Time to refresh your (scrambled) memories before the premiere.
Westworld Season 3 is right around the corner and if you've been keeping up with the trailers, you've probably been asking yourself some questions lately--namely: What the heck even happened last season and what is actually going on? How did a show about robotic cowboys turn into something that looks and feels like a mashup of Blade Runner and The Dark Knight? What actually happened to your favorite characters to get them into this mess?
Well, don't panic. We found ourselves in the same boat. We painstakingly broke down each moment of Season 3's final trailer and then turned our attention to the past, poring over each and every moment of last season to try and piece together exactly what happened to each of our favs. Needless to say, it was a little confusing. But never fear, we pressed on, took rigorous notes, and did our best to reassemble the out-of-order events of Bernard's scrambled memories.
The revelation that Delos had actually been stealing information on every guest to ever set foot in the park--using the cowboy hats as brain scanners, no less--dovetailed into an even bigger revelation that the plan for the park all along had actually been to "turn guests into hosts." This process would be completed using a giant host-creating super-server called the Forge, which not only housed all the stolen guest information, but could create any number of host bodies to install them into. Unfortunately, however, Delos quickly learned that turning a human into a host was more complicated than just uploading their brain wave patterns into a computer and, as far as we know and despite rigorous testing (conducted by an AI version of Logan--you remember, William's friend from back in the day?) they never quite cracked the code in any sustainable way.
But the hybridization of hosts and humans is the least of Dolores's problems--she made it all the way to the Forge to try and destroy the recorded human data altogether, before deciding that it would be more beneficial to upload her fellow hosts into a super-server all their own called the Valley Beyond or the Sublime. The net result of this choice is a little hard to quantify but it basically means that Delos lost a whole bunch of their saved human data, and then the entirety of their host programs--or, well, the host programs that weren't killed by Delos security before the upload completed. So, at the end of Season 2, Dolores (in disguise) managed to rescue a grand total of five non-uploaded hosts, which she spirited off of the island and into the real world.
That's where Season 3 will likely pick up, with Dolores and her scrappy band of rescued hosts bringing their fight to their creators--unless, of course, there's some other twist we just haven't seen coming. This is Westworld, after all.
Now, let's take a closer look at where exactly each major character ended up, where they'll likely be in the future, and what you should remember about their stories going into the next chapter of the sci-fi epic.
Maeve
After Delos learned that Maeve had a glitch that allowed her to "reprogram other hosts on the fly" just by being near them, they attempted to remove and repurpose her code. This, unsurprisingly, failed, when Maeve was able to puppeteer the bodies of some of the hosts in the lab around her and murder her captors. Once free, she, Hector's gang, and Sizemore, the Delos head of Narrative, returned to their mission to find Maeve's daughter.
It didn't end well for them, however. When Dolores and Bernard opened a portal to the Valley Beyond, Maeve only got to watch her daughter from afar before being gunned down. Her body was returned to Delos custody--maybe. The two Delos employees who retrieved her corpse were none other than Felix and Sylvester, the engineers Maeve roped in to helping her during the rebellion, and who eventually came to respect Maeve's sentience.
Akecheta
It was revealed that Akecheta had actually gone a full decade without being updated, which allowed him to start a sort of oral tradition among his Ghost Nation tribemates. This, in turn, allowed the tribe to slowly begin unraveling the truth of their own existence, which led them to start looking for the door to the Valley Beyond.
At some point, Akecheta realized that Maeve's daughter was in a similar position--she could remember her past lives, to one extent or another--and he vowed to protect her. Unfortunately, these intentions were, uh, misconstrued(?) as violent, which led to Maeve's traumatic memories of her daughter being kidnapped. Apparently, it was all a big misunderstanding. Who could have guessed?
Akecheta ended Season 2 by actually making it to the Valley Beyond with Maeve's daughter, which should indicate that he's finally safe and free. But his voice can be heard in the Season 3 trailer saying that he finally "understands his purpose," so we expect we haven't seen the last of him.
Clementine
Poor Clementine was used as a sort of Trojan Horse by Delos after they secured the anomaly of Maeve's code. Delos gave a catatonic (or, perhaps more accurately, dead) Clementine the ability to drive hosts mad just by being in proximity to them, and then puppeteered her lifeless shell straight into the train of hosts walking toward the portal to the Valley Beyond.
The moment Clementine got near them, the hosts began murdering one another. Maeve was able to stop her, temporarily, but the madness of the hosts didn't end with Clementine going down and Maeve was killed in the process.
Clementine's body was recovered by Delos, so we presumably haven't seen the last of her either.
Hector, Armistice, and the Gang
Hector's gang, including his heavily tattooed right-hand woman, Armistice, were all taken down in the chaos of Clementine's arrival before they could cross into the Valley Beyond. Delos recovered their bodies, and we could see someone who looked suspiciously like Hector fleeing with someone who might be Maeve during a WW2 scene in the Season 3 trailer, so they're not out of the equation.
Charlotte Hale
It was revealed that Charlotte Hale was actually murdered by Dolores, who had uploaded herself into a host body that had been created to look exactly like Hale. So the real Hale is definitely dead but the host Hale, which apparently was abandoned by Dolores at some point after escaping the island and reuniting with Bernard at the end of Season 2, is currently occupied by someone else. Whether this is a back-up of Hale herself kept in Delos's servers, one of the hosts Dolores managed to get out of the park, or someone else entirely is yet to be determined.
Teddy
Unwilling to submit to Dolores' reprogramming of his core directives to become an unfeeling murderer, Teddy instead chose to shoot himself in the head. Dolores removed his "pearl" and then uploaded it to the Valley Beyond, which likely means he'll go on living the rest of his days in robot heaven.
