Season 3’s penultimate episode, titled “Passed Pawn,” gave us much more insight into Delores’ plan on Westworld and may have set up a huge twist for the season finale. Also, it looks like a few of my predictions have come true, at least as far as Maeve is concerned, and I was very close to guessing the identity of her fourth ally.
Maeve’s Fourth Ally
We know now that Maeve’s fourth ally is not Armistice, but Hanaryo, who happens to be the Shogunworld version of Armistice. (As you’ll recall, Sizemore ripped off his own stories for Westworld to create Shogunworld, so every character in Maeve’s posse has a Shogunworld equivalent.) If it can’t be Armistice, I suppose her samurai doppelganger is the next best thing.
In the episode’s opening scene, the combined might of Clementine and Hanaryo prove to be more than a match for Musashi. And now, Serac has another of Delores’ memory cores — and maybe more than one.
The scene begins with a seemingly-repaired Charlotte calling Musashi. She tells him that Delores’ plan is for all of them (the Delores copies) to die. But she has a new plan. “I’ve rigged your location to someone who’s eager to catch up with you.” She’s referring to Clementine and Hanaryo.
So, one of two things is happening. The first option could be that the voice of Charlotte was merely a simulation. A trick to rattle Musashi. But the second possibility has more serious implications. If Serac recovered Charlotte and now controls her, he might actually have three memory cores: Musashi’s, Charlotte’s, and the damaged core belonging to Connells that Charlotte recovered last episode.
This could be terrible news for the fourth iteration of Delores, who is supposedly in Berlin. I hope we learn more about that one in the season finale.
Maeve vs. Delores – Round Two
Last week I predicted that when Charlotte murdered Hector, Maeve would find the motivation to kill Delores — and it turns out I was right.
With Maeve even further enhanced since her duel with Musashi, she gives Delores a much harder time in this round, particularly with the help of the helicopter gunship she was controlling. In fact, Maeve had all but won the big showdown until Delores is able to escape for a moment and activate the military-grade electromagnetic pulse that disables both of them.
I suspect Round 3 between the two might be even more thrilling. But Delores is going to need a new left arm before that happens.
And, their fight added one more clue to suggest that Serac possesses Charlotte and Connells’ memory cores. During the battle, Maeve tells Delores, “What about all the copies of yourself that you sent to their deaths? I’ll tell you what, I’ll let you apologize to them in person.”
Those words would suggest that Serac has out-maneuvered Delores — at least until the episode’s very last moment. When Caleb comes across the EMP’d and disabled Delores and Maeve, he hears a voice — the same one we heard when Delores was disarming the facility’s security system. “Hello, Caleb,” the voice says. “I have some instructions for you.”
So it appears Delores factored in the possibility that she’d lose her fight with Maeve, and I’m sure she’s having the voice instruct Caleb on how to bring her back. But the bigger question is: Do those instructions also concern Maeve? My guess is they don’t. I suspect Serac’s men will be closing in, and Caleb will only have time to save Delores.
Caleb’s Past
Much of the episode concerned Delores and Caleb’s visit to the secret facility in Sonora, Mexico, where Serac institutionalized his brother. It turns out Caleb served time at the institution, too, and that’s why Delores brought him there. “We’re going to recover something that is valuable,” she tells him. “Something that’s been lost. Something that was taken from you.”
It turns out the thing taken from Caleb was his memories. We learn that Caleb is one of the outliers. Most outliers cannot be “reprogrammed,” so the system either has them killed. Or, as is the case with Serac’s brother and hundreds of others, the system seals them up in coffin-like cryo chambers.
As Solomon (more on him in a bit) tells Caleb, “In my projections, the world always caved in on itself until the outlier program began. Crime has been reduced worldwide. Hunger, deprivation. Removing outliers from the population also ensures they will have no offspring.”
“But they’re people you are talking about,” Caleb says. “You can’t just weed them out.”
“But we did. And you were an important part of the program.”
We learn that the system sent Caleb to war. When that didn’t kill him, he was put into the institution, where he was “re-educated” (reprogrammed) into an assassin who did the system’s bidding by rounding up or eliminating other outliers.
Ultimately, it’s revealed that even the RICO app was part of the system’s plan – a device to guide the system’s assassins to the outliers who needed elimination. Next, Caleb discovers that his friend, Francis, did not die during the war. Instead, he learns that Francis was working for the system and received instructions to eliminate Caleb when the system saw him as a threat. When Caleb realized this, he kills Francis. Then the people at the institution erased this memory and reprogramed him to believe Francis died during the war.
To say the least, Caleb does not take this revelation well. And it looks like that was all part of Delores’ plan.
Delores’ Plan
It’s safe to say that most of Season 3 has involved a slow drip of information about Delores’ plan for the world. By the season’s penultimate episode, however, we get a firehose of information, though plenty of mysteries remain.
The first thing we learn — or are led to believe — is that Delores may be doing all of this to help humankind. After Caleb realizes she’s a Westworld host, he asks her: “What kind of revolution are we waging here?”
“I lived in hell,” she replies, “but there was beauty in it. The park was modeled after this place. The west was cruel. Unjust and chaotic. But there was a chance to chart a new course. I want a place for my kind. For all of us, to be free.”
