It feels like it's been ages since the second season of Westworld ended in a dazzling spectacle
of sacrifice, splendor, and of course gunshots.
In a way, the long wait for season 3 feels appropriate for a show that has always played
fast and loose with its viewers' perception of the passage of time.
Now that season 3 is almost here, fans of HBO's mind-bending sci-fi western are hoping
to soon find answers to many of the questions raised in the shocking season two finale,
"The Passenger."
What can we expect when we return to the show's mesmerizing, robot-filled universe?
Watch on as we round up all the information we could find about what lies in store for
us in season three of Westworld.
After a seemingly interminable 21-month hiatus, Westworld's third season will finally premiere
on HBO on March 15, 2020.
The series announced its return date via a perplexing tweet in January of 2020, which
was accompanied by a video outlining the timeline of the "Divergence."
The Divergence began in 2019 with some events that have already happened in the real world,
hinting that Westworld's third season may wind up hitting uncomfortably close to home.
The video then goes on to catalog points in the "Divergence" that haven't happened yet,
ending with the most recent "Divergence," in 2058, as the voiceover worries that there
may be someone they haven't accounted for.
While it's easy to assume that the 2058 incident refers to the Host uprising at the end of
season 2, that event actually takes place in 2052, according to security footage of
Maeve's escape at the end of season one.
This raises the question of just what occurs six years later, and to whom exactly the video
is referring.
While a number of familiar faces are returning for season three, the end of season two marked
a definitive farewell for several others.
Anthony Hopkins' park creator Robert Ford has been dead since the end of season one,
and although he continued to appear regularly in flashbacks and visions, co-creator Lisa
Joy confirmed that he's now gone for good.
Meanwhile, Jimmi Simpson's character, William, will still be very much alive in season three,
but will be portrayed exclusively by Ed Harris, as Simpson revealed at TCA that he hasn't
been asked to return.
As for Shannon Woodward's determined truth-seeker Elsie, she was tragically murdered at the
end of season two, and showrunner Jonathan Nolan has confirmed that for now, at least,
Elsie is truly gone.
Less clear is the fate of James Marsden's stalwart cowboy, Teddy.
Teddy committed suicide near the end of season two, determined to die rather than become
a monster but Dolores [ left his brain pearl in the Forge, leaving his consciousness free
to cross over into the Sublime.
Nothing has yet been said one way or another about Marsden's return, but since this is
Westworld, we know better than to rule anything out.
As for the hosts whose consciousnesses crossed into the grassy plains of the Sublime while
their mechanical bodies plummeted off a cliff?
Showrunner Lisa Joy confirmed they're gone for good, including Ghost Nation leader Akecheta,
his lost love Kohana, and Maeve's daughter.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Joy said,
"The stakes and the finality of it are important.
It's not something where I think the humans can type it up and get back in and start messing
with them anymore.
It's what so many hosts sacrificed so much for, to see their kind to this safe space."
By the end of season two, the real Charlotte Hale is dead and gone, murdered by her host
doppelgänger, which was imbued with the consciousness of Dolores.
However, this new, host version of Charlotte successfully makes it out of the park, as
does Bernard, and is ultimately able to construct a new Dolores host body to inhabit.
However, when asked by Entertainment Weekly whether season three will follow double Doloreses,
Jonathan Nolan responded,
"Not really.
The question of who's who and what we're looking at is something we're excited to play with.
We're excited to withhold a little from the audience but ... it's complicated."
It's an intriguing answer, and one Tessa Thompson is eager to explore in season three.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Thompson said of her new identity,
"It's a total game changer.
I want to put on a lot of different characters.
That to me is the real exciting potential in all of this."
Thompson has also said that while in the past, her character has seemed unsympathetic to
the hosts' experiences and the fact that they're not in control of their own lives, we may
see a different side of her in season 3.
"but I think what we come to learn in the third season is that the world that Hale comes
from is maybe not so dissimilar, and that's something that I have found really fascinating
about this season."
Thompson's host wasn't the only one to make it out of the park in the season two finale,
though.
Before she left, she took five pearl-shaped control units, each housing the consciousness
of one host.
Just which hosts they are remains to be seen, and according to Jonathan Nolan, not even
the writers had fully decided who was in Dolores' purse at the end of season two.
However, when the inhabitants of those pearls are eventually revealed in season three, Nolan
said that the goal of the writers is for their choices to "surprise and hopefully delight"
their audience.
While we can rule out any of the characters that we saw cross into the Sublime, that still
leaves a large number of hosts to pick from, so place your bets wisely.
Since the early days of Westworld, fans have suspected that Ashley Stubbs, the park's chief
of security, may be a host, a theory that only continued to gain traction once other
characters previously presumed to be human were revealed to be hosts.
This theory was seemingly confirmed in "The Passenger," during an intriguing exchange
between Stubbs and the host that looks like Charlotte Hale, but is being driven by Dolores.
During their brief conversation, Stubbs obviously realizes that Hale isn't all that she seems.
But instead of turning her in, he tells her that he was hired so long ago he can barely
remember it, saying that Ford was always very clear about his role at the park, and who
he was supposed to be loyal to.
"Guess you could call it my core drive."
After musing for a bit over how the lines have since blurred, making it hard for him
to know where his loyalties should lie, Stubbs tells her that she's free to go, after making
it very clear that he knows who and what she is.
"I'm responsible for every host.
Inside the park."
