By Bianca Coleman5 July 2022

Westworld: Recap of Season 3 ahead of new episodes of Season 4

At the end of our recap of Seasons 1 and 2, we say,” The more you think you know, especially in Season 2 (and there are other worlds and theme parks that come into play during the season), the more you realise that you know nothing.”

Welcome to Season 3, which is more confusing than an Excel spreadsheet, or Eskom’s multi-stage load shedding schedule.

Watch the trailer for Westworld Seasons 1-3

The Westworld Season 2 finale The Passenger wrapped up so many of the show’s mysteries and delivered a couple of big surprises with a 90-minute episode, says Entertainment Weekly. The season contained two main timelines, just for fun, and flashbacks too, so we are very grateful to EW for keeping track of all that.

Dolores to the power of five

In a nutshell (more like coco-de-mer than pistachio), the hosts made it into the Valley Beyond, lots of them “died”, but Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) was not among them. She enters Season 3 – and the real world – set a few months later, with five “pearls” – a host’s unique CPU that can be placed in any body. This practice is not new; hosts have died and been brought back to life many times in different shapes and forms, to the extent we don’t even know (as per our previous recap) who is real and who is not.

But who are these five? We don’t have to wait long to find out they are all Dolores. Yes, you read that correctly. Dolores is in her own body, as well as Charlotte’s (Tessa Thompson) – an executive director of Delos who was sent to the Westworld park to deal with the Host Uprising. This effectively gives Dolores a seat at the boardroom table, where she could spin all manner of mischief, and that’s just the beginning. Den Of Geek has more here.

Frankly, if you can keep up with just the multiple Doloreses, you’re already doing well. “There’s [sic] a lot of twists and turns in the third season of Westworld, so many in fact it makes the simple task of remembering what happened and when it happened an exhausting task, to say nothing of the question of what really happened versus what didn’t,” says Polygon, which provides an exhaustive recap.

AI spells trouble, but Caleb’s the one to fear

Westworld is on Showmax — Aaron Paul as Caleb (left); Thandie Newton as Maeve (right)

A key player in Season 3 is Engerraund Serac (Vincent Cassel), a reclusive and powerful tech genius. He is the main antagonist (who the protagonist is you’ll have to decide for yourself), a trillionaire and the richest man in the world, who owns Incite Inc (a large data collection and analysis company). He is the co-creator of Rehoboam, the world’s most advanced AI. But is he, though?

Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul appears as Caleb from episode 1; before the season, speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Paul hinted at the possibilities for his character’s role in the remainder of Westworld, referring to it as “complicated and messy.”

No kidding. In the same article: “There’s good news and bad news when it comes to Westworld newcomer Caleb Nichols, played by Emmy-winning Breaking Bad alum Aaron Paul. The good news: He’s not a secret robot. The bad news: He’s something much, much deadlier.”

Is it bad that Dolores has plans to use him to overthrow Serac and the AI that predetermines unpredictable human behaviour? These are marked as “outliers” and disposed of. “Rehoboam sends this group to high-risk sectors like war. A wood chipper to eat them up and spit them out. Dead or useless,” says Serac.

A complete breakdown and analysis of Season 3 is virtually impossible unless you have a few days lying around and you don’t mind your head spinning. It’s a LOT. Maybe just jump in and keep the remote handy for replays. And don’t worry too much; Insider presents us with no fewer than 31 unanswered questions at the end of Season 3 so if you’re feeling a bit adrift, you’re not alone.