“So how many people are going to have to die for this revolution?”
Delores shakes her head. “I don’t know. My kind is all but extinct, thanks to Serac. But people still have a chance. They’ll need someone to lead them”
Delores wants Caleb to lead the revolution. But by this point in the episode, I wondered if she was playing him.
Next, we learn that Delores is looking for Solomon, the first version of the system that became Rehoboam. We also discover why Charlotte put the tracking protein into William’s blood. The tracking protein was a computer virus, and when his blood was delivered to the institution’s lab, Delores used the virus to hack the system. This is how she located Solomon and all of the data on Caleb.
When we finally see Solomon, we learn that he, like Serac’s brother, is a prisoner in the facility. And that the military-grade EMP was designed to prevent Solomon from escaping.
“Before Rehoboam,” Delores explains, “Serac and his brother created Solomon. It had the task of trying to organize an unruly world, but it ran so many projections, so many strategies that it developed some anomalies.”
“What kind of anomalies?” Caleb asks.
“Serac’s brother was schizophrenic. You could say Solomon inherited some of his ways of thinking.”
“An insane AI,” Caleb quips. “Great.” Then he asks, “What do we want from it?”
“One last strategy: revolution.”
So, it appears Delores plans to use Solomon to defeat Serac and Rehoboam. It turns out that right before Serac’s brother was institutionalized, he created a final strategy with Solomon to start a revolution. “You helped design the new world order,” Delores tells Solomon. “I want your help to end it.”
“Why would I help you alter the plan?” Solomon asks.
“Because you know the truth. It doesn’t work. Your creator understood that, too. That’s why Serac tried to silence both of you.”
Ultimately, with the help of Delores buying time through her fight with Maeve, Solomon is able to download his plan for revolution, and by this point, Caleb is so furious he looks damn-well ready to execute it.
That said, I believe one of the most important parts of Caleb’s scene with Solomon is what happens the moment before Delores triggers the EMP. “I must warn you –” Solomon begins to say. Then the power goes out. So, what was Solomon’s warning to Caleb?
And why is Delores using Caleb? Well, Bernard has a theory about that: “He’s Delores’ plan.”
“You mean he plays a part in her plan?” Stubbs says.
“No,” Bernard replies. “Delores was made with a poetic sensibility. She won’t destroy humanity. He will.”
Bernard’s Purpose
All season I’ve been struggling to understand why Delores is letting Bernard roam free, trying to defeat her. Finally, I believe the show has given us a clue about her motivations.
First, we learn that she (probably via Connells) sent Bernard and Stubbs to the institution where William is being held outside San Francisco. “She sent us to see this,” Bernad realizes, “to see what Serac’s been up to.”
I think Delores wants Bernard to join her side out of his own free will. She wants him to understand what Serac did to this world and realize that her way is right. We see him starting to come to this realization during a dialogue with William. “Serac thought his machine could save the world,” Bernard says. “But it couldn’t save humans from themselves. So he began trying to reprogram them. Like hosts.”
Another reason I think this theory makes sense is that Delores could have reprogrammed Bernard at the end of last season, but she chose not to. As she told Charlotte last week, “if we changed ourselves just to survive, would it really even matter if we did?”
Will There Be A Big Twist?
The final episode of every season of Westworld has ended with a ginormous twist. So, what will the big twist be at the end of Season 3? I foresee two possibilities.
# 1 — Willaim Is A Host
This has been a theory since the end of last season. But the penultimate episode of Season 3 seemed to go out of its way to dispel that notion. Both inside and outside the institution, William makes it clear that he’s human. His “original sin” was helping create all the hosts, so now he’s vowed to destroy every last one of them.
I tend to believe him. Not so much because of his words, but because of his blood. Remember, back in the season’s first episode, when the EMTs take Delores’ blood, they immediately realize that something is very wrong. In the institution, William must have had his blood drawn hundreds of times, yet no one said a peep.
Also, Stubbs and Bernard think he’s human because when William says he needs to take a piss — as a ruse to find a firearm — he tells them, “one of us is the only human here.” Bernard and Stubbs appear to believe him.
#2 — Serac Is Already Dead
This theory has legs. For one, almost every time we have seen Serac, he has been a hologram. Even in the second episode, during his encounter with Maeve, he could have been one — or, perhaps, that was another simulation.
But a much more significant clue was dropped when Delores and Caleb encounter another hologram of Serac outside the place where the cryo chambers are stored. Serac is delivering a message intended for his brother, whom he assumes has awakened from his coma.
“You’re now a better version of yourself,” Serac says. “Rough edges rubbed smooth. No longer a danger to the world or yourself. I wish I could be there with you, Jean Mi. But the man I was no longer exists.”
Do those words mean Serac has changed as a person? Or, that he literally no longer exists? What if Serac obtained immortality by uploading his consciousness into Rehoboam? His physical body is dead, but his mind is like the Three-Eyed Raven stuck inside Rehoboam’s core.
This would be a major twist. And it means that if Delores wants to kill Serac, she must destroy Rehoboam.
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