Westworld S3E01 Explained

Westworld season 3 explores a new world. The robot Dolores has escaped from the Westworld park, and enters the real human world, in the year 2058. This season is almost like a reboot, with a new setting, new characters and a new style, but with the same technology themes, freedom and control. He also has Death Grips now. The premiere begins with a beach, just as season 2 begins on a beach and season 1 ends on a beach. Teddy once said that “where the mountains meet the sea,” the water will “wash away the past” from you, so that “you can begin again.” Westworld is removing the chaos of season 2 and starting a new story in a new world.

Or maybe it's just a damn beach. Jerry is a rich jerk in a Chinese mansion. He's angry because he's an investor in the Westworld parks, and news just broke that a hundred people died in the parks when Dolores and the hosts wreaked havoc last season. Jerry is rude and controlling towards his wife Eunice, making Jerry instantly unpleasant. We see futuristic technology, as if there are holograms that can be seen with special glasses. And there are high-tech medications called limbic pills. People have implants in their palates, and when you put an eyelash on them, it sends a digital code to your brain to change your mood.

Westworld's website says available flavors include “Zen Garden,” “Agenda Achiever,” and “Impulse.” Jerry's mansion has smart home technology, like an Alexa robot voice controlling the place. This entire human world is run by machines, making it vulnerable to machines like Dolores. Dolores arrives at night and hacks into the smart house system, cutting off the oxygen to knock everyone out. Jerry tries to get help and the system says “I'm afraid I can't do that,” which is what HAL 9000 says in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Dolores confronts Jerry and tells him that she met Jerry before: she once came to Westworld and Dolores. "You do not remember?" Dolores says – “After everything we have shared.” That's exactly what William tells Dolores in season 1.

But this time Dolores is the powerful one and the human is the helpless one. Dolores knows everything about Jerry. Because last season he went to the Forge, which records data on all the memories, DNA, and minds of everyone who visits Westworld. Then Dolores knows that Jerry murdered his last wife. She places the hologram glasses on Jerry to project images of the crime on him, haunting him like the Ghost of Christmas Past. Dolores steals money from Jerry and takes data on a company called Incite, which runs all the data technology in the world. Dolores says her goal is "The Rise of a New Species" (she wants Westworld's host robots to become her own free people), which means she will have to deal with humanity.

But Dolores says that she doesn't want to hurt anyone, unless they try to hurt her. Because Dolores has already “hurt so many people.” Last season, Dolores killed many humans and hosts who might have been innocent. Her brutality drove her lover Teddy to suicide, which seems to have changed Dolores' mind. She doesn't want to kill unless necessary. Then, when Jerry tries to kill her, she uses a hologram in her glasses to trick Jerry into dying in her pool. She tells Eunice, Jerry's wife, that he has freed her from her murdering husband. So Dolores is no longer an evil killer robot taking revenge on the entire human species.

She now fights for justice and liberation, freeing not only the hosts, but also oppressed humans like Eunice. Dolores takes a swim in Jerry's pool, which could symbolize washing away her past sins and starting over, just as Teddy said. The title of this episode is Parce Domine, a Catholic word that means “Forgive, Lord, forgive your people: do not be angry with us forever.” Dolores is less angry now: she is more merciful and just, like a benevolent god. This could make Dolores a much more sympathetic character than last season. In Los Angeles, we meet Caleb. He's the first average person we meet in this series: all the park visitors in past seasons were rich tourists, corporate types, technologists, and sadists.

Caleb is just an ordinary guy getting by in Los Angeles in 2058. He works in construction; This shot refers to a famous photograph of New York in the 1930s. But Caleb works with a robot, there are driverless cars and the whole city looks modern, clean and green. Caleb says that technology has improved some things, but Caleb feels trapped. His mother is sick, apparently with dementia or something, because she no longer recognizes him. And he can barely pay her medical bills. So Caleb turns to crime, and there's an app for that. His name is Rico and he's like Uber or Taskrabbit for crime.