The Man In Black/William
Some of the most bizarre exposition in Season 2 came care of William, who we learned lost his wife to suicide (which apparently took place after she learned what a monster he was in the parks, so kind of his fault). He also became estranged from his daughter because of his obsession with the park--and then, just to make things really dark, he shot and killed her when she tried to come rescue him from the host uprising, thinking it was all still part of Ford's "game."
But things got even more bizarre after that. More unhinged than ever, William tried to kill Dolores before she and Bernard were able to access the Forge (the giant server responsible for housing the archived data of all 4 million guests who entered the park)--but there are some timeline shenanigans at play. Whatever happened to the William who got to the Forge at the same time as Dolores is left a mystery--he somehow ended up "rescued" by Delos and he can be seen unconscious in their basecamp during Dolores's final escape, but we don't know how or when that happened. And, to make things even more confusing, during the post credits sequence we see William arrive at the Forge some time far in the future, where he's greeted by his daughter--or, more likely, a host replication of her--who assures him that this is the real world, or "what's left of it, anyway."
That leaves us with way more questions than answers. Exactly what happened to William between the last time we saw him in the present day and this giant time jump? Who pulled him from the flooding valley? Is the version we see in the post credits a human-host hybrid like the copy of James Delos that was featured in the earlier episodes of Season 2 or is he something else? If he is a hybrid, how long has he been one, and is he trapped in a loop like Delos was? If yes, how long is the loop? How much of William in the show has actually been a figment of the fidelity test?
Honestly, we can't even make an educated guess on any of those points--but we do know that William will be coming back for Season 3. So, hey, at least there's that.
Logan Delos
The mysterious Logan was given a proper backstory in Season 2, where it was explained that he was the deadbeat, disowned son of James Delos who overdosed and died years ago--presumably not long after he and William first visited the park together (and William basically stole Logan's whole life out from under him like a giant sociopathic jerk). However, a digital version of Logan lives on within the park as a sort of all-powerful librarian, testing and curating the digital versions of all 4 million guests who have set foot in the park. One of his biggest projects was a digital recreation of his own father.
But now that the park is in shambles, we can't be sure what happened to virtual Logan. Dolores may have changed the coordinates to the Valley Beyond, but given his position as a super AI, he probably knows them, right? And he probably can't be trusted.
Sizemore
Skeevy Head of Narrative Design Lee Sizemore went out in a blaze of glory to protect Maeve and Hector, reciting a speech he wrote for one of his stories as he was gunned down by Delos security. It was a shockingly selfless act for a guy who spent the majority of the season struggling to think of the hosts as anything more than expensive toys.
So human Sizemore is definitely dead. Of course, knowing what we know about Westworld's hoarding of guest data, there could very well be a host Sizemore running around somewhere now.
Stubbs
We last see Head of Security Ashely Stubbs as he's overseeing the final evacuations from the island. He has a very pointed conversation with host Hale (actually Dolores) where it's heavily implied that he's actually a host programmed by Ford himself to ensure the safety of both the guests and the hosts.
It's also heavily implied that Stubbs knows the Hale he's speaking to is actually a host (and likely knows that it's actually Dolores) before he lets her board the boat back to the mainland.
We see Stubbs briefly in the Season 3 trailer, which likely means that we're headed for a proper Stubbs and Dolores team-up sometime soon.
Dolores
Oh, Dolores. After carving a bloody swath across the park that eventually took her to the Forge, the mega-server housing not only access to the Valley Beyond but all of Delos's stolen data on the 4 million guests of the park, things only got more brutal and confusing for her. At first, while she was at the Forge with Bernard, she decided that it was more important to delete all of the human data than it was to open up a gate to the Valley Beyond for her fellow hosts, much to Bernard's dismay--but then, after some trademark Westworld timeline shenanigans, she had a change of heart. She did delete a considerable amount of guest data--and triggered the flooding of the valley--but she also moved the coordinates to the Valley Beyond to ensure that no humans would be able to find it once the gate was closed.
At the end of the day, we really can't be sure just how much of the guest data was purged or how many hosts were taken to robot heaven, since a fair amount of them were gunned down by Delos employees before they could cross the threshold. We do, however, know that in the chaos, Dolores recreated the body of Charlotte Hale as a host, uploaded herself into it, and then used Hale's doppelganger to escape the island with five host brains hidden in her purse.
Presumably, she's going to implant those pearls into new host bodies on the mainland and cause all sorts of trouble, but given how absolutely inscrutable most of her story was in Season 2, it's also possible that there's going to be some sort of twist we have yet to see coming.
Bernard
Bernard's journey through Season 2 was a confusing one, but it ended simply enough. After being killed in the park, he was rebuilt by Dolores following her escape from the island. This likely means that Bernard was one of the pearls taken by Dolores off the island--unless there's some other loophole there for Bernard that allowed him to be installed into a new host body without the help of a pearl. It's basically impossible to tell at this point.
We do know, however, that Bernard is no longer trapped on the island and is, presumably, living among humans, contemplating the choice Dolores gave him about where his allegiance lies: to the hosts or to the humans.
Ford
It was eventually revealed that the Ford who had been "talking" to Bernard actually wasn't an infectious bit of code implanted in Bernard in an effort to ensure Ford's own immortality. It was that for a little while, sure, but then Bernard removed that code and--well, it turns out that even hosts can go a little bit crazy. But we knew that. The Ford that Bernard saw through maybe half of the season was actually just Bernard's own consciousness trying to communicate with him as he reached self-awareness, which probably indicates that Ford is well and truly gone, at least for now. An Anthony Hopkins cameo is never out of the question, obviously.
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