Westworld got off to a refreshingly slow start this season. The first couple of episodes just focused on one or two characters at a time, really giving audiences time to kind of languish in the lives of Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Caleb (Aaron Paul) and Maeve (Thandie Newton) and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright). But it appears that Westworld Season 3’s new normal is to put the foot on the gas and cover as much ground as possible.
After last week’s installment was packed nearly to the point of incoherence, this week’s episode—aptly named “Decoherence”—similarly tackles multiple characters at once, but finds greater emotional success by the episode’s end. Written by Suzanne Wrubel and Lisa Joy and directed by Jennifer Getziner, this week’s hour put a greater focus on Charlotte (Tessa Thompson) and Maeve as Serac (Vincent Cassel) made his final move on Delos, with William (Ed Harris) going through… something on his own. Let’s dig in because there’s a lot of ground to cover.
Maeve
The episode opens with Maeve inside Serac’s simulation version of Westworld’s “Great Beyond,” showing her he can give her what she truly wants—to be reunited with her daughter. He explains that memory is infallible for hosts, that he can pluck out any person from her mind and recreate them whole cloth in a simulation of her choosing. He tries to give her an incentive to go after Dolores, but Maeve says that’s not what she needs. She needs help—she wants her friends brought back to life. And Serac acquiesces. But not without a final warning: “If you fail again, your future won’t be in such bucolic surroundings.”
Maeve is then transported back into the “War World” simulation we found her in in Episode 2 of this season, and she immediately lays waste to the Nazi scum and finds her old pal Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman), still kicking around the simulation. He’s been living here ever since Maeve got out, and has even programmed the NPC’s so that they don’t even see him. Maeve explains that her body is in the process of being reprinted, and then realizes her core drive (and the simulation) has been moved “home” to Delos headquarters.
As Serac’s men work to bring Maeve’s companions back to life, she finds Hector inside the simulation but can also see Hector’s true pearl outside, in the real world. She uses her magical robot powers to then download Hector’s true self into this simulation, and this dynamic duo is at last reunited.
Maeve, Hector, and Lee then head “downstairs” to confront a Dolores host. This is the pearl that was inside the Connels body, which Serac recovered. Maeve sets about interrogating Dolores to gain an advantage on her in the real world, but also seems interested in having a genuine debate over the future of their species. Dolores argues Serac is destroying as many hosts as he can, and notes that while Maeve judges Dolores’ violence, Maeve has sacrificed the lives of her friends and loved ones for the prospect of reuniting with her daughter. “You want me to be a saint, but you’re no saint. You’re not a villain either. And neither am I,” Dolores says. “We’re survivors.”
She’s not wrong, and the Maeve vs. Dolores sides of the debate for the future of host-kind has certainly been one of the more fascinating tenets of the show thus far. But the two are at loggerheads. There’s no changing each other’s mind. Maeve watches as Haleores, in the real world, destroys Hector’s pearl right in front of her eyes. He’s gone for good, and boy does this make Maeve mad.
The last we see of Maeve in this episode, her host body has been rebuilt. She looks on at another body being created, but we’re not sure who it is. Clementine maybe? Lee perhaps? Haleores crushed Hector’s pearl but that still leaves two additional hosts that Serac smuggled out of the park for Maeve. I suppose we’ll find out next week!
William
As it turns out, this episode is kind of a trip down a rabbit hole for William. If you’ll recall, he was put into a mental institution in the real world by Haleores (Dolores in Charlotte’s body) the last time we saw him, and we now see he’s doing just great in group therapy. And by “doing just great” I, of course, mean he’s turning his fellow patients into puddles of tears by explaining why he thinks God doesn’t exist in the most nihilistic way imaginable. Chaos is the only thing William believes in now.
Which is good because, unbeknownst to William, the outside world is turning to chaos at this very moment. In the middle of his 1:1 therapy session with his therapist, who prescribes him “AR Therapy”—a process that “helps your brain heal not by running from itself, but by leaning in”—she receives calls and texts from her husband. Dolores has given everyone access to Rehoboam’s files, and for William’s therapist that means the end of her marriage and relationship with her children. She is devastated. Devastated enough to not really pay attention as William admits he accidentally killed his daughter in the park. “I spent so long playing the game, I couldn’t see outside of it,” he says in his confession.
But the next scene is where things get really interesting. William is being given one of those mouth implants we saw Caleb wearing earlier this season, and as he’s prepared for his AR therapy, his blood gets tested. The technician misses it, but we see on the screen that there is an “unknown protein detected” with a warning labeled “synthetic markers found.” The screen then flickers, and we see it says “Tracing Data Transmission. Recipient Server Detected,” with the location of Sonora, Mexico.
So this means one of two things. Either the William we’ve been following in the real world is 100% a host, and whatever Haleores did to him with that finger prick made it easier for her to track him. Or Haleores’ finger prick was to put location markers in him (which would be the “synthetic markers” that were found) so she could transmit something from him down to Dolores’ hideout in Mexico. Or maybe transmit his location to… someone? Is he in Mexico? Or is the data being sent to Mexico? We don’t get confirmation either way just yet (or maybe we do and I’m just still confused), but more food for thought.
William is put in a room, locked into a chair, and given super fancy squash goggles for his “AR Therapy” experience. Immediately, a young boy version of him walks in and William begins experiencing a memory from his childhood—a seemingly abusive father, a young boy hiding in his bedroom. The memory fades as William resists the therapy, and in walk two techs who note that William’s implant isn’t working (perhaps because he’s a robot?). He bites off the finger of a tech trying to sedate him, but they eventually succeed and we see William fall into a deep sleep.
Next we see William he’s awoken in his room by someone leading him to group therapy, but this someone is… Major Craddock (Jonathan Tucker) from Westworld! And inside his group therapy is… a bunch of Williams! Yep, his AR Therapy has begun. Present William sits down with Kid William, Young Professional William (Jimmi Simpson), Black Hat William, and Philanthropist William, with James Delos (Peter Mullan) serving as the group therapy moderator.
What ensues is a very deep dive into William’s psyche, as his different personas argue with one another about William’s true nature. He defends himself by saying he did good stuff outside the park, and inside the park he only killed robots—which aren’t humans, after all. Young Professional William admits that sure, he fell in love with a host, but the host was designed to make him fall in love with her. So really, it’s Dolores’ fault.
William claims he was never violent as a child, that he had nothing as a kid and pulled himself up from his bootstraps to become a wealthy philanthropist. But a breakthrough occurs during a flashback to his childhood. Yes, his father was berating him. But he wasn’t abusing him. He was scolding young William, because the boy broke another boy’s arm and knocked out his teeth after he was bullied. “What the hell is wrong with you?” his father asks. The nature vs. nurture plot thickens.
James Delos pushes William on the notion of choice vs. predestination, “Was this the inevitable end? Were you just a passenger? Did your life just happen to you, or did you choose it?” William coldly replies, “If you can’t tell, does it matter?” and then proceeds to brutally beat his other selves to death. As one does. After he beats the final William to a pulp he says, “It doesn’t matter what I’ve been. Good or bad. Everything we’ve done has led to this. And I finally understand my purpose. I’m the good guy.” L-O-fucking-L William.
But then William is woken up. He’s still in the chair, still wearing the goofy goggles, but a voice says “it looks like he’s been here awhile.” It’s Bernard and Stubbs. They’ve found William, somehow. The location marker perhaps? Bernard remarks the doctors must have forgotten about him in all the chaos, but Stubbs has another answer: “Or maybe they just left him here.” Bernard reaches out his hand to help William up, as it appears these three amigos will be going on an adventure together.
Haleores
In the aftermath of Dolores’ chaos-causing data leak, we see Haleores has picked her son up from school and has taken him back to his father’s house. Haleores has a genuinely emotional conversation with her ex, Jake, in which she admits she’s feeling scared, and we believe her. While the Dolores pearl inside this Charlotte Hale body is a copy of Dolores, she’s been having experiences all throughout the season that seem to be taking her on a different course, giving her different emotional drives. She seems to genuinely care about her “family.” Jake says he didn’t bother reading his Rehoboam profile, saying it’s up to them to decide what happens to them. Not a machine.
After that brief detour, Haleores heads to Delos to complete her plan of fending off Serac’s hostile takeover. One issue, though: Serac is three steps ahead of her, and murders a fellow board member crucial to her vote in broad daylight. Serac has now ensured his takeover of Delos, and he’s on his way to meet “Charlotte” inside the Delos building—a building he now owns. Haleores makes a fevered phone call to Dolores to break the news, and Dolores tasks her with sneaking the host-making data out of Delos before Serac destroys it. Haleores is incredibly hesitant, saying Serac will “come after my family.” Dolores replies, “They’re not your family.” Indeed, Dolores explains why she didn’t remove emotions from her copies’ code: “We considered it, but if we changed ourselves just to survive, would it even mater if we did?” Haleores says she’s already changed, that she can feel herself slipping away from Dolores…
It’s a fascinating back and forth—we’re watching two copies of the same brain whose experiences have molded them in very different ways. And it’s hard not to feel like Dolores views Haleores as expendable, just as she did Connells. Sure these are copies of herself, but if hosts are worthy of free will and independence, shouldn’t that extend to “copies” as well?
No time for philosophical debates, however, as Serac arrives at Delos and orders the entire facility locked down. The logos all change from Delos to Incite. He asks for three assets to be copied over from the park via satellite, but once that’s done he wants his men to destroy everything. Yep, he’s gonna destroy every existing host and piece of data left in Westworld. He says the only thing he wants is the encryption key buried inside Dolores’ head, and he seems pretty sure about it—his Rehoboam watch is realigning to a circle of predictability. Why? That’s, uh, unclear.
But Serac also knows now that Dolores made copies of herself, and institutes a mole hunt inside Delos. This spurs Haleores to sneak downstairs and copy over the Westworld data herself to an external hard drive, so Serac can’t destroy all of her robot buddies. But while snooping around, she discovers that Serac is in the process of printing four new hosts—including Maeve—and is in possession of the corrupted drive that was inside the Connels host. Meaning Serac now has a copy of Dolores’ mind.
Haleores is on her way out the door, to her family, when Serac calls a board meeting. He knows she’s a host “because the real Charlotte Hale never would have taken the time to check on her son.” But then she knew he knew she was a host. As he’s monologuing, she’s releasing a gas that incapacitates (or kills?) everyone in the room. Everyone except Serac, because of course Serac is a hologram projecting from elsewhere in the building. Haleores claims she’s already smuggled out the data, but we see that back in Westworld Serac has also already been destroying all the remaining hosts. If there’s any hope of a future for host-kind, it lives on only in data form now.
Haleores sets about escaping, but first heads downstairs to stop the reprinting of the additional hosts. She sets her sights on the Hector pearl, and Maeve watches as Haleores crushes the pearl in her hands. Hector is gone for good now, it appears. And this only solidifies Maeve’s resolve to do Serac’s bidding and hunt down Dolores.
Haleores retrieves the corrupted Dolores copy pearl and makes her way out of Delos by the skin of her teeth, and not without laying waste to a number of Serac’s men. She gets some help from a Riot Control robot, resulting in a pretty thrilling action sequence.
At long last Haleores makes it home safely and gets Jake and her son into her car, promising she’s going to take them somewhere they can’t be hurt. But of course Serac was two steps ahead of her. The car explodes in a fountain of flames, Serac’s henchman watching from afar. Haleores crawls out of the wreckage, burned to a crisp, and cries tears of agony. Not because of her physical pain, but because of her emotional pain. Haleores is indeed different from Dolores, but both are now very intently set upon taking Serac down. Whatever the cost.
Episode MVP: Tessa Thompson. I cannot overstate how difficult Thompson’s job has been this season, and how well she’s done. Initially she was playing a Dolores copy but couldn’t let on, yet we still felt for her. Now that we know she’s a Dolores copy, watching the subtle ways in which Charlotte is straying from Dolores’ path is utterly fascinating. There’s a humanity to her lacking from Dolores, and Thompson is knocking it out of the park.
Final Thoughts
After a bit of a rough start, this episode really comes around in the end. I still think it feels like we’re watching 10 episodes’ worth of story crammed into eight episodes, but emotionally, "Decoherence" works. By the end, Maeve’s resolve to help Serac has been solidified—she had a heart-to-heart with Dolores about their differences, and they agreed to disagree. Then she watched Halelores kill Hector. So she, uh, doesn’t need any more incentive to go after Dolores. And Halelores, despite her misgivings about Dolores’ plan, is now deadset on taking down Serac after he murdered her family. The lines are clearly drawn, and it appears we’re heading towards a showdown.