual ten. But now that it’s over, we now know the fate of the hosts and humans that have been warring, as well as the fates of Evan Rachel Wood‘s Dolores, Thandie Newton‘s Maeve, and Ed Harris’ William AKA the Man in Black in an epic season finale that once again changes everything we thought we knew about the future of this series.
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Warning: Spoilers for Westworld Season 3 finale, “Crisis Theory,” below.
In the episode, Serac’s forces finally capture Dolores and Caleb (Aaron Paul) with the help of Maeve, and the latter two are forced to watch as the original Westworld host’s mind is stripped of all her memories, effectively and slowly killing her. Maeve finally deduces that Serac is controlled by the artificial intelligence known as Rehoboam, and not the other way around, and fights back.
While Maeve and Caleb wrest control away from Serac, Dolores’ final act before death is to grant control of the human-controlling A.I. to Caleb and let the human decide. Before, Bernard hypothesized that Dolores was programmed with a poetic sense of justice and that she was using a human to bring about their downfall, but Maeve learns that Dolores saw the beauty in life and was giving a human — one who has been controlled his entire life — the free will to determine the fate of his species.
But Dolores’ fate is seemingly certain, and it looks like Evan Rachel Wood’s time on the series has come to an end — much like Jason Marsden’s Teddy was given an ending in the previous season.
We find out that Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) has granted access to “the promised land,” where all of the host memories are stored away from human interference, and it is known to be a place of no return. Bernard enters the area and it seems like his character has made his exit from the series as well.
The show then cuts to a post-credits scene where the Man in Black shoots his way through a shell company that he thinks is creating bodies for hosts, and he’s not surprised when he finds the Charlotte Hale version of Dolores (also Evan Rachel Wood) overseeing the manufacturing of many bodies. She reveals that she’s created a host of the Man in Black who can predict everything the real William is saying.
This likely teases that Hale has used the Rehoboam algorithm to perfect host copies of humans, as the Man in Black swiftly kills his real-life counterpart. It’s a brutal end for the real William, while also allowing the show to keep Harris on staff as a the fan-favorite version of the villainous character, more reminiscent of his Season One portrayal.
Finally, the last shot of the series jumps forward to the future to reveal that Bernard didn’t stay in that paradise forever, and he has since woken up in a dilapidated state some time in the future.
So while we know we will see Jeffrey Wright and Ed Harris’ characters again, the future is uncertain for Evan Rachel Wood. Her character of Dolores was widely regarded as the main focal point of this series, and her battle to free her fellow hosts became the main crux of the show. If this is the end of Dolores’ journey, at least she received an amazing sendoff.
All episodes of the three seasons of Westworld are now available on HBO Go, HBO Now, and other HBO-enabled streaming platforms.
