Westworld S3E06 Explained

In Westworld season 3 episode 6, William is in a mental hospital because Charlotte had him committed. In therapy, there is talk of hope and healing, but William gives an avant-garde nihilistic speech about how humans are a virus and there is no God and no meaning. That's why William loved Westworld: everything in the park was designed by the divine Ford. And when William was the powerful gunslinger Man in Black, his speeches were rough, but now that he's a mental patient, he sounds more like a crazy old man: "What the fuck is wrong with you?" William faces the truth. He admits that he felt "confused" and delusional in Westworld, and that he killed his daughter Emily.

William feels that he would be better off dead: he has played with self-destruction since last season. But William has applied a special treatment called AR Therapy. Because this isn't a normal hospital, it's one of the "re-education" facilities where Serac edits people who don't fit into his system (people like Jean Mi and Caleb), we're told this treatment is used on veterans. with post-traumatic stress disorder. Now this facility is trying to change William. William's therapist gets the Incite profile of him, because in the last episode, Dolores sent everyone data revealing how they are watched and controlled. The therapist finds out that since she has been cheating on her partner and abusing drugs, she will lose her family and her medical license, so she hangs herself.

Dolores' data leak causes true tragedy and chaos. We found out that half of the staff at this place are missing. The staff takes a blood sample from William and finds "unknown proteins" and "synthetic markers" in his blood. This is what Charlotte injected into William in Episode 4. She is a "tracker" to find William's location, so Charlotte learns that William and this facility are in Mexico. It's a little strange that Charlotte sent William to this hospital, but now she needs to track him down to find out where he is. In the last episode, Martin-lores showed Bernard this hospital and it seemed like he already knew its location.

So it's confusing, but the point is that Charlotte finds these facilities in Mexico; maybe it's the same place where Serac edited Jean Mi in that flashback, and maybe it's where Dolores and Caleb are flying now. William has a “dropper” installed, the digital drug device. And to calm him down, the staff gives him a limbic pill called Desert Oasis, which is one of the many drug flavors listed on the Incite website. William starts his AR therapy and it looks like Caleb's flashback, so it seems like he had received the same treatment. With the combination of virtual reality glasses and the "drip" of him driving him crazy, William has visions of his past.

He sees Craddock playing the role of nurse. Last season, Craddock played host to the Confederacy, whom William killed in an attempt at redemption. William then has a hallucinatory therapy session with past versions of himself: there's William when he was a kid, and Jimmi Simpson William from season 1, and corporate "family man" William, and the Man in Black William. The current William seems to have all of his fingers, although we just saw that he is actually missing fingers that were blown off last season. That shows that this is all in William's head, he's just imagining himself with fingers as a "residual self-image" in The Matrix.

The therapy is led by James Delos, William's father-in-law, whom William seemed to admire and respect, although he also took James' company, Delos, and trapped James in an immortality experiment last season. They all argue about how and when William became such a destructive, screwed-up person. William thinks maybe Westworld or his childhood made him violent. He says that when he was a child he had “nothing” except his books. He's been telling himself this since season 1. We see a flashback of the boy William reading a book called Sir Rowan and the Lady of Sulon, which appears to be a book made up for the show, not a real book.

He mentions "Sir Logan", as William's brother-in-law Logan, and this Lady looks a bit like Dolores. So perhaps William fits the role of Sir Rowan, a knight on a journey of self-discovery. We see William's father being aggressive towards him and at first it seems like a cliché story about William turning bad because his father was mean to him. But it turns out that the boy William was the bad guy. He brutally beat another child just for making fun of him. So the idea is that William didn't become brutal, but rather that he was born a monster. It's like William said last season, there's a dark "spot" inside him that's always been there.

Then William says that he "never had a choice." James questions if William ever had free will or if he was just a "passenger" following his code. "The Passenger" was the name of the season 2 finale, which concluded that humans are just passengers, without free will, and that only hosts can truly change and grow. But William says, "If you can't know, does it matter?", which is what Angela told him in season 1. Maybe "free will" doesn't matter, and maybe William's past "don't matter"; The Williams of the past are dead and gone, only the present is real. Then William kills all of his past selves, rejecting the man he was.

He frees himself from the prison of his own sins by destroying his past. Serac says in this episode that hosts remember everything, but humans can forget. By forgetting his past, William can become someone new. He finds a new "purpose" and says that he is "the good guy." So what good will William do? Clearly, William doesn't care about humans: he hates himself and thinks humanity is a virus. But he does feel guilty for abusing Dolores. So maybe he will help Dolores and the hosts conquer the world. And maybe that was Dolores' plan. Maybe the reason she sent William here is so that he would have this revelation and decide to help her.

And if Dolores manipulated William, that might suggest that he doesn't have free will after all. Either way, this is probably not what he intended this AR therapy to do. Serac uses these facilities to make people more predictable and controllable. But William's new sense of freedom and purpose could cause more chaos. Bernard and Stubbs arrive and take William out of AR; They say he was left there too long because the hospital was disrupted by the data breach. Maybe that's why William's treatment went so crazy. Bernard is here because Martin-lores told him about this place in the last episode, and maybe they got the location of him thanks to the blood tracker.