His algorithm offers jobs based on his location and profile: robbery, delivery, car theft, murder. It's all anonymous, automatic, efficient, and seemingly untraceable—showrunner Jonathan Nolan says it runs on the blockchain, like something from the Deep Web. And it's gamified: You earn points, badges, and “criminal currencies,” and you rate people based on their performance, which affects the jobs you can get, like star ratings at Uber. So Rico is a “parody” of our real-world algorithmic “gig economy.” Caleb is into robberies, transports and stuff, but he chooses not to do "personal", meaning he won't murder, kidnap or stuff like that.

So Caleb is a very sympathetic character: he only commits crimes to pay his mother's medical bills. But Caleb feels stuck in a loop: These shots of Caleb waking up each morning are like Dolores waking up in Season 1. Caleb takes a job robbing an ATM, just like host Hector robs the saloon in Season 1. Hector does the same. He steals again and again because his programming tells him to, just like Caleb does these jobs for Rico, again and again, because his algorithm tells him to. Season 1 was about robots stuck in loops, this season is about humans stuck in loops, controlled by code.

Caleb meets up with some criminal friends: Ash and Giggles. Giggles is played by NFL player Marshawn Lynch, and has a moody shirt that changes depending on how he feels. Ash has a device that blocks surveillance and fires Death Grips at maximum volume. So this is a stylish cyberpunk dystopia: these guys are barely getting by, but they look good while doing it. The Westworld parks are managed by the Delos corporation. They have a reunion, after last season's massacre. And it's directed by Charlotte Hale, except we know it's not actually Charlotte: Last season, Dolores killed Charlotte and posed as her with Dolores' brain in a Charlotte body.

When Dolores left the park, she created a new Charlotte, so whose brain is in there? She maybe one of these five host brains she hit out of the park. It can't just be Dolores, because we saw Dolores with Charlotte last season. It's not Teddy, because Dolores left him at the Sublime. It's not Angela, because she exploded in the Cradle. It's not Maeve or Bernard. Maybe it could be Hector or Armistice? Or there could be a twist, like maybe it's not a host at all, but a copy of a human, like the James Delos clone. Or it could be a totally new person, like a host child.

Whoever Charlotte is, she is working with Dolores to influence Delos (she takes the company private and says "let's resume host production"). Maybe Dolores wants to continue making hosts so that her "new species" can grow. She may want the parks to continue operating because she agrees with Ford that the hosts must suffer in the park before they can become conscious, as Dolores did. To control the board, Charlotte needs approval from another board member, who is not at the meeting; It must be William. William owns Westworld, he is the majority shareholder. But for years he has not attended meetings and prefers to spend time in the park.

He should let this “machine shareholder” vote on things for him, and that's okay with Charlotte. The last time we saw William, he was alive in the park. But where is he now? Does he still control this machine? Maybe Charlotte is hacking into this machine, like Dolores is hacking into Jerry's house. Either way, Charlotte takes control and blames Bernard for the entire Westworld massacre. So Bernard is on the run. He has left his old life behind for a simpler one, like that of the Dog from Game of Thrones, with a very similar suit. Bernard works on a farm and finds an injured cow with flies buzzing around him.

In season 2, Dolores tells the story of some cows who contract a fly-borne infection. Teddy says that she would protect and help the infected cows. But Dolores said that she would kill the weak cows so that the strong cows could live. So this continues the theme of mercy versus survival: Parce Dominem. Should the weak die so that the strong can survive? Should weak humans die so the hosts can grow and prosper? Bernard tries to help the injured cow, but her human boss sends her to the slaughterhouse, just as humanity can be slaughtered, unless Dolores is merciful. Inside the slaughterhouse, humans kill animals, just as the hosts were slaughtered in the Westworld park, in the “livestock” section.

Then Bernard talks to himself, in diagnostic mode: he seems to have two different personalities. There is the more conscious human side and the more unconscious robotic side: they talk to each other, like Gollum and Smeagol in The Lord of the Rings. Bernard doesn't trust the robotic side of him and wonders if Dolores has influenced him. Because this Bernard was created by Dolores last season; maybe Dolores left some back door to hack or control Bernard's subconscious mind. Bernard's identity and mental state have always been complicated. Bernard is a host based on a human named Arnold; Arnold Weber is an anagram of Bernard Lowe.

