#but solomon's scene..that scene was SO pivotal to understanding more of his character. so much

[3vocatio]

obm devs are a joke lmfao the fact that they had the audacity to self-plagiarize such a tender scene with solomon still irks me to this day.

vs

[chlostertalks]

Westworld Timeline (My Best Guess) – Post-Season 3 Finale

Updated May 4th, 2020 (after S3E8)

“If this is still now, and if we are indeed still here.”  -Solomon, S3E7

The show creators want us to experience the world the way the hosts learn about their world and the world, which is why the timeline is so confusing. I've hammered it down as best I can, even with Season 2 causing brain damage a second time.

The year 2052 threw me off so much after S3E7, because Charlotte said that she infiltrated Delos "for the last few weeks" rather than what I thought was the last few years. I thought Dolores and Caleb were the only ones in 2058, but it turns out that all the characters were in the same year, so Seasons 1 and 2 occurred the year before rather than six years before. I had to reconstruct my timeline into what it is now below.

Rather than fitting Season 3 into the collective understanding of the timeline of Seasons 1 and 2, I had to structure Seasons 1 and 2 around the timeline of Season 3.

TL;DR:

The season 2 post-credit is finally explained

Caleb was born the same year as the Westworld massacre (and ironically on Groundhog Day)

The 2052 security footage of Maeve may be an off-camera event that parallels her exploring the Mesa in Season 1 (because nothing else makes sense with this arbitrary date)

A Refresher:

Season 1 sets up Westworld and the Reveries update (part of Ford's grand plan to do what Arnold tried doing a long time ago). The hosts are free…under Ford's control. They're merely slaves to a loop and the guests that hurt them.

Season 2 sets up the Arnold Project and the Delos Project, and that below the Valley Beyond is a room full of servers containing the Forge (all the park data) and the Sublime (a safe haven simulation for hosts). The season itself also shows other Delos Destination parks. Explores the idea that the next phase in human evolution is humanoid robots (hosts). Humans enslave hosts, only to want to be like hosts and achieve immortality.

Season 3 branches outside all the Delos Destination parks, showing that the very guests that visited the park were also part of a global loop controlled by Rehoboam. Explores the idea that hosts are controlled by humans, who are controlled by AI.

In the Previous Years….

Arnold's son, Charlie, dies.

Arnold wrote half of Westworld's code in 2017. (S1E7)

In S1E3, Ford explains that he, Arnold, and a team of engineers begin living on the park grounds to build the hosts. It was a three-year creation process before the park ever opened, so creation began in 2020.

All the interrogation sessions are of Arnold and Dolores; they begin here. All the times when hosts freeze all motor functions are with Arnold.

"You should get back, Dolores, before someone misses you."

Arnold gives Dolores a maze to follow so she can find herself. She will follow the maze three times in her lifetime in the park: once here, once with William, and once before the attack at the end of season 1.

2023 (34 Years before 2057/Season 1):

After achieving consciousness via the maze for the first time, Dolores kills all the hosts, Arnold, and herself to stop the opening of Westworld (S1E10). The park will open anyway, but Arnold almost achieved shutting down the place.

Meanwhile, Caleb is born February 2nd (Groundhog Day). We know this from S3E7, just above his left middle finger:

In the Years in Between:

Akecheta, chief of the Ghost Nation, was on a different loop. He was peaceful, and had a wife. He discovers the massacre and the maze but before he knew the voice inside his head, his narrative was changed, and the Ghost Nation was born.

The Arnold Project (before the Delos Project)

Any time there are black bars above and below the footage, the audience is watching a simulation.

Because it's impossible to have complete fidelity remain outside the Forge simulation and in the real world (as William will soon find out throughout the Delos Project), she allows him to have behaviors unlike Arnold to be separate from Arnold and function.

Thus, Dolores and Ford create Bernard Lowe for the real world. This is how he is part host and part human.  

Dolores is wiped and reset after creating Bernard.

Logan Delos sees the prototypes for Westworld; park needs funding

Husbandry robotics

Riot robots (used in the Season 3 finale)

George (site survey and construction)

Delos Destinations (Westworld and five other parks)

2025:

A thermonuclear incident occurs in Paris October 9th. (we know this from the Westworld Season 3 date announcement)

Engerraund Serac and his brother Jean Michel (Jean-Mi) watch as their loved ones and city are gone in an instant. This moment inspires the brothers’ creation of Solomon and, later, Rehoboam.

