Westworld Reveals the Big Bad of Season 3

Westworld has been venturing into a brave new world in its third season, completely changing what everyone thought they knew about the advanced robotic park. After the season premiere followed Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) in her mission in the “real world”, this week dove back into the journey of Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) — and quickly made things more complicated. In the process, Maeve – and the viewers – were introduced to the series’ newest and most ominous villain yet. Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Westworld, “The Winter Line”, below! Only look if you want to know!

The episode opened with Maeve waking up in “Warworld” — a new World War II-themed fantasy set in the park. After realizing that Hector (Rodrigo Santoro) didn’t recognize her in this new park, she realized she was trapped in some sort of bizarre new simulation. She then woke up in Delos’ labs, where Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman) informed her that Warworld was close to The Forge, where the digital souls of Maeve’s daughter and dozens of other hosts would be. Maeve decided to re-enter Warworld and escape to The Forge with Sizemore — before understanding that he was actually a simulation of himself as well.

Maeve then determined that everything she was seeing and experiencing was actually a construct, and that she would need to break her pearl out of some sort of mysterious archive in order to escape. She proceeded to do just that — and soon woke up in a white dress in the “real world”. There, she was greeted by Engerraund Serac (Vincent Cassel), a mysterious man who introduced himself as one of the architects of “Rehoboam”, the company that Liam Dempsey Jr. (John Gallagher Jr.) and those at Incite have been working on.

He then told Maeve that he had brought her back online to enlist her help in the fight against Dolores, and ordered Maeve to kill her. Maeve questioned Serac’s plan, and prepared to stab him with a knife — only for Serac to use a remote to freeze her motor functions, and threaten that she needs to do his bidding the next time he asks.

While it’s still unclear exactly what Serac wants, his entrance is certainly ominous, especially since he is able to manipulate and physically control Maeve – something that no one in the park was able to do in previous seasons. There’s also the nature of Rehoboam, a project named after the Biblical heir of King Solomon (the trailer announcing Season 3’s premiere date references “Solomon builds” being put in place in 2039). As some have begun to theorize, the Rehoboam project could make humanity be stuck on a sort of closed loop, not unlike what the hosts experience in Delos’ control. The fact that Serac is tied to that – and wants to stop Dolores from taking control of humanity herself – could make things really complicated.

Westworld airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.