Now, Bernard uses a false identity, Armand Delgado, which is a damaged anagram of Arnold. So Armand is an alias of a copy of a copy of a dead man, and every time he remakes himself, he changes, he rearranges himself like the letters in his name. So Bernard is confused and struggles to figure out who he is. Bernard is attacked by some workers who recognize him as a fugitive, so Bernard lets out the robotic side of him, which is a powerful fighter, it's like Eddie Brock unleashing Venom. Bernard says that he is trying to save the human race from Dolores, but they don't listen to him.

He is then forced to hurt the people he is trying to save, like that cow. As in previous seasons, Bernard's story is confusing, but at least everything seems to be happening again within one timeline. Dolores attends a fancy corporate event for Incite, the technology company that manages the world's data. Dolores has seduced the face of Incite, Liam Dempsey, and uses him to obtain information about the company. The party is full of wealth, luxury, and idiots: Liam's friend brags that his drink is worth more than most people make in a year. Meanwhile, Caleb can't pay his mother's medical bills, so this is a deeply unequal society that's not all that different from reality.

Showrunner Jonathan Nolan says this is what the world could be like if we continue the way we're going: with a small number of people with even more wealth and power, controlling everyone else through technology. Liam's friend gets high and says that nothing is real, that we are all "living in a simulation." It is a common theory that the so-called real world in this show is simply another fake reality, or another park, like Futureworld. But the showrunners are clearly interested in exploring our reality, so having this guy rant about simulations could be their way of dismissing the theory and saying this is the real world.

Dolores says that a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens evolved to make humans believe in God, which is a loose interpretation of neuroscience, but there is evidence linking the nucleus accumbens to religious experiences. So Dolores' point is that believing we are inside someone's simulation is basically the same as believing we are in a world created by a God. Either way, you're simply believing in a higher power because that's what our brains have evolved to believe: humans, like robots, can only follow its code. Dolores sees Rehoboam, a computer that processes all the data of the Incite corporation.

Her algorithm offers strategies that tell people how to live (what they should buy, what work they should do, who they should date). Incite offers “A path for all”. In season 1, Dolores believed in “one path for all,” but then realized that this was her programming, trapping her in a cycle of suffering. Humans had been free, but now they have created technology that traps them in loops as well. Dolores uses a sick cyberbike and spyglasses to listen in on a meeting between Liam and an Incite person named Martel. She says thatsomeone has been accessing Rehoboam, through Liam, so this probably means that Dolores got in by exploiting Liam's access.

Martel threatens to use Rehoboam's data to murder Liam. Liam admits to Dolores that he has no real power in Incite. The only person who controls Rehoboam is his original architect: a mysterious guy named Serac. Liam hints that Serac may have murdered Liam's father, who was Serac's business partner. Dolores is captured by Martin, Liam's tough fixer. Martin discovered that Dolores was using a false identity. So Martin uses Rico to hire someone to bring him some drugs to kill Dolores, and Caleb gets the delivery job. Martin injects Dolores with the lethal drugs, but they do nothing because she is a robot.

Dolores summons a driverless car and inside it is a copy of Martin. This is all Dolores' trap; As with Jerry, she must have used Forge data to predict and manipulate Martin. She kills Martin and replaces him with the host Martin, loyal to her. So, with Martin and Charlotte, Delores is using hosts to infiltrate powerful tech companies, to take over the human world and help the birth of the new host species. Martin's men attack and have a shootout in MacArthur Park: Dolores goes full Terminator. As a robot, she is fast and durable. But she is not invulnerable.

She walks wounded into a tunnel, where Caleb finds her. Caleb was once in the army with his partner Francis, played by Kid Cudi. But something went wrong, Francis was killed and Caleb is left traumatized. The military put him in a psychology program, but instead of a human therapist, he has to talk to a chatbot with the voice and personality of his dead friend like some shit from Black Mirror. And this Francis-bot is not like the real Francis: the robot encourages compliance with the system and "playing", when the real Francis was rebellious. Then Caleb rejects the robot and says that he needs "someone... real," and that's when he meets Dolores.

So the irony will be that the robot Dolores is the most real person in Caleb's life, because unlike everyone else stuck in a loop, Dolores follows her own plan. In season 1, Dolores fell into the arms of William, who became the Man in Black; William taught him that humans are selfish and cruel. Maybe Caleb will show Dolores that humans can be good and selfless. Showrunner Jonathan Nolan says Caleb represents "humanity, humility and kindness." But Caleb remains a mystery. He casually mentions that he was shot in the head earlier and his mother said that he is not his son.