2027 (30 Years before 2057/Season 1):

Dolores meets William during her first quest to find the center of the maze a second time; William’s experience leads to his funding Westworld and saving them from closure; leaves photograph behind, showing that William’s tale from Episodes 2-9 set up the pilot and the season finale

William had been engaged to Juliet for a year upon his arrival at the park

Dolores achieves consciousness again, paralleling her third achievement in 2057 in S1E10

Dolores' memory is wiped after achieving consciousness a second time.

After William leaves the park….

Akecheta finds Logan in the middle of a desert after his horse dies. William had spanked the horse with Logan tied to it, and the horse ran as far as it could. Logan is insane and doesn’t know his way out. He told Logan that his kind would come for him, but he learned from Logan that there is another world. Possibly why the Forge simulation itself takes on Logan’s image.

William would come back to the park one month out of the year to unleash his true self  (S3E8).

William convinced Mr. Delos (Logan’s dad) to back Westworld after William bought Logan’s share; shows the possibilities of market research, explaining the ton of data they collected over the years.

The market research turns into achieving immortality, preserving their conscious minds in control units and placing the control units in drones. It’s pivoted as the next step in human evolution. This becomes the Delos Project.

William’s daughter Emily meets Dolores at Mr. James Delos’ retirement party. Logan is permanently insane.

Mrs. Delos died of a stroke, and Logan goes insane and ODs.

Through the Delos Project, William tries, over the next 30 years, to preserve Mr. Delos and bring him back to the real world after he dies of cancer.  Mr. Delos’ mind is preserved as a perfect virtual copy in the Forge, but the problem is bringing that copy into being in the Mesa and in the real world. If William can do that, the possibilities are endless. However, it fails multiple times.

William will grow to loathe the Delos project by 2057, and believe that "no system can tell me who I am. That I have a…choice" (S2E10). It feeds into what the entire series explores: whether or not there is free choice.

Mr. Delos’ last conversation with Logan becomes Mr. Delos’ cornerstone of his copy in the Forge.

2031:

Caleb’s mom abandons him March 20th. She is found months later, and is institutionalized as a result of her schizophrenia September 25th. This scene itself is shown S3E3. The dates are shown S3E7 (see 2023 photos).

In the Years in Between....

Akecheta looks for Logan at Westworld, but he is already gone. He instead finds the Valley Beyond, a door to another world—the Sublime, a safe haven or Garden of Eden, if you will. The Valley Beyond will also be known as Glory. He tries to take his wife from his former life, Kohana, to the Valley Beyond, and she remembers him, but the Westworld staff takes her away for decommissioning. He was afraid that, if he would die, he would lose her memory. He also noticed that more of his family was decommissioned and replaced.

William visits Dolores frequently at the park, and tells her of the plan of the Valley Beyond. William will build both the Valley Beyond and the Forge to record guest data and use it to achieve immortality.

Akecheta looks for his love and, for the first time ever, allows himself to die. He hasn’t been updated in 10 years because he had never died. He finds B83 and his love, but sees that she will no longer live. Thus, he dedicates his life to recreating the maze throughout the park so that the other hosts can find themselves and be free.

2037:

The Second Russian Civil War starts in Moscow, according to the Westworld Season 3 date announcement. Caleb and Francis will soon fight in this war.

In the years in between….

Serac and Jean-Mi create Solomon for Incite. Mr. Dempsey, the founder of Incite and Liam’s father, wants to predict the stock market for personal monetary gain, but the Serac brothers see something more in Solomon.

2039:

Solomon Build System initiated (we know this from the Westworld Season 3 date announcement)

This is a previous Rehoboam build by the Serac brothers. This is what Dolores and Caleb will find 19 years later in Sonora, Mexico.

In S3E7, Dolores explains that Solomon developed so many anomalies and inherited Jean-Mi’s “schizophrenic…way of thinking.”

2042:

Caleb graduates high school June 5th. He enlists in the army December 22nd, and will later fight in Crimea alongside Francis during the Russian Civil War.

Caleb begins training in Park 5 of the Delos Destinations. According to Dolores in S3E8, the government wanted "live" targets, and her creators were happy to supply. Like all Delos Destinations, the hats recorded every decision, including Caleb to not only choose not to harm the hosts, but also to encourage his comrades to do the same. He saved hosts, including a reassigned Dolores and Hanaryo, from being raped. His capacity to choose is why Dolores will choose Caleb for her mission outside the park 16 years later.

