Major Westworld Season 3 Death Was Right in Front of Us All Along

Westworld‘s third season came to a close on Sunday night, but not before shifting essentially all of its principal characters into a new status quo. The episode featured quite a few deaths, character returns, and a fascinating new mystery going into Season 4. While a lot of elements of the finale were almost too complex to predict, it looks like one key detail was hiding in plain sight. As some noticed in the weeks leading up to the Season 3 finale, it appeared as if the first teaser poster, which showed a host skeleton on its knees in front of a cityscape, was really Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood).

Now that we’ve seen the Season 3 finale – and, particularly, Dolores’ fate in one key sequence – this poster takes on a whole other meaning. The robot skeleton can be seen with two scraps of fabric attached, which appeared to come from the farmer’s daughter dress that she wore in Westworld. In the final act of the Season 3 finale, Dolores returned to a virtual version of a field in Westworld, where she tried to convince Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) to work to help humanity. Throughout the sequence, Dolores was wearing that farmer’s daughter dress — and she appeared to “die” shortly after.

Of course, we know that Westworld always has another trick or two up its sleeve, so it will be interesting to see if and how she ultimately factors into Season 4 and beyond. While nearly every aspect of television is currently on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Wood recently hinted that Dolores’ future on the series could be up in the air.

“I think a lot of things are still unknown given how the finale ended,” Wood said on a recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “I think obviously it’s been proven, you know, it’s quite hard to get rid of characters, but I do think certain things are final.”

What do you think of Dolores’ “death” hiding in plain sight all throughout Season 3 of Westworld? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!