So there are theories that Caleb is actually a robot replacement. Although that could undermine the whole good human idea. But we have to wonder if this meeting of Dolores and Caleb really is a coincidence. Caleb came to Dolores thanks to a job on the Rico app. Rico isn't supposed to be tracked, but it would be a nice twist if the criminal app was actually controlled by Incite. The easiest way to prevent rebellion is to make rebellion part of the system, right? Like in the Matrix, when the One and Zion are actually programmed by machines, or like the prison industry in the real world.

Throughout the episode, we get these shots where some system sees “divergences” and anomalies in the places Dolores and Caleb go. Maybe it's Rehoboam, who sees Dolores and Caleb as blips in the world's data. Perhaps Serac, who controls Rehoboam, deliberately brings Caleb and Dolore together for some higher plan. At the very least, Incite is screwing with Caleb. He interviews to get a better job, but is rejected by a company's "strategic group." Rehoboam's thoughts are called "Strategies", so it seems that Incite's data is preventing him from being hired. Perhaps because Rehoboam is aware of his criminal activity in Rico, or he is hearing his anti-authority attitudes in his calls with the robot Francis.

Or maybe it's some arbitrary reason: the point is that, through data technology, humanity has surrendered its freedom to machines. So even outside of the Westworld park, we can't be sure who is in control and what is real. Bernard takes a boat to the Westworld parks; His map seems to confirm that Westworld is on an island in the South China Sea. Bernard says that he is “looking for a friend” and, after the credits, we see the friend he is looking for. Maeve wakes up in an unknown place. Last season he sacrificed himself to save her daughter. Technicians Felix and Sylvester were told to rescue her from her.

And it seems that they have put it in a new park: Warworld, a simulation of Italy in World War II. Apparently, Bernard's goal is to enlist Maeve's help to stop Dolores from destroying humanity. Then Maeve could finally leave Westworld and see the real world for the first time. In Season 1, Maeve's programmed narrative said that she "crossed the shining sea" to a "new world," where she "can be whoever the fuck she wants." Now she can do it for real. But first, she'll kill some N. Westworld has a new intro sequence that highlights some of the season's themes.

There is a dandelion, with its florets drawn with geometric lines, like the natural world follows mathematical laws and the human mind can be described with lines of code. There's an eagle flying towards a jet engine, like Icarus before the sun, like how humanity is destroying itself in the pursuit of technology. But the main images are of reflection: repetitions and symmetry. The first season was about hosts controlled by code. The third season is about humans controlled by a code. Dolores was powerless against humans, now she is the powerful one. She knows Caleb, like she knew William. Bernard worked in host livestock, now he works in animal livestock.

Images, lines and phrases are repeated and refracted in different situations. This is reflected even in the architecture: all this glass, mirrors, water. This shot also resembles the famous painting The Creation of Adam, which appeared in season 1. We see cells dividing, because Dolores wants the birth of a new host species. So there is some optimism in this new introduction. But the intro ends with the logo in bright red, hinting that despite all the changes, Westworld is still a bloody affair: violent delights, violent endings. The intro also shows Rehoboam, because this season is about data and algorithms controlling humanity.

This may seem like a science fiction idea, but big tech companies have been using data to predict and control us for years, and you can read all about it in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. It's a deep exploration of the systems that increasingly control our lives, it's at least as terrifying as anything in Westworld, and it's real. You can get it on audiobook for free right now by signing up for a trial with Audible. Members receive one audiobook each month, and if they cancel, they keep the audiobooks. You can listen in your self-driving car or on your cyberbike.

Sign up at audible.com/asx. Remember to like, subscribe and hit the bell; Otherwise the algorithm may not show you our videos. We will be live streaming right after each episode of Westworld Season 3, at approximately 10:30 p.m. ET on Sundays. Patreon supporters can watch live streams after the broadcast. Thanks to sponsors Nolan Strout, bando gora, Hazard Alhosni, Ben Katz, Tanya, Travlis Hallingquest and Drug Dog. Health.