We know the dates from S3E3 (see 2049 photo) and S3E7 (see 2023 photos)

2043:

Jean-Mi asks Solomon to make a strategy; it’s his final request before his reeducation, according to Dolores in S3E7.

Jean-Mi goes mentally insane, so Engerraund checks Jean-Mi in a reeducation facility where he can monitor and manipulate him. The institutions, one being called Inner Journeys, are for outliers. The centers were meant to turn their minds inside-out so that they could fit Solomon’s (and later Rehoboam’s) society and be less of a threat. However, only 1 in 10 people reentered the world after reeducation; the outliers were so unpredictable, it was better to remove them from the world than have Rehoboam try to control them (a decommissioning, if you will).

In the years in between….

Engerraund also kills Mr. Dempsey and stages it as a plane crash.  

2048:

Caleb has a skull fracture May 9th (see 2049 photo) (1:28).

Caleb and Francis are in Crimea to hunt down an insurgent group called the Diehards, even though the Diehards were also hunting them. One of Caleb’s men dies in an explosion, and shrapnel hits him in the head, causing the fracture.

On May 11th, Caleb and Francis are honorably discharged, but Caleb won’t remember this as a result of his reeducation.

We know the dates not only from S3E3 (see 2049 photo), but also from when Caleb asks Solomon about Francis in S3E7 (see 2023 photos)

In the months in between….

Caleb and Francis robbed banks and murdered people through the RICO app. The app was designed for people to make money off murders and robberies, but in reality, it was used for U-class citizens to get rid of other outliers. Caleb and Francis were the best at it.

2049:

On April 4th, Caleb and Francis were tasked to murder the creator of the pharmaceutical company that produced memory-altering drugs (including the limbic wafers that correspond to reeducated people with drips installed in their mouths, like Francis)(not sure if it includes the Genre drug); the creator tells Caleb the truth, and since Caleb now knew the truth, he would be reeducated. Caleb turns and kills Francis and the creator after a bounty is immediately placed on both his head and Francis’ head.

Caleb nearly commits suicide when he ends up in Sonora May 4th.

We know the date from S3E3 when Dolores shows Rehoboam’s prediction of his suicide (below) (10:08). We know the date of his treatment center visit from S3E7 (see 2023 photos)

In the facility, Caleb becomes U454.1, and is reeducated on how he got to the facility in the first place. He’s trained to believe that Francis died in combat.

The reeducated backstory: After the incident in Crimea, Caleb and Francis captured the leader of the insurgent Diehards. The “leader” is the man that told him the truth about the world. The insurgents ambush Francis and Caleb, killing Francis and triggering his PTSD.

Caleb was not only one of the first people to be reeducated, he was one of the 10% of successful patients. Once reeducated after three months, Caleb is sent out into the world to be a construction worker who occasionally goes on RICO. This is how Dolores will find him in 2057.

2052:  

Maeve tries escaping the first known time (we know this date from the Westworld website—since removed, but photo is below)

But now that Westworld has made it obvious that Season 3 is in 2058, and it's only months removed from Season 2, which is immediately after the attack in Season 1, it's hard to pinpoint this date that was once on the Westworld website.

It may be from a past life that we did not see on camera, as Felix explained to Maeve S1E6 that "hosts get reassigned all the time"

Being that she's one of the park originals, Maeve has been around for a long time, and therefore, her time with her daughter may not be her first narrative

Like Dolores, she may have achieved consciousness once before–we the audience may not know this yet, and that may have been what was depicted on the website.

2055:

Caleb has a 5-month romantic relationship end by system interference October 2nd. This suggests that Rehoboam controls people’s lives.

We know the date from S3E3 when Dolores shows Rehoboam’s prediction of his suicide. This date is just below her right hand (see 2049 photo).  

2056:  

Juliet commits suicide after seeing William’s card from the Valley Beyond. It details the things he did in Westworld, videos and all. She leaves the card behind for Emily to see; it’s inside her 16th birthday present.

William does something truly evil (below) and feels nothing.

In exchange for her saving his life, Akecheta tries protecting Maeve’s daughter. However, William has other plans, shooting Maeve and her daughter, leaving Maeve to die on the maze Akecheta drew, and forcing the Westworld staff to assign Maeve to a new story: madam at the Mariposa.

