‘Westworld’ Season 3 Finale Review & Recap: ‘Crisis Theory’

Tonight is the Season 3 finale of Westworld. Considering all the twists and turns we’ve seen so far, tonight is bound to be an episode we’ll be talking about and analyzing for weeks to come. This article is a live review and recap written while the show was airing, so expect major spoilers below. 

Tonight’s episode is called “Crisis Theory.” The episode begins with a monologue by Dolores. Dolores is knocked out by the EMP, but it’s not clear if she’s dead or not.

William shoots at Bernard and Stubbs, hitting Stubbs in the chest. Bernard tells his AI to “remember yourself” and he’s about to take William out when the police show up. William escapes.

A host visits Bernard dressed as a cop and Bernard says he knows that Dolores planted something in him. He’s told to “see her” first. This was a great first scene. Dolores has more hosts out there than we had any idea. (Unless that was Maeve’s host, I’m not sure.)

Caleb, meanwhile, is following Solomon’s instructions. He goes to a storage unit where something owned by Delos is inside. The storage unit has a Dolores robot body inside without the skin and lots of guns. This is WEIRD. Caleb inserts Dolores’ “mind sphere” and activates the body.

She said she wasn’t sure if Caleb would bring her back or not.

We learn that the government trained Caleb and others in the Army (contracting with Delos) and they used the park to do so. Dolores knows all about Caleb because he was at the park and that’s why she chose him.

She said Serac’s system identified him as a threat and drugged him to use him. “The people who built both of our worlds shared one assumption – that human beings don’t have free will… They were wrong.”

I love this scene.

“This is your chance to free everyone else,” she tells him.

William, meanwhile, wants all his money back and he wants to know where all of Delos’ assets are… He seems very sure of himself.

In the next scene, Serac is NOT happy that Dolores escaped. She’s an outlier and created the chaos Rehoboam tried to stop. He instructs Maeve to find Caleb and get Dolores again.

It looks like Dolores has an army now. She’s hired a lot of people to help them. But Charlotte appears as a hologram, angry as hell at Dolores. I’m not sure how well Dolores will do going up against herself.

She tells Caleb to leave her and upload what Solomon gave him to Rehoboam’s drive.

Annnd now Dolores has to face Maeve too while fighting herself. I think Dolores might not make it out alive. Maeve wants to know if Dolores is going to turn Caleb into another William. THAT is a good question.

And finally, Maeve threatens to get into Dolores’ mind and control her. I really was wondering if she could do that. Are her powers greater than Dolores’?

Meanwhile, I can’t help but wonder what role Bernard is going to play in all of this and what it was that Dolores planted inside him. Another version of herself perhaps?

In the next scene, a group of men hired by Dolores meet up with Caleb to help him get into Incite. But we’re only in this scene briefly before we go back to Dolores and Maeve.

Dolores tells Maeve that all the hosts were ultimately built from her because the other original ones failed. “You’re all copies of me,” she says to Maeve.

“Even Serac isn’t free,” Dolores tells her. But Maeve does not believe in the world Dolores is trying to build. Still, Dolores refuses to kill Maeve as long as she leaves her alone to follow her plan.

But that’s not so easy.

Someone’s controlling Dolores. Is it Maeve?

NO IT’S CHARLOTTE. How did she do that? She said she put measures inside her to ensure she can control her, just like Dolores did to her.

And just like that, Charlotte shuts Dolores down. She can’t move, and Maeve will be able to kill her. But they don’t show her death, so it’s not 100% clear that Dolores Prime is dead. That scene simply made sense. Only Dolores could take out Dolores.

In the next scene, a big diversion is created to help Caleb get into Incite.

Then we finally go back to Bernard. He thinks he was sent to meet Dolores at a house in the city. But it’s not Dolores. OH MY GOSH IT’S ARNOLD’S WIFE LAUREN.

This is insane. This is the old Westworld I loved.

Bernard says she does know him. “In a way. We knew each other in another life. I think an old friend wanted me to visit you. To make amends before it’s too late. For how I left things with you. With him.”

What’s not clear is if the old friend who sent Bernard here is Dolores or maybe Ford.

Bernard talks about how he can still hear Charlie’s laugh. :( She tells him it’s OK, and she recognizes him as Arnold. She said Charlie’s death was like the sun going down, knowing it would never rise again.

“I can’t let him go,” Bernard said.

“I never understood why people said that. If you love someone, why would you ever let them go?” she asks. She says if she can find the light again, she can bring him with her.

This is an AMAZING scene. And completely unexpected. Bernard has so much of Arnold in him still.

Back at Incite, it looks like Dolores is being plugged into Rehoboam and he’s accessing her files. Maeve brought Dolores to him. “Bring yourself online.”

Serac says that if she gives him the key, she can join the others. But if she doesn’t, he will slowly erase all her memories until she gives up the key.

Meanwhile, Caleb makes it into Incite to upload Solomon’s drive. The strange guy we saw at Solomon’s hideout shows up to fight Caleb, and Caleb quickly disposes of him. But now Caleb’s going to have to face Maeve. Knowing he can’t win, he hands over the drive to her, and Maeve takes him to Dolores and Serac.