But what will Bernard and William do now? How does all this fit into Dolores' plan? It's interesting that these shots don't show William's hands. Because if we ever see William again with all his fingers, that would suggest that he is still in the AR treatment; maybe what's happening isn't real yet. Maeve wakes up in a simulation of Sublime, the digital paradise that Maeve's daughter went to last season. The last time we saw Maeve, Musashi-lores killed her. Serac then connected Maeve's brain to this simulation while he reconstructed her body. Maeve wants to meet her daughter at Sublime, but Dolores has the key to Sublime, so Serac wants Maeve to kill Dolores and get the key for him.

To do this, Maeve says that she needs "help." Then Serac starts imprinting Hector and two other hosts to help Maeve. Serac promises that if Maeve manages to kill Dolores, she will let her go to the Sublime, to heaven. But if she fails, she will go to a bad place, which sounds like hell. Serac is playing God, and Maeve seems to obey him so far, but maybe he will rebel and win her freedom, just like he did last season. Maeve does some combat training on Warworld, killing some Nazis for "fun." It's like Neo and Morpheus trained in simulations in The Matrix.

Previously, Maeve's power to control other hosts "didn't work" here, but it seems Serac has given her administrator privileges back to her. It's kind of fucked up that Maeve kills these Nazis for fun. Season 1 was about how bad it is to kill hosts for fun. At times, Westworld is more interested in being badass than being morally consistent. We see a bar in a Warworld called Taverna delle Farfalle, which is Italian for Butterfly Tavern. Maeve's living room in Westworld was called Mariposa, which in Spanish means butterfly. And in Shogunworld, there was another Mariposa bar. This represents parallels and coherences between cultures.

It also represents Lee Sizemore's laziness, because he copied and pasted stories when he wrote the park narratives. Lee died last season, but this simulated digital Lee exists in this simulated Warworld. He now knows that he's not real, so he drinks at the bar all day, which is not much different than what he did when he was alive. The simulation shines for a moment, because Serac moves Maeve's brain to the Delos building. He begins printing bodies for Maeve and three other hosts who will be his allies; Maeve says he'll be "reuniting with some old friends." We know that one of these hosts is Héctor.

And another one could be Clementine, because this ID number on the screen appeared before as Clementine's ID. The third host could be Hanaryo, Shogunworld's equivalent of the Armistice. His actress, Tao Okamoto, confirmed that she would return this season. Perhaps Hanaryo will confront Musashi, his former ally. Hector logs into the simulation and Maeve finally reunites with the real Hector. Maeve is reuniting the old team and another host is logged into the simulation. It turns out that Martin-lores, the clone of Dolores posing as Martin Conells, was not completely destroyed in the explosion last episode. Serac recovered the brain and plugs it into this simulation so Maeve can talk to this copy of Dolores.

Martin-lores appears here as Dolores, not Martin, because it seems that this copy remained faithful to Dolores, rather than diverging and transforming into her own person as Charlotte-lores does. So we have another dramatic conversation between the two main rebel hosts in the story. Maeve says that Dolores has too much power, because she has the encryption key for both the human data in Forge and all the hosts in Sublime, she is "the guardian of two species." Dolores says that she is using her power to fight for a future for the hosts: she is here protecting their data, creating new hosts, and saving their species from extinction.

Maeve has only been fighting for her loved one, her daughter. Maeve has sacrificed many people for the only person she cares about. But of course, Dolores has also slaughtered tons of humans and hosts. In the end, they've both done terrible things, but Dolores says they had to do it: her species is in a war of survival, which means they're not heroes or villains, they're just "survivors." And unfortunately, they seem doomed to fight each other, because because they have different priorities, they do not trust each other with the power of the encryption key. Will these two protagonists ever make peace?

Charlotte tries to protect her family from the chaos. Since Dolores released the Incite data, everyone has realized that they are being watched and controlled by algorithms. So all over the world people are scared: there are riots, looting, someone throws their clothes out the window, it's anarchy. But would this really happen due to a “data leak”? In the real world, there have already been leaks revealing global surveillance and control systems. The Chinese government in Xinjiang is reported to be using artificial intelligence technology and surveillance data to target and arrest "suspicious" people. There are a million people imprisoned in “re-education camps” right now, under this data surveillance system, and there is no “mass chaos” about it.

But in Westworld, San Francisco becomes chaotic. Some children paint a picture of the Labyrinth. In season 1, the Labyrinth represented the hosts' journeys toward consciousness and freedom. Now, it is the humans who have to escape control, and the Labyrinth they are trapped in is the Incite system. The Incite logo looks like a globe-shaped maze. At Jake's house, there is an Ensō circle in the background, a Buddhist symbol that closely resembles Rehoboam's circle. Rehoboam looks chaotic right now because the world is becoming chaotic, deviating from Serac's plan. Charlotte-lores has a touching moment with Jake. This Charlotte started out as a copy of Dolores, but living Charlotte's life has "changed" her and she now genuinely cares for her family.