Akecheta finds Ford as he constructs a new story. Ford knew that he was going to die by Dolores’ hand, and told Akecheta that when that day comes, he needed to gather his people and go to the Valley Beyond.

2057/Season 1:

Ford's months-long grand plan is put in motion. This plan will include:

The Reveries update (allows the hosts to access Arnold's code and possibly achieve freedom)

Reconstruction of Escalante while using half the park's resources

Writing a new narrative

Pulling hosts out of narratives

Letting Dolores and Maeve make their own choices

Letting Clementine fight back and demonstrate what Delos considers a fault in the Reveries update

Drinking to the lady with the white shoes with Old Bill

Retiring and allowing Dolores to kill him

Peter Abernathy is decommissioned after he sees a photograph of the real world; turns out to be William’s wife, Juliet

Maeve tries escaping a second time

William and Dolores begin a quest to find the center of the maze

Since Westworld is just another world to conquer, and he sees himself as a "Titan of industry," he must finish this quest to conquer Westworld to find his purpose.

She is retracing her steps with no concept of time

Some of her retracing is mixed in her flashbacks with William and Logan, including the graveyard, orgy house, and train scenes.

Maeve begins piecing together what Sweetwater really is. She finds old doodles and signs of the Livestock engineers. She begins dying repeatedly in order to find the Livestock engineers. She'll awaken multiple times, and force engineers Felix and Sylvester to provide answers on what this park really is. She also gets new powers and personality modifications out of it.

Elsie finds that Maurice (the host that smashes his head in) was implanted with a satellite uplink. He was drawing a target that looked similar to Orion's belt to smuggle data out of the park, and has been doing it for weeks. As Elsie investigates, Bernard abducts her and abandons her for three weeks.

Ford begins displacing more hosts, ruining the years of hard work that Lee Sizemore put into narratives. He also talks to Dolores, and she lies, telling him that she hasn't made contact with Arnold in over 34 years--the day of the massacre.

"He doesn't know. I didn't tell him anything." (S1E5)

Ford finds William and Teddy at a bar. William explains to Ford that he's looking for purpose and meaning, something he believes he will find by playing Ford's game

Ford: "Well if you're looking for the moral of the story, you could quite simply ask."

William: "I need a shovel. The man I'd be asking died [roughly] 35 years ago. Almost took this place with him. Almost, but not quite, thanks to me."

Bernard wants to learn about the 5 unregistered hosts of Sector 17--the replicas of Ford and his family. The area is designated off-limits for future narratives. It is also later in S1E6 that Bernard learns he is part-human (Arnold) and part-host.

Charlotte and Theresa continue devising a plan to overthrow Ford and to keep smuggling data out the park. Charlotte knows that the only thing the board cares about is the IP they need for the Delos project. She also has a hidden agenda as Serac's mole.  

Using Clementine in the demonstration to show what Delos finds a fault in the Reveries update

Firing Bernard

Wanting to lobotomize hosts within the next six months in order to reverse what they see as damage

Late 2057/The Attack (season 1 finale):

William finds the center of the maze, but it was never for him

Bernard makes a copy of Ford. This copy will taunt him for part of Season 2.  

Dolores achieves consciousness a third time via the maze and kills Ford and some board members. Unlike the last massacre in 2023, this one is by choice

Maeve achieves consciousness again and creates an escape army

Charlotte plants the key to the Forge and Sublime in Peter Abernathy’s head to smuggle out the park for Serac; breaks him mentally

Charlotte leaves a message for her son Nathan via a host (revealed in season 3)

Late 2057/One Week after the Attack (meat and potatoes of season 2): 

Dolores' rancher's daughter and Wyatt personalities have merged, as the Bicameral Mind song alluded to in the opening scene of the pilot. She goes on a killing spree of the guests, but also mentions repeatedly that "not everyone gets to go to the Valley Beyond" to justify killing hosts. 

Bernard escapes the park with Charlotte. 

Bernard tries getting Peter Abernathy for Charlotte, but plans are foiled by Dolores. Bernard hides with Dolores' army. 

Dolores finds her father, Peter Abernathy. She asks Bernard for help, but he can’t do a whole lot.