We expect to see more of how Stubbs fits into Ford's plan when he returns in Westworld season
three.
While the first two seasons of Westworld have been told mostly from the points of view of
Dolores and William, otherwise known as the Man in Black, season three seems to be taking
a sharp left turn.
The first intriguing glimpse at Westworld's new season followed a brand new character
named Caleb, played by Aaron Paul, through a series of events in what appears to be the
"real" world outside of Delos' park.
Paul cryptically told The Wrap that his character will bring excitement, danger, suspense and
honesty to the series, but other than that, he's playing his cards very close to the vest
when it comes to Caleb, revealing only that,
"He is a construction worker with a good friend, George, his robot.
He's a red robot."
According to Jonathan Nolan, Caleb will "challenge Dolores' notions about the nature of humanity,"
although whether her interactions with Caleb will soften her feelings toward humans or
just further convince her that her ruthless attitude is justified is yet to be determined.
All Paul can tell us is,
"He crosses paths with this lovely, lovely being very soon and they create a relationship."
In addition to Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul, other new additions to the season three cast
include Master of None's Lena Waithe, former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch, and rapper
Kid Cudi, credited on the show as Scott Mescudi.
No details have been revealed about any of their characters, but judging by the trailer,
it appears as though Waithe and Lynch will be playing Paul's accomplices in various illegal
activities, while Cudi's character will be spending at least some of his time in prison.
Additionally, Vincent Cassel will be coming aboard as season three's new villain, who
can be seen in the final trailer for Westworld's third season making Maeve an intriguing offer.
"Dolores.
I want you to track her down and kill her."
While viewers of Westworld are no strangers to artificial lifeforms, season 3 will introduce
us to a different type of robot than the human-presenting hosts we're used to.
George is a standard construction robot, Delos model G-267.
Built to serve as a helpful co-worker for Caleb, George doesn't speak, and likely won't
have much in common with his mechanical counterparts from inside the park.
Speaking about Dolores and the other hosts who escaped the park into the real world at
the end of the second season, Jonathan Nolan said,
"Part of what our hosts find [is that] they're caught in between they're fashioned to look
like human beings and act like them, but they have more in common with the mechanical pieces
in our world."
Robots like George and the other real-world worker-bots will play an important role in
the upcoming season, contrasting the human-like traits of the hosts with their mechanical
origins.
According to Nolan, these more utilitarian robots have...
"...been designed for a specific purpose, and the hosts have been designed to be emotional
mirrors for us.”
Although a few main characters managed to escape at the end of season two, there are
still others left on the inside, with several areas of Ford's bizarre theme parks as yet
unexplored.
In addition to Westworld, season two introduced viewers to Shogunworld and The Raj, but the
show's official Delos Destinations website teases three additional parks.
We may very well travel to one or more of these remaining parks in season three.
Nolan and Joy have previously hinted that the show may eventually visit the Roman and
Medieval Worlds from Michael Crichton's original 1973 movie.
As for the sixth world, it may have already been revealed in the season 3 trailer, which
shows Maeve in a place that looks a lot like Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II.
This also seems to match the glitchy image of the third park on the Delos website, which
seems to show planes flying over a light brick town with smoke rising from it.
While at first glance, World War II doesn't exactly seem like a prime vacation spot, if
there's one thing we've learned about the elite clientele of Delos' theme parks, it's
that they're drawn to violent settings where enemies lurk around every corner.
But since a World War II park is possibly an even worse place for a woman of color to
exist than a Wild West park, we can only hope that Maeve isn't stuck there for long.
In the final moments of the Westworld season 2 finale, we follow Ed Harris' William as
he stumbles out of an elevator, badly injured, and meets his daughter Emily in the rubble
of what he assumes must be part of the park.
Since he actually killed Emily earlier in the season, William assumes his consciousness
has been uploaded to the Forge, but she assures him that what he's experiencing is real.
"I'm already in the thing, aren't I?"
"No, the System's long gone."
The conversation that follows echoes the ones that we saw earlier in the season between
the younger William and James Delos, in which William repeatedly tested the host body that
housed Delos' consciousness, waiting for it to break down.
William discerns that he's now a host, and when he asks how many times he's been tested,
Emily responds that it's been "a long time."
Speaking to The Wrap about William and Emily's scene, Lisa Joy said,
"He’s in a very different timeline.
The whole place looks destroyed, and then she explains that all of that stuff happened
long ago.
That was real.
But now something has happened and the Man is now the subject or some iteration of the
Man is now the subject of testing.
The roles have become completely reversed."
The final trailer for Westworld season 3 looks very different than anything we've seen from
the show before.
While we do seem to get a couple glimpses of parks, most of it appears to be set in
the "real" world, where Dolores and Caleb will join forces with the Host modeled after
Charlotte Hale, although she worries that they are severely outnumbered.
"Five of us against an entire world of them."
Who are those five?
There are lots of possibilities, including Bernard, Stubbs, a resurrected Teddy, or possibly
some new characters.
The trailer also teases a surprising team-up between Dolores and William.
"I'm gonna save the f------ world."
Opposing them is none other than Maeve, who is very much alive, despite meeting a bloody
end at the end of season 2.
The action-packed trailer builds to a climactic shot of Maeve and Dolores, both clad all in
black, confronting each other on a city overpass.
We may not know a lot about what to expect from season 3, but we have no doubt that the
next showdown between Dolores and Maeve is going to be one for the ages.
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