But first she has to stop Serac from taking over the Delos company, because Dolores wants to use Delos' technology to create more hosts. The plan is to vote to make Delos private, but Serac murders one of the board members, so they don't have enough votes. Then Serac takes over the Delos company and now owns Westworld. Charlotte feels defeated, but Dolores tells her to smuggle the host's technology out of Delos anyway. Dolores says they will build a “new world” “together.” But at a time when Charlotte is scared and needs support, Dolores is not as understanding and loving as Jake was.

Then Charlotte feels closer to herhuman family than to Dolores and the hosts. Dolores says that she and Charlotte considered eliminating the painful emotions from her, but decided to keep them, because what's the point of surviving if you lose the feelings that give meaning to life? Dolores learned this last season, when she removed Teddy's empathy and fear to help him survive. She realized it had been a mistake when Teddy died. Serac arrives and takes over the Delos company: his Rehoboam watch becomes cleaner and tidier, showing that the world is returning to his plan. All Serac wants from Delos is the encryption key to get Forge's human data.

Everything else destroys it. He doesn't care about the business of the Westworld parks and he doesn't care about the hosts' right to survive: all the hosts we've met in previous seasons are burned in a robot massacre. So before Serac wipes everything, Charlotte downloads a "backup" of "the host data" and appears to upload it somewhere safe. Charlotte stands next to this statue, which is similar to this mirrored statue in Episode 3. The mirrored statue represents Dolores and Charlores together, identical and symmetrical. But this new statue stands alone. It represents how Charlotte is becoming a separate person from Dolores, and its rough texture could foreshadow that she is about to be burned.

Serac calls a meeting and Charlotte deliberately removes a bracelet for no apparent reason. On the Still Watching podcast, actress Tessa Thompson revealed that this was actually to correct a continuity error, because they filmed some things out of order and forgot to have the bracelet on in later scenes. Serac reveals that he knows Charlotte is a hostess, because the real Charlotte would never have been so worried about her family. It's a little ironic that the fake robot Charlotte is a more attentive mother than the real human Charlotte. That said, we saw the real Charlotte send an emotional message to her son, so perhaps humans are more capable of change than Serac believes.

Charlotte tells Serac that she got the data from the host, but Serac laughs and says that he was "watching her the whole time," so it looks like those files didn't actually arrive. Charlotte tries to shoot Serac, but he's just a hologram, she outmatched her. Serac's goons attack and Charlotte becomes whole to escape. Charlotte wants to make sure Maeve and her allies don't come after her. Then Charlotte destroys Hector's pearl. Since the originals in Westworld are destroyed, this means that Hector is permanently dead; Well, this is Westworld, so someone could still do a simulation or a memory copy or something.

But the point is that Charlores has murdered Maeve's lover, and now the newly imprinted Maeve seems determined to destroy her. Before Charlotte can also destroy Maeve and her other allies, she is attacked, so she fights to escape with the help of a friendly robot. She grabs Martin-lores' brain on the way out, so maybe he's still a character. Charlotte escapes and returns to her human family. She appears to leave Dolores once and for all and embrace a life with Jake and Nathan. She promises to keep them safe, and then her car explodes and kills Charlotte's family. One theory was that Dolores might have blown up this car because she wants to separate Charlotte from her human family and make her loyal to her hosts.

But Evan Rachel Wood confirmed that Serac blew up the car, apparently to kill Charlotte. But the guy who blew up the car doesn't bother to check that Charlotte is dead, which is stupid. Because Serac just got Martin back after he seemed to die in an explosion. And, in fact, Charlotte survives too: she crawls out of the wreck like Anakin in Star Wars, burned and grieving the loss of her loved ones. Perhaps, like Anakin, this is the origin of a darker, angrier Charlotte. She may now be more loyal to the hosts and want to take down Serac in revenge.

Hosts are often defined by pivotal tragic memories, such as Bernard losing Charlie and Maeve losing her daughter. Maybe Charlotte's loss of her family will be her ultimate memory and she will finally truly become her own person and make her own decisions. This episode, Decoherence, is about change and divergence. William rejects his past to find a new path. Maeve and Dolores deepen their division. Charlotte's identity is burned and she is resurrected to take a new form. Westworld has been renewed for a fourth season. There are also upcoming seasons of the movies His Dark Materials, The Expanse, Foundation, and Dune, which are the kind of series we'll be covering after this season of Westworld.

We will also make more videos about the Game of Thrones books. Author George Martin says he is working on finishing the next book. So now is a good time to read the series: in addition to the main books, there is the world book, the Dunk and Egg and Fire and Blood stories, on which the upcoming prequel to the TV show is based. You can get any of these audiobooks 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 while you train in the Matrix, or while you drink and complain.

Sign up at audible.com/asx. Thanks for watching, like and subscribe. We'll be livestreaming right after each episode of Westworld Season 3, Sundays at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time. Patreon supporters can watch live streams after they air. Thanks to sponsors Stephanie Ramirez, Shakeeb Majid, Hugo King, Xavier Spain, Nick Hoedemakers, Laura Rodriguez and Oskar. Health.