During a battle between the Confederados and the Delos security team, Clementine drags Bernard to a cave where Elsie is. It’s where Ford commanded him to leave her after the events in season 1. He begins leaking cortical fluid, so Elsie rushes him back to the Mesa. 

Maeve, Sizemore, Sylvester, Felix, Hector, and Armistice journey through Shogun World to shortcut into Westworld and find Maeve’s daughter. They learn that Sizemore copied narratives throughout other parks. 

The Delos Destinations: 

Westworld (Seasons 1-3)

Shogun World (Season 2)

The Raj (Season 2)

War World (Season 3)

Park 5 (Season 3)

Medieval World (Game of Thrones cameo in Season 2) 

William visits James Delos copy #149 and tells him how he and his family died. The copy goes insane, and Bernard and Elsie later find James and destroy him.

Bernard and Elsie fear that the Cradle, where the backups of the host data live, is in jeopardy, so they head to that section in the Mesa to save it. Ford's copy from S1E10 takes Bernard’s free will away from him because he doesn’t have it in him to survive. Ford will command him again to leave her. 

Elsie keeps bugging Bernard on what he found in the Cradle, but he doesn’t tell her. Instead, he has her find a car for the Valley Beyond, and splits from her to handle some other things for Ford. He later severs his ties from Ford to begin thinking on his own, and rejoins Elsie. 

Angela destroys the Cradle anyway, and Bernard destroys the security system to allow Dolores to have full control and take the key inside Peter Abernathy. 

Seeing that, by Charlotte placing the key in his head, he is broken and “dying,” Dolores kills Peter, and gets the pearl from his control unit. She now has the key to the Forge and the Sublime in her possession. 

William has to play a game that involves his past. His past conveniently finds him in the form of his daughter Emily, who escaped from the Raj park and somehow ends up in Westworld. Hallucinating and asking for Ford, William kills Emily, thinking she is a host. However, he realizes she was human when she has his data card in her hand. 

William questions whether or not he has a choice to do good or evil things or if it's part of his code, which is explored in Season 3

Dolores reprograms Teddy so that he'll no longer feel conflicted on following along with Dolores' revolution. The reprogramming drives him to suicide. 

Bernard leaves Elsie behind in the park. He heads to the Valley Beyond and runs into Dolores. They find the room of servers that hold the Forge in the Mesa, located just below the Valley Beyond.

Within the Valley Beyond: 

The Forge: holds guest data and James Delos' memories, among other things (the Forge itself takes on the image of Logan)

The Sublime: a safe haven for hosts  

Dolores learns about the park data while in the Forge itself with Bernard. She begins studying humans, and possibly which ones to target in the real world. 

The Valley Beyond holds a promise of a virtual Eden called the Sublime, where hosts are free and no longer slaves to these parks. Dolores believes that it’s just another cage, and she wants the real world, so she begins destroying the servers that support the Forge and the Sublime. 

To Dolores, the Sublime is basically a place where the hosts are only in simulation on someone's server, and can easily be deleted 

Bernard shoots Dolores, saving the Sublime and the Forge, but the servers' room begins flooding. That flood will carry above ground, closing the door to the Sublime and creating a flood above ground in The Valley Beyond (Sector 16, Zone 4).

Bernard imagines Ford’s voice guiding him on next steps, but he’s really listening to his own voice for the first time. He creates a host Charlotte, but with Dolores’ control unit. Host Charlotte kills real Charlotte.  

Host Charlotte saves the Sublime itself (about 2 exabytes of data), redirecting it via satellite to an undisclosed location on earth. 

"We are capable of change. And I've changed my mind." -Dolores as host Charlotte

Dolores saves the Sublime while as host Charlotte, even though she tried destroying it moments earlier. 

Host Charlotte kills Elsie because she’s too caught up in her own self-interest of wanting to be promoted and helping out on the Delos project. (Could also be a metaphor in killing off audience questions because she constantly wanted clarity on what the hell is going on in Westworld) 

Elsie had similar interests as Theresa, who had similar interests as Charlotte. Would make no sense for real Charlotte to kill her, which is why Dolores disguised as host Charlotte did. 

Bernard scrambles his own memory and leaves himself on the beach as the server room floods. 

Late 2057/Two Weeks after the Attack (season 2 premiere and finale)

Bernard washes up on the beach to start season 2. Strand and the Delos security team are in the middle of an investigation, and Strand, Stubbs, and host Charlotte bring Bernard along to see if he can piece together what happened two weeks ago.

