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Westworld ratings may not be what they were when the show first arrived, but season three still attracted enough viewers to earn a fourth season renewal, with a total of six seasons expected.
You have to wonder if this was previously up in the air though. Season three ended very neatly, as though the showrunners were hedging their bets in case they weren’t brought back for another. With new villain Serac dealt with, Maeve and Caleb surveyed a burning Los Angeles from a bridge at the close, aghast at the chaos in the city but heartened by the fresh start for humanity now that it’s free of Serac’s algorithms.
This turning of the page presents a ton of possibilities for Westworld going forward, which we’ll examine here along with the few loose ends that season three did leave behind.
The host and humans are free. Now what?
The stage is set for a new world order in Westworld’s alternate version of Earth. Millions, perhaps billions, of people have just discovered that their lives were being manipulated by an all-powerful AI that stripped them of their free will. Cities will continue to burn. Governments will be overthrown. Hierarchies will be up-ended.
Westworld seems poised to get political, with new factions and dogmas set to rise from the ashes of revolt. It will be interesting to see how the hosts figure into this. The outbreak in Westworld was known to Serac and his cronies, but it seems the average joe still isn’t aware that hosts now roam among them. This surely can’t last long though, what with all the sub-machine gun japes that have been happening in broad daylight, and you could see the human population polarising when it comes to what rights hosts should be afforded. As the Dolores-appointed leader of the humans, Caleb will surely be advocating for the hosts, but will this be a case of zionism, or can humans and hosts co-exist on the same streets?
What will Bernard do (after taking a long shower?)
In the season 3 finale’s post credits sequence, we saw Bernard wake up in the real world again after going on one hell of a field trip. Covered in dust, it seems he spent months, if not years in the Forge/Valley Beyond/Sublime, where, he told Stubbs, he was looking for “an answer to what comes after the end of the world”.
Was he just gaily running through a meadow and playing softball with Maeve’s daughter in there, or did he experiment with different forms of peaceful government and society in the hope of helping implement one in the real world?
Voters might not want to listen to the socio-economical musings of a robot, so expect Bernard to team up with Caleb next season. After all, Bernard is part of Dolores’ plan too, Dolores having given him the key to the Sublime.
Is Dolores really dead this time?
Dolores is never dead. When she died in season three episode seven, it took Caleb all of 45 minutes to locate a spare Dolores body in a nearby lock-up.
Then again, her Pearl does seem to have been wiped this time, so maybe that version of Dolores truly is done for, unless a copy exists on the cloud somewhere in Delos HQ.
We do know, however, that a version of Dolores still resides in the Charlotte Hale-shaped host. But this isn’t the karate-kicking, revolutionary Dolores we know and love/hate, but one that is rapidly changing and establishing a new personality and psyche.
What’s next for Maeve?
Sassy comments, of course! If Maeve had her way, sassy comments would be at the very heart of society, and Westworld would be turned into a reeducation centre where hosts are trained in pithy double entendre.
Aside from this, Maeve will probably help Caleb’s uprising. “We’ll be reunited, just not today,” she told him of her daughter. This could mean she’ll ultimately retreat to the Sublime, but more likely she wants to make the real world safe enough that her daughter can rejoin her there.
Is William dead too?
It looks that way, given he was last seen getting his throat sliced, but technology is so advanced in this show that the wound could be an easy fix with a laser scalpel, it’s hard to say.
Prior to his run-in with Hale-ores, William was busy getting his assets unfrozen and mounting a return to the real world. Should he survive, he feels on a collision course with Caleb, who shares a lot in common with William, or at least the younger version of him.
What is of more immediate significance is Hale-ores’ new Man in Black-shaped sidekick. She knows that William was aiming to “save the world” for the humans, while she is trying to do the same but for her kind. Most likely, she will get the host William to pass himself off as the real William, and exploit his ownership of Delos.
‘Westworld’ season 4 is yet to be given a release date
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