Welcome back to Westworld.
Westworld Season 3 is officially here and you know what that means: Time to start pouring over every little details of every scene to try and unravel the mystery and piece together the puzzle. Though this season certainly seems (at least for now) to be a whole lot more linear than Season 1 and 2, we don't want to fall into a loop of expecting the same tricks to be played again and again.
So, with that in mind, we went back and picked on every tiny detail and Easter Egg in the premiere episode you may have missed. From callbacks to Sweetwater to the biblical nature of the supercomputer that is, apparently, determining the paths of every human being on the planet, there were plenty to pick from. And, perhaps more importantly, gave us a closer look at just what the rest of the season may have in store for us. Are human being actually free or are they just in their own versions of the hosts' narrative loops? What is Caleb's deal? Did Delos somehow build a simulation inside a simulation? Who's puppeteering Charlotte Hale?
Time to bring yourself back online and get to theorizing. Let us know any details we may have missed in the comments below.
1. The Delos Massacre
Unsurprisingly, Delos shareholders are in panic-mode after the host uprising. The headlines read "Bloodbath at Delos park," otherwise known as the entirety of Season 2.
2. I'm afraid I can't do that
It's taken three entire seasons but we finally got a Westworld-flavored 2001: A Space Odyssey nod, courtesy of the computer system telling its owner that it's "afraid it can't do that."
3. "I read your book."
Dolores mentions reading her first victim's "book." She's talking about the data Delos had been harvesting from guests that was stored in one of their servers. If you remember back in Season 2, the system was guarded by an AI representation of Logan Delos and the files were shown to Dolores and Bernard as books in a sprawling library.
4. Host wife?
It's difficult to tell whether or not Dolores's first victim's current wife is in fact a host or not--it certainly seems like his first wife either died or left him and he recreated her as a host for himself. That, or he remarried a human woman who looks shockingly similar to his first wife. Either way, it's insanely creepy.
5. Who is Charlotte Hale?
We still don't know who's actually inhabiting the host copy of Charlotte Hale--but whoever it is, they've apparently done a great job of keeping themselves hidden in plain sight. There seems to be absolutely no suspicion at all about Charlotte not being herself.
6. Farmer Bernard
Bernard was resurrected by Dolores back at the end of Season 2, and has since gone into hiding--though even he doesn't seem to have much faith in that protecting him. He's conducting security scans on himself to try and prevent any memory tampering--you know, the reason Season 2 was so fragmented and out of order? Hopefully that'll never happen again, given Bernard's new paranoid diligence.
7. A small town out west
Dolores makes a joke about being from a "small town out west," obviously meaning Sweetwater.
8. Rehoboam
The supercomputer/AI charged with "charting a path for everyone" is named Rehoboam, after the biblical figure who was the son of King Solomon.
And speaking of Rehoboam, it certainly sounds like it's the human equivalent of the narrative "loops" that hosts were put on in the park. Sure, the language might be different--strategies, rather than "narratives," "paths" instead of "loops," but the outcome certainly seems the same.
9. Digital meat hooks
During Bernard's unfortunate fight, take a look at the background--this definitely is a traditional meat packing plant. Though they're still vaguely cow shaped, the things growing red steaks hanging from hooks are robotic, and the meat is more than likely cloned.
10. MacArthur Park
Westworld's Los Angeles may be pretty unrecognizable by modern standards, but MacArthur Park (where Caleb goes on the Rico mission with sends him careening into Dolores' life) is a real place.
11. "Someone else beat you to that."
We don't know much about Caleb's history just yet--he was in the military, something bad happened, and apparently, he's been shot in the head. It's likely that that particular wound is what damaged or removed the "implant" he's talked about, which also seems to be a key component in the "drugs" (paper thin tabs with circuit boards in them, taken orally) that people have been consuming throughout this episode. With any luck, we'll learn more about this soon.
12. Poisoning a host
Fortunately for Dolores, hosts' synthetic bodies aren't actually susceptible to poison, so the scheme to murder her doesn't exactly go as planned. But perhaps more importantly, proves that absolutely no one knows who Dolores really is.
13. Common People
The song playing during Dolores' shoot-out is Common People by Pulp.
14. Phone calls from beyond
Clearly the idea of replicating humans as host programs wasn't something exclusive to Delos--Caleb's friend Francis died, but an AI replicant of him has been calling Caleb as a sort of "therapy." Pretty morbid.
15. Body snatchers
Dolores pulls a Charlotte Hale body snatch on Martin Connells, murdering him and recreating him as a host--but we don't know who's inside the body controlling it just yet.
16. Shadow people
The drugged-out party guest Caleb is sent to deal with by the Rico app is watching a projecting on a wall while raving about "shadow people." It's not the most elegant representation, but the set-up seems like a very clear nod to ancient greek philosopher Plato's Allegory of the Cave, which attempted to explain the nature of reality and truth. In the work, Plato describes people who are kept hostage in a cave, watching a wall, where shadows are projected. They come to understand and accept the shadows to be reality when they are, in fact, just a projection of a real world they can't see.
As far as Westworld themes go, that one is pretty on-the-nose.
17. Parce Domine
The episode title comes from a Roman Catholic "antiphon," or Gregorian chant. The full verse translates to "Spare, Lord, spare your people. Be not angry with us forever."
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