Host Charlotte reveals to the team that Bernard is a host (because she’s Dolores in disguise and already knows about Bernard). They enter the house of Ford’s original hosts (designed in his own and his family’s image) and discover all the copies of Bernard hanging on meat hooks in the RDF basement.

Bernard is basically put in custody, and host Charlotte forces him to give directions to the security team on where Peter Abernathy’s control unit lives

Bernard and the security team head to the Valley Beyond. The security team drain the Valley Beyond and the room where the Forge servers live. Host Charlotte kills Strand. She later sends an encryption key to Delos, and Delos finally sends help off the island after two weeks. Bernard reveals what he did after the attack. Charlotte reveals herself as Dolores and kills everyone.

In the Months in Between….

No one’s picked up on host Charlotte’s host status other than Stubbs, who is a host himself. He gives host Charlotte clearance, and she’s free to leave the park. She leaves with 5 pearls.

In the season 2 finale, Bernard and Dolores are back in their host bodies, and are in Arnold’s old house. Dolores saves Bernard’s pearl and implants it a body she made for him. Host Charlotte is functioning, but with a different pearl. Dolores saves Bernard as a check and balance of her power rather than as an ally or a friend.

Bernard shaves his head and tries getting by without people recognizing him. He's been wanted for three months.

Late 2057/Season 3: (personal theory of when this happened on the timeline)

Dolores makes it into the real world, back into her own body, and cuts her hair into an asymmetrical bob. She begins going after guests that once frequented the park. We see this in the opening scene of the season premiere.

Bernard returns to Westworld, located on the South China Sea, after months of hiding (and in spite of a warrant being out for his arrest), and programs Stubbs to protect him. He is looking for Maeve, but finds that she is not only decommissioned, but her control unit is missing. He has a remote and answers questions via a tablet as if he’s talking to Ford.

Maeve is in a simulation within a simulation--she's a host in War World, but the Delos Destination and Mesa she's taken to when killed in War World are within a simulation themselves. Still aware of who she is, she tries busting out the park again. Maeve, with the help of the copy Lee Sizemore (the real Sizemore died in season 2, as expected), tries to break out of both simulations and the physical Mesa itself. Through a help bot in the Mesa, she finds her control unit and makes a break for it, but the help bot is gunned down.

In San Francisco, Serac is introduced as a former park guest and, while at Incite, created the AI technology Rehoboam. He narrates the season 3 date announcement video. He slowly bought out the board (38% ownership over two decades). He’s trying to take over Delos via a mole inside the company (real Charlotte—RIP), and use the intel gathered on Westworld guests to feed into Rehoboam and control the globe outside the park with a better perfected algorithm. This is why Charlotte and Theresa had common interests when they were alive. It also explains the plot of the season: Rehoboam gathers every bit of intel on people to build a new world where, in Dolores’ words, “It’s not about who you are....It’s who they’ll let you become.”

Maybe Serac was a primary shareholder and the very reason why Delos wouldn’t send help until Peter Abernathy and all the park data was smuggled out of Westworld 

What Incite makes/runs: 

The cars we see throughout the season 

Psycho Pharmacology (bought out the pharmaceutical company run by the creator that Caleb kills in 2049) 

Virtual Assistant (the earpiece Dolores wears) 

Rehoboam 

RICO 

Delos’ assets (which will soon be destroyed—Serac only wants the data)

Also in San Francisco, host Charlotte struggles being inside a different body. She’s learning about Charlotte and her personality as she goes, but is in constant confusion. Could be like the James Delos copies where they lose their minds in trying to achieve fidelity to the original person. Nathan, real Charlotte’s son, quickly learns that Host Charlotte isn’t his real mom. 

Delos begins testing one of 300 riot robots that will be used in S3E8 

Host Charlotte learns that someone smuggled Maeve out the park (S3E3). When Charlotte later meets Serac, she learns that original Charlotte (RIP) was one of his moles, but not the only one.

Charlotte used Maurice (the guy that smashes his head in) to smuggle data out of the park for him (S1E5)(see In the Years in between 2052 and 2055). 

