Hold onto your cowboy hats and open your eyes. Everyone's favorite infuriating free-will mind game — by that I of course mean HBO's Westworld — returns on Sunday.
It's been a year and a half since that doozy of a finale for season two, so there are naturally a lot of questions on our mind. Mainly, what the heck happened last season? Even the most dedicated fans likely had a hard time keeping track of what was reality, and what wasn't. Here are 15 questions we still have going into the new season.
1. Who's in Dolores' pearls?
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
At the end of Westworld season two, we see Dolores — who was temporarily occupying the body of an android that looks like Delos CEO Charlotte Hale — making off with five "pearls," each of which holds the consciousness of a host. But we have no idea who they are! While Teddy (James Marsden), her cowboy lover, would be an obvious choice, we can probably rule him out: Dolores evidently left him in the "Valley Beyond," that heaven-for-robots into which the majority of the hosts escaped at the end of season two. Maeve will definitely be back, but the end of season two made it look like the technicians Felix and Sylvester will be the ones to revive her.
So who's left? Dolores might have taken her father, Peter Abernathy, or Angela, the greeter-turned-cult-leader who she has a special relationship with. She could have possibly taken Clementine, another first generation host, too. One host it seems almost certain she took, though, is Bernard, who we learn in the finale that Dolores has painstakingly resurrected after killing him, apparently for the sole purpose of having an enemy (season three had to happen somehow).
2. Is Evan Rachel Wood returning to Westworld?
You might be wondering about this one, since the demure-farm-girl-turned-vengeful-killer Dolores (Wood) installed her consciousness into an android version of Charlotte Hale, played by Tessa Thompson, in the season two finale. But at the end of the season, we see the Charlotte Hale robot walk off with the blond Evan Rachel Wood-version of Dolores — apparently meaning a different host Dolores smuggled out of the park is occupying Charlotte's body in this scene. To make a long story short, Wood will be back for the third season of Westworld, since Dolores has her regular body back now.
3. Right, okay, but then who the heck is in Charlotte Hale's body?
Great question! Who knows!
4. Whatever happened to Maeve?
Last we saw Maeve, she was out-of-order and being eyed by the technicians Felix and Sylvester, who are apparently going to attempt to "salvage" her. Actress Thandie Newton appears in the season three trailer as well, so we hopefully haven't seen the last of Westworld's "witchy" madam.
5. Who else is going to come back from the dead?
If making it through two seasons of this show has taught us anything, it's that no one ever dies. Who's going to be back this season, in some form or another? Lee Sizemore, the writer who goes out in a blaze of glory to save Maeve and her team? William's (Ed Harris) daughter Emily, who he shot dead after mistaking her for one of Ford's tricks? Teddy, who committed suicide after Dolores changed his personality to be unconscionably aggressive? Elsie, the engineer who gets shot by Charlotte Hale when she threatens to expose that Delos has been photocopying people's brains for 30 years in an attempt to achieve immortality? Or Charlotte, who is shot by Dolores while Dolores is in the guise of Hale's own mechanical doppelganger?
6. Is that Aaron Paul in the trailer?
Yep, Paul — aka Jesse from Breaking Bad — is joining Westworld for the third season as a character named Caleb. He is apparently "a construction worker and petty criminal who, like the robots in the park, exists in his own loop," according to TV Insider. Caleb is in cahoots with characters played by Lena Waithe and Marshawn Lynch (why not), and apparently will team up with Dolores in some form or another based on the trailer.
7. And is that Vincent Cassel in the trailer, too?
Also yes — he's playing some fancy guy named Serac who tasks Maeve with killing Dolores.
8. Is Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) a robot?
Apparently! Trust no one!
9. What happened to William, aka The Man in Black?
We learn in season two that William is actually a successful version of a human who's achieved a sort of immortality by having his consciousness uploaded into a host body, something William himself was never able to achieve with the consciousness of Jim Delos. In a post-credits scene after the finale, it becomes clear that William is being "tested" by a host-replica of his daughter, Emily, the same way he once tested Delos.
10. How many more times is William going to get shot and not die?
At least now that we know he's a host, the fact that he's constantly getting shot and not dying has started to make a little more sense. Still, I give it at least half a dozen.
11. What crazy deus ex machinas are they going to think up for this season?
One of the most annoying things about Westworld is the way that people are constantly having guns pointed at their heads, and then something really distracting (competing gunfight; bulls) happens to ensure they aren't actually killed. Hopefully that tapers off a bit more in the new season, but I wouldn't entirely count on it.
12. Will we ever see or hear about the other three parks?
We've seen three Delos Destination parks so far out of an apparent six: Westworld, the Raj, and Shogun World. In the trailer for season three, we see images from what looks like Italy during World War II — is Naziworld a thing? Will we see the rest of the parks in the new season? The world-building is one of the strongest aspects of the show, so I sure hope so.
13. Are the flies in Westworld also robots?
The bulls are, the horses are, and the dogs are, so I'm just genuinely curious.
14. What songs are going to be covered?
Last season we heard "Seven Nation Army" on a sitar, a piano-rendition of "Heart-Shaped Box," and the trailer for season three is set to a version of "Sweet Child O' Mine" like you've never heard it before. The super-talented Ramin Djawadi is the composer on Westworld — he also worked on the fantastic music in Game of Thrones — so I can't wait to see what covers this season will hold.
15. What's actually real in this show?
Your guess is as good as mine!
Will California's EV mandate survive Trump, SCOTUS challenge?
'Underneath the noise, however, there’s an existential crisis'
2024: the year of distrust in science
