Westworld: SPOILER Dies in “Decoherence”

Westworld viewers have already been taken on quite a journey throughout the show’s third season, as the lives of Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood), Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton), and much of the show’s ensemble have been thrown out into the “real world”. As viewers have seen, everyday life in the show’s version of the 2050s also has issues with agency, identity, and technological control. That was especially the case in the series’ latest episode, where the aftermath of the series’ latest events had some surprisingly-deadly consequences. Obviously, spoilers for this week’s episode of Westworld, “Decoherence”, below! Only look if you want to know!

Much of the episode revolved around the Dolores clone pretending to be Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson), as the real version of Charlotte had been serving as a mole for Engerraund Serac’s (Vincent Cassel) hostile takeover of Delos. Charlotte arrived at Delos for a meeting between the board and Serac, just as the ramifications of Dolores’ Incite hack began to cause riots on the street. When Charlotte arrived, one of the board members was murdered by Serac’s men in broad daylight, which made her doubt if it was worth following through with the plan. She called Dolores, saying that she was worried that Serac would target the real Charlotte’s family — her estranged husband, Jake Hale (Michael Ealy), and their son, Nathan (Jaxon Thomas Williams). Dolores told her to stick with the mission at hand, which involved copying the hosts’ data before Serac ordered it to be destroyed.

As the episode went on, Charlotte managed to do just that, but was quickly targeted by Serac, who realized that she was really Dolores. Charlotte panicked, letting off a bomb of gas in the board meeting and trying to shoot Serac, before realizing that he was only in the building as a hologram.

At the same time, Serac had helped hook Maeve up to another simulation, in hopes of helping her find more hosts to fight against Dolores. Just as Maeve had reunited with Hector (Rodrigo Santoro) in the simulation, Charlotte made her way down to the room where they were hooked up to the simulation, before pulling out Hector’s pearl and crushing it with her hands.

Charlotte then tried to reunite with Jake and Nathan, in hopes that they would be able to escape the city and go somewhere safe. As they began to drive away, their car was exploded in a fiery blaze, with one of Serac’s men seemingly carrying out the job. Hale’s host body crawled out from the wreckage, devastated at what had happened.

The deaths of Hector and Charlotte’s family aren’t the only carnage in the episode (countless Delos goons are killed, William’s therapist commits suicide, and William eventually brutally murders younger duplicates of himself while inside a VR simulation), but they definitely change the trajectory of the season going forward. Assuming that Hector is really dead, that might be enough to officially push Maeve against Dolores’ crusade, which could set up major things in the conflict to come. And Charlotte’s car wreck is absolutely heartbreaking, but does provide an interesting cover, as Serac and company might not realize that she’s still alive.

Westworld airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.