Westworld: Season 3 Finale Post-Credits Scene Explained

Welp, another season of Westworld is officially in the books. The HBO series brought its third season to a close on Sunday night, but not without dropping a few metaphorical (and literal) bombs along the way. The Season 3 finale ended on an unexpected note for a myriad of characters -- but it wasn't done from there. If you're finding yourself scratching your head at what happened in the finale, and in the immediate moments afterwards, we're here to help. Obviously, spoilers for this week's season finale of Westworld, "Crisis Theory", below! Only look if you want to know!

The final moments of the episode ended the conflict between Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood), Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton), and Engerraund Serac (Vincent Cassel). After trying and failing to find the "key" to Rehoboam inside of Dolores' body, Dolores found a way to convince Maeve to join hers and Caleb's crusade, while revealing that she'd actually hidden the key in another host's body, just before uploading her consciousness into Rehoboam. This allowed Caleb to be able to control Rehoboam, and Serac and his men to die at the hands of Maeve in the process.

Then, we came back to Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) and Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth), who were hiding out in a scuzzy motel room. Bernard helped Stubbs nurse his wounds, before realizing that the key was actually inside of his mind. He then put on a sort of VR headset, which allowed him to access something -- before going offline and dying. We then saw Maeve and Caleb standing on a bridge in Los Angeles, just as Bernard's actions appeared to lead to massive explosions in the city. Channeling Fight Club, we zoomed out on Maeve and Caleb watching over this "new world", as an instrumental version of Pink Floyd played in the background.

If that wasn't enough, Westworld capped things off with a post-credits scene, which showed William/The Man in Black (Ed Harris) arriving at Delos at daylight. After antagonizing a few of the guards there, he found his way to the underground research lab, where the Dolores host inside of Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) was conducting experiments. As Charlotte told William, he was actually going to save the world for their kind -- just as a host version of himself, dressed in full Man in Black gear, stormed out of the darkness. He fought William and ultimately slit his throat, saying that he'd finally reached the end. We then saw an almost-endless room of host-making machines, rebuilding the population that had been destroyed earlier in the season. We then returned to Bernard in the hotel room, covered in orange dust and dirt, as his body was finally brought back online.

This leaves a wide array of questions for Westworld to answer in its upcoming fourth season, while also completely changing the landscape of the show in a major way. Now that the world is veering on apocalypse, the place that Maeve, Caleb, and possibly Dolores will have in that is certainly interesting. That status quo shift also allows Hale and other hosts to seemingly be able to infiltrate society, including (finally) a host version of The Man in Black. There's also the question of how far into the future Bernard's storyline is now taking place, and what we could learn about the show's canon from there.

What do you think of Westworld's Season 3 post-credits scenes? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!