William admits in S3E7 that he sold some of Delos’ data to Serac in order to raise capital for the park, but it's not possible for him to be a mole, as he feels that Serac stole his company from him

Host Charlotte reveals to William that she’s a Dolores copy. William freaks out and is immediately deemed incompetent. She pricks him for blood, and he’s taken to a mental institution, Inner Journeys Recovery Center (the place where Serac took his brother) while all his shares transfer to the acting president of Delos: Charlotte.

We know William is there based on a quick shot in S3E4. It's later confirmed in S3E7. 

(Bernard and Stubbs will later learn the location of this site from Martin in S3E6)

In a hallucination, William is taunted by Dolores in her traditional Westworld clothing while in the Inner Journeys mental institution

Someone stole Maeve for Serac. He wants Maeve to kill Dolores, for he believes the encryption key in her pearl unlocks all the data on Delos’ park guests through the years. Maeve doesn’t want to, and motions to kill him, but he stops her with a remote very similar to Bernard’s (most remotes wipe out surveillance tapes, but this one controls a host). Later in Singapore, Serac tells Maeve that humanity’s biggest threat is itself, and that Rehoboam was designed to predict and prevent disaster. The most complete portrait of the map of the human mind lies in the encryption key inside Dolores. In return for Dolores, Serac will give Maeve the key to the Sublime after getting it from Dolores.

Serac and Maeve go to Arnold’s old house, now confirmed to be in Singapore, and find that Dolores has made 5 hosts—3 women and 2 men.

In Jakarta, Maeve tries tracking down Dolores. She finds that Dolores got a body from the yakuza (gang) and a man named Sato is in charge. She finds him in Itaidoshin Distillery (“to be of the same mind, even though we may have many bodies”). The kegs are full of the paste used to make hosts, meaning Dolores is making an army. Sato is not only one of the samurai from Shogun World, he turns out to be one of Dolores’ five hosts, and we further learn that Dolores has copied herself into four hosts. The only host she didn’t copy herself into is Bernard as a check and balance.

Dolores as host Charlotte smuggled five pearls out the park: four copies of herself and Bernard. 

The Four Hosts of Dolores: Charlotte, Sato, Martin, and Lawrence

Sato stabs Maeve, and removes a tracking device from her control unit.

2058/Season 3 

Dolores has been hunting down former guests for months. She begins dating Liam Dempsey, the figurehead of Incite, Inc., for answers. Incite created an AI system called Rehoboam, and it has detected a mole that could be after some IP (real Charlotte with Delos’ IP?). Liam wishes he could turn Rehoboam off, but lost access after his father, the co-founder of Incite, died. Only the original architect (Serac) knows how to turn it off. If he tells her the architect’s name, Rehoboam will know and he will die.

Real Martin Connells knocks Dolores out, and tells Liam that she is a spy; he tries killing her quietly, but she kills all his henchmen, and has host Martin kill real Martin. Caleb, an LA resident down on his luck and missing his deceased friend Francis, finds her after she is shot over the melee.

Dolores clues Caleb in on Rehoboam. It’s an AI system that is the framework of a company named Incite. Incite is doing what Delos tried to do, but in a different way; they collected data years before privacy laws to create a replica world with all these replica people. Moreover, Incite uses Rehoboam to predict how people’s lives will go. In Caleb’s case, he will commit suicide in 12 years, according to his file and based on Rehoboam’s algorithm. It’s why he can’t get a job and get ahead in life. Incite is deciding what people’s lives should be, and predicting people’s outcomes in lives.

But Dolores supposedly hates humans for what they did to her at Westworld, or at least that's the front she puts on. She wants humanity to have free choice to send the world back into chaos and let the world burn to the ground so it can start anew.

Dolores and Caleb plan to steal all of Liam Dempsey’s cash. Host Martin gets Liam’s fingerprint. Dolores knocks out Michael, the wealth manager of Liam’s assets. His blood is the encryption key to Liam’s account.

Dolores extracts some of his blood and injects it into Caleb. The blood key will only work for 20 minutes, but the transaction goes through and Liam’s assets are emptied.

Liam goes to an elaborate masquerade auction. He learns of a drug called Genre, which allows a person to have 5 different hallucinogenic experiences. 

Bernard believes that Dolores killed Liam and made a host out of him, so he and Stubbs plan to capture Liam in order to see who else she compromised. They cross him at the auction after Liam finds that his funds have been depleted. They learn he is still a human just as Dolores crosses them and takes Liam. 

While kidnapped, Liam injects Caleb with the Genre drug he got at the auction. