SPOILER ALERT: If you are not completely caught up on ‘Westworld’, this article contains huge SPOILERS for the first three episodes of Season 3.
If there were ever any questions that HBO’s ‘Westworld’ was “The Dolores Show,” the revelations from Ep. 3 of Season 3, “Mother of Exiles,” confirms that Evan Rachel Wood’s free host is calling the shots of not just her own regular form, but three others. Dolores’ consciousness is operating the bodies of Tessa Thompson‘s Charlotte Hale (in a composite some fans are calling “Halores,” a combo of Hale and Dolores), Tommy Flanagan’s Martin Connells (“Connellores”), and Hiroyuki Sanada’s Musashi, a Shogun Warrior from last season’s Shogunworld (“Yakuzalores”). Who is the fourth? Wood herself divulged to Deadline:
“Bernard is one.”
These bodies under her control are called “pearls” and it is known that Dolores has five pearls. However, fans will have to continue to tune in to discover who that fifth pearl is, not to mention how they will all work together… if they are going to work together.
But there are clues, as Wood pointed out an aspect that viewers may have overlooked– wardrobe.
“It’s Dolores. Dolores kills Maeve as Musashi. She’s in Musashi, she’s in Connells, and she’s in Hale. She’s all the pearls that were copies of her. And if you’ll notice, Connells’ tie is this blue that matches the blue dress, and Musashi is also dressed in blue. They all have these little hints of blue in there.”
Jonathan Nolan, who acts as co-showrunner with Lisa Joy, expounded more in-depth about the multiple Doloreses and warns that they may not all wind up on the same side of the war that has been teased outside of Westworld. Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, he stated:
“We very carefully avoided the idea of clones and copies of hosts in the first couple of seasons. When you apply the idea that digital information wants to be free to your characters, it’s a very dangerous idea. If Dolores is infinitely copiable, then is she still Dolores? One of the ideas we’re most fascinated with is identity, agency. Is Dolores a computer program? Or is Dolores a collection of her experiences? It’s one of the questions that’s the origin of the series: nature versus nurture. If we indulge in the idea of copies of the hosts too early, then the rules get threatened, and your affinity for and investment in Dolores — this Dolores — is threatened.
“Now, in our third season, a fascinating thing for us to explore is this other way of approaching the question of identity. If you take two copies of the same person but set them on slightly different trajectories but with the same goals, would they remain the same person? Would they maintain the same goals? Or would some part of the character — the version of Dolores who has been forced to pretend to be Hale (Thompson) — in pretending to be Hale, has she absorbed any of her methods of thinking? Is she absorbing any of who Hale was? Or could a natural consequence of being in a different circumstance than the original Dolores be that they may not remain the same person anymore — that they may not even be allies? It’s a larger question that we think is a lot of fun to play with.”
There are only eight episodes in ‘Westworld’ S3, so viewers are almost to the half-way point. Could an all-out war erupt in the next few episodes? Or will storylines from this season carry over to the fourth? And when will that get here? There was a two-year gap between S2 and S3!
How are you enjoying the new season so far? How far do you think Dolores’ control extends?
