The Biggest Question That Was Answered In Westworld Season 3
HBO's Westworld had a lot to answer going into its third season, as mysteries got tossed around in the season 2 finale. What was going on with William? Whose personality pearls were smuggled out of the park? Plenty of answers popped up across season 3, and the most satisfying of these came when audiences finally learned what Dolores had been up to all along.
Looking back, Dolores's plan was actually pretty simple — it's kind of surprising that more people didn't guess what was happening from the start, frankly.
See, Dolores had become aware of Rehoboam, the supercomputer so advanced that it could accurately predict the trajectory of every human life on the planet, calculating causality with surgical precision. Rehoboam (named after the son of King Solomon and first King of Judah) had become so integral to society's ability to function that it was essentially the hub of all activity, be it social, political, or economic. Dolores, who started life as a puppet being controlled by unknowable and surreptitious forces, takes umbrage at the idea.
In another parallel to Dolores's life, there's Caleb, an ex-military operative and gig-based criminal with a head full of altered memories. Dolores enlists Caleb's help after having met him years prior during a military training operation at a Delos park in which Caleb stopped his fellow soldiers from getting all unspeakable on the hosts.
Oh, and then also there's the Forge of it all — the section of the park containing the brain patterns of previous guests that's also used as a server for the utopian host paradise referred to as the Valley Beyond. Rehoboam's co-creator, Serac, who was secretly being controlled by Rehoboam the whole time, comes to believe that Dolores has the key to the Forge hidden inside her memories.
See? There's really not much to it.
Westworld's complicated delights have complicated ends
And like, it just gets more boilerplate from there, narrative-wise. Dolores is taken to Serac, who hooks her into Rehoboam to try and find the key to the Forge. The supercomputer runs through Dolores's memories, deleting them one by one while looking for the information that it needs.
As she reaches her final moments, Dolores draws Maeve (oh yeah, Maeve's there too) into her mind and explains that she doesn't have the key, and that the plan was always to inspire Maeve and Caleb to work for a better world, potentially freeing humanity from the same fate that the hosts suffered at the park, living as hapless puppets. Despite her anger, she has come to the conclusion that it's not up to hosts to decide how the human race should end, which comes off as a little preachy for someone who's spent the last two seasons killing anyone that wasn't born in a gyroscopic milk bath, but whatever.
In the end of Westworld's third season, Dolores uses her link to Rehoboam to transfer its control from Serac to Caleb, who orders the computer to delete itself. Dolores's dream of a truly free world is realized through the destruction of civilization's most advanced artificial intelligence, allowing mankind's destiny to carry on free from the influence of machines. It's a beautiful ending, if you ignore the fact that she's a machine who influences mankind's destiny.
You can stream Westworld now on HBO Max.