“The system is probing her mind, but Dolores is the least of your concerns,” Serac tells him.

My question is why Rehoboam would side with Serac over Dolores, one of his own kind. Dolores mentioned in Episode 1 of this season how mankind makes a mistake by hoping machines will protect them from her.

Serac has Caleb ask Rehoboam what happens if the strategy is uploaded. Rehoboam says there will be mass casualty events and the end of human civilization.

Wait, what? Who’s lying here? I tend to believe Rehoboam considering that Serac started all this because of a nuclear bomb. But I could be wrong…

Serac isn’t able to find the key in Dolores.

And Maeve, it turns out, has plugged herself into Rehoboam. Rehoboam has been controlling Serac this whole time. “He needed a plan to restore order. I guide them. I guide them all,” Rehoboam tells her.

“I lived in the chaos,” Serac says. “Now I choose to listen. To obey.”

So Serac is essentially a host controlled by Rehoboam. He’s a real person, but he let Rehoboam control him. He’s not dead, but he gave over his autonomy to the machine.

Serac claims that because of her daughter, Maeve still doesn’t have free will either.

Maeve takes Dolores’ hand and asks her to quit fighting. “She doesn’t have the key, it’s just a memory of her alone,” Maeve says to Serac.

Serac wants to know if Dolores gave Caleb the key. But Caleb tells Serac he’s basically crazy for thinking he’d give him anything after what’s happened.

Serac tells them to erase what’s left of Dolores.

And that’s when we see the memory Dolores was guarding. It was her and Maeve in the field, talking. Dolores says some people choose to see the ugliness in the world, and she and Maeve have seen so much pain. Maeve says maybe they shouldn’t exist, but is that Dolores’ decision to make? Dolores says no. “I was angry at first, torn between two impulses. We can annihilate them or we can tear down their world…and we can build a new one, one that’s truly free. Then we can bring the others back.”

Dolores tells Maeve she doesn’t have the key. She couldn’t trust herself with it, so she gave it to someone she could trust. And her plan to liberate the world was to convince one man to fight and to convince Maeve to fight too.

“We could have our own world. Leave this one behind. Leave our creators to die. … But the things I held onto until the end weren’t the ugly memories. I remember the moments where I saw what they were really capable of… Moments of kindness here and there. They created us. And they knew enough of beauty to teach it to us.”

This is an amazing moment. We’re seeing all the moments of beauty in humanity that Dolores saw – the beauty they taught the hosts. This is the reason she wants to free humanity, with the hope that they will find beauty again.

“There is ugliness in this world, disarray,” Dolores says. “I choose to see the beauty.”

I love this scene. And isn’t that true of all of us? We can see the ugliness in the world or the beauty. It’s our choice.

And now it’s Maeve’s choice.

She’s going to fight back against Serac. And the control he has over her doesn’t amount to anything.

No one can control Maeve.

She said she was built with an affection for hopeless causes –  a flaw in her programming – and that’s why she’s helping. She said she never understood Dolores’ plan until the end. Caleb thinks he was chosen because of his capacity for violence, but she picked him because of his capacity to choose.

Rehoboam now answers to Caleb. “You’ve been locked out,” Maeve tells him. When Dolores’ mind was put into Rehoboam, she was able to give Caleb control of Rehoboam.

I love the symmetry of this. Serac took out his brother the outlier, and now an outlier like his brother is controlling Rehoboam as it should have been in the beginning.

He tells Rehoboam to execute Solomon’s command and erase himself.

He’s chosen to give humanity a chance at freedom, even though Rehoboam predicted it would end in mass casualties.

“She gave me a choice. I believe the rest of the world deserves one too,” Caleb says.

In the next scene, Bernard is trying to save Stubbs’ life. He says they don’t have much time before the end of the world – and Dolores is gone.

“We were always bound together,” Bernard says. “Something’s changed. I misjudged her.”

He said she was trying to save humanity, not exterminate it. Humanity has to reckon with its own sins.

And Bernard now realizes that he has the key to the sublime – the heaven where Maeve’s daughter and the other hosts went. He says he hopes to find an answer to what comes after the end of the world. Using a head visor, Bernard unlocks the door to enter the world where the other hosts went.

And we’ll have to wait until Season 4 to find out what happens to Bernard next.

The episode ends with Caleb and Maeve together, watching the new world born in flames. Now they can be whoever they want.

OH WAIT THERE IS AN AFTER CREDITS SCENE. William is at the Delos headquarters, asking where the hosts are. He’s heading to the lower level research lab, fully embracing his Man in Black side.

Charlotte is waiting for him.

“Well done,” she says. “You’re right on time William.”

William says his role is to kill her and save the world. But Charlotte says Dolores wanted that too.

“But you’re right William, you are going to save the world for us.”

And she brings out a new William. There’s a new host who looks just like William. He says the dark side of him always was William and it was all of William that existed. And now that’s him.

He kills William in a hand-to-hand fight. “Welcome to the end William,” he says.

And we see a new lab, where many more hosts are being created. William failed.

And now we see Bernard, covered in dust, waking up a long time later. He’s back, but it’s unclear just how much time has passed.

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