Since season 3 of Westworld ended, we’re left with so many things up in the air. There were some big deaths and crazy cliffhangers in season 3. There’s a lot to discuss in terms of what could be happening.
For example, how we know Stubbs is alive, what could be going on with William, the secret park that could be getting explored and what the time jump means.
Obviously, there will be heavy spoilers here so if you haven’t seen it then I recommend that you click off now.
Time Jump
We know that at some point Westworld will be having a major time jump.
This was teased at the end of the second season in which we saw William return to the Forge. Showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan confirmed that this was taking place in the far distant future once the world had ended and thus it was theorised that William’s arc had been taking place in a complete simulation of the park in which the events played out exactly the same as how they had to the host uprising.
It seemed that William was a host and that they were testing for fidelity to see if the Delos immortality program had been achieved however the end of the third season seemed to provide some answers.
Is William Dead?
In that we saw that William had been duplicated by Halores who was in the process of creating a host army. William seemingly died too and many in the fan community have gone back and forth on whether the character is dead or not.
Personally, I don’t think that he is and I believe that the way the showrunners would’ve handled his death if this was the case would be much more dramatic. William has been one of the big bad in the show since its inception and to see him go out like that I think would be disappointing.
We didn’t see the character take his last breath and therefore I don’t think it’s the last we will see of him.
As we saw from Caleb, pretty much all wounds can be healed if the person is not dead and though I don’t think that he will be storming out of the gates in Season 4, Nolan and Joy know that they can always bring him back should they need to.
It would be great to see him going head to head with the hosts once more and taking them down would really bring everything full circle. Having more William vs William fights would be an interesting aspect of the show in terms of duality.
We would have two Williams both had to decide whether what they’re doing is the right thing and as we know, neither copy would mind smacking the other out with a steel chair.
Though this may not happen what will happen is that we fans will no doubt questions what the hell was going post-credits scene in season 2.
Duplicates?
It is possible that the William we saw was the copy and this would explain how the character was able to live far into the future. If it was an exact duplication it would too mean that the host would carry across his existential crises and thus it would be unable to fully grasp reality.
Perhaps it will be revealed in the end that this host was the one we actually saw through seasons 1 and 2 merely going through a simulation that mirrored the events of the host uprising and his journey to the forge was purely to test fidelity.
This would explain how in Season 3 we just randomly caught up with William back at his house even though we didn’t really see how he got there. It would also tie into the time jumps that we’ve seen throughout the series making us once more question everything that we’ve seen.
Hale’s Plan
Now this replication of humanity was seen in Hale’s lab in the host-making part of Delos Dubai.
In season 2 we learned that Delos had the data on four million people and Hale will have a huge army to pull from. So going ahead it appears as if Hale will be the antagonist for season four.
It is possible that this was actually all part of the plan carried out by Solomon and on Reddit, user Falltime2017 dropped a great theory about the A.I. God.
They stated that Solomon had likely planned this all out to turn humanity into hosts. We did see through Rehoboam that should the path Solomon set up come true that the human race could be extinct within as little as 50 years.
Why this may be the case is because humans may have been fully replaced by hosts at this point, especially with Hale working double time in the basement of Delos HQ.
Solomon was trying to get a grip on humanity to control them so that it could save the species from itself. It is possible that its plan this entire time was to put us on a path that would see us all turned into hosts so that it could place us on our own loops. Hosts can be controlled and guided far easier than humans can and the ability to programme them would pretty much remove the need to take away the outliers.
Perhaps humans becoming hosts is inevitable and we have already seen from William’s work on Jame Delos that the key to immortality always lay in transferring our consciousness to them.
So Hale’s uprising may be inevitable and now that she has an army she will likely be able to take over humanity far easier.
The Upcoming War
But who exactly will fight in the upcoming war?
Well, we do know that there already exists an army of outliers in deep freeze at a re-education centre in Mexico. Caleb, the new saviour of humanity knows of these and he will likely have to thaw them out to fight the upcoming battle.
As they’ve been kept out of the loop as it were, their data will not be present at Delos so Hale will not be able to replicate or use their brain scans to predict how they will act.
We saw that host William was able to copy the real one perfectly and if Hale doesn’t have this as a weapon against them then they could get the other hand.
Now Aaron Paul has already signed on for a fourth season so we know he will be returning but I actually think he will be teaming up with an unlikely ally, that is Serac.
What About Serac?
Serac was left alive at the end of season 3 and I think his final few words actually hint at the direction he will be going in the future.
The character was left screaming to Rehoboam to answer him and eventually this turned into pleas for his brother. He could end up returning to the outliers with Caleb to free them to stop the incoming war. Jean-Mi would be far more trusting of his own kin than he would some stranger so I do think that he will be needed further down the line.
After thinking about it and knowing what we do of Serac I think that Jean-Mi’s schizophrenia actually showed us a lot of things about the character.
In Episode 8 of Season 3, we learned that Serac was completely obeying Rehoboam and it is possible that Jean-Mi’s schizophrenia because he refused to obey all of the time. He had a voice constantly whispering in his ear telling him what to do but when he went against this it caused complications that lead to his psychosis and questioning of right and wrong.
I still think that there is a lot to explore with both the Serac brothers and Season 4 will likely bring them back in a new light.
Is Dolores Dead?
In addition to this, the fate of Dolores still hangs over the show. Though we saw her completely wiped at the end of Season 3 and Evan Rachel Wood confirmed that that would be the last we saw of this version of Dolores that doesn’t mean she’s gone for good.
Evan already confirmed to Jimmy Kimmel that the character would be returning for the fourth season though she did not know in what capacity.
There still exist several Dolores pearls out there though and they could easily be placed into the shell of the one that’s still hooked up to Rehoboam. We still have Lawrence, Musashi and of course Hale who all still contain Dolores’ personality.
The main reason for Hale’s fall was because she had difficulty not being in her own body so it could be possible that the key to defeating her lies with putting her back into a Dolores shell.
Either way, Dolores has died countless times before so I doubt that it’s the last that we’ve seen of the character.
More Stubbs?
Another character that we’ve likely not seen the last of is Stubbs.
At the end of Season 3, he was left in a bathtub bleeding out and though this likely spelt doom for the character, there are hints that he survived.
Before entering the Sublime, Bernard placed the briefcase and gun on the bed beside him and journeyed into the host heaven.
However when he awoke there was no gun on the bed beside him, hinting at Stubbs getting out of there and taking it for protection.
Now we don’t know why he didn’t come back but the fact that a maid didn’t check on him and Stubbs never returned shows that something big has happened in the world.
Perhaps Stubbs was unable to wake him up and then went to get help only to find himself caught in the middle of a war.
This would explain why no one has stopped by to rescue him and, likely, the apocalypse has already happened.
Bernard journeyed to the sublime to find out what to do once the world ends and he may have been successful, merely sitting in hibernation and waiting for it all to blow over.
Different Realities and Timelines
I think that for the fourth season we will likely operate with three different realities and timelines.
The first will show the war being fought by Caleb, the second will be Bernard’s journey into the sublime and the third will be after the war and it will focus on William and possibly Bernard.
Nolan recently told the Hollywood reporter that Bernard and William are in two separate timelines so that could lead to a fourth one for the fourth season but we will have to see if everything comes full circle.
It makes more sense to me with both characters being in the future but only time will tell.
Maeve
And finally is Maeve who is still on the hunt for her daughter. As we know she is in the sublime and after Maeve’s mission in Season 3 to track down the key to the forge, it does seem likely that she will be searching for Bernard, however as we know from the flash forward, she never finds him.
To me, this teases that there will be a return to the park and that she will enter the sublime the old-fashioned way.
The Delos website was recently updated to show a complete shut down of all of their facilities and there are also some notable little teases.
There’s actually an advertisement for a brand new park that is completely obscured.
Shoutouts to Reddit for unblurring this image and pointing out that it was a castle. This is of course medieval world which we saw teased throughout the second episode. We haven’t actually seen the park itself but we do know from the D&D cameo that it contains dragons. Reddit also managed to unscramble some of the text for the park and it does look like it will indeed contain this.
So who knows we may get to see Maeve go back to Westworld and even get to see how this park operates as she navigates the landscape of Delos.
I think the only way for her to fully reconnect with her daughter is through this manner and I can’t wait to see how it’s handed going ahead.
So that’s pretty much all of the fan theories that I have for the fourth season but I’ll make sure to keep you up to date with any news on the show going ahead. 2022 seems a long time away but I have no doubt we will have teasers and trailers before then let us know what we’re in for so hopefully you stick around for our coverage of other things.
Obviously, I’d love to hear your thoughts on these theories and if you have any of your own.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.