Westworld‘s third season is officially coming to a close, but not before completely shifting its status quo in the process. The season finale brought its mind-bending new conflict to an unexpected close, while also providing more insight into the world of Delos. Surprisingly, the episode provided another bit of worldbuilding regarding the parks in Delos’ facility — including one with some heartbreaking repercussions. Obviously, spoilers for the Season 3 finale of Westworld, “Crisis Theory”, below! Only look if you want to know!
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The episode opened with Caleb Nichols (Aaron Paul) being led to another copy of Dolores’ body, which he was instructed to put her pearl inside of. Once she awoke, Caleb demanded answers about who or what she was — and she quickly provided them. As she made him realize, he had actually dealt with hosts before, through training exercises at what was simply known to her as “Park Five”. In a sequence, we saw Caleb and other soldiers training in a modern-day city square, and being tasked with shooting hosts playing terrorists and saving some host civilians.
During one of the exercises, Caleb realized that one of the hosts was actually a duplicate of himself, and that Delos had been recording data of everything he did and thought, not unlike how they built profiles on Westworld’s guests. The sequence then ended with some of the other soldiers suggesting that they experience “the spoils of war”, alluding that they would sexually assault the female hosts they’d saved. As we learn later on in the episode, Caleb turned down that offer — and two of the women there were Dolores and Hanaryo (Tao Okamoto).
So, for those keeping track, this is the fifth of six parks that has been confirmed to exist within the Westworld universe, after Westworld, The Raj, Shogunworld, and whatever the heck that Game of Thrones-inspired park is. That potentially leaves one more park still unaccounted for, depending on whether or not the WWII-themed “Warworld” simulation that Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) went through earlier this season was actually inspired by a real park. If not, that certainly leaves a wealth of new time periods or possibilities for the elusive sixth park to actually be.
This provides an interesting bit of context for how Delos operates its park, especially as the show has a fourth season (and potentially fifth and sixth seasons) left of stories to tell.
What do you think of the latest park to be unveiled on Westworld? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
All three seasons of Westworld are available to stream on HBO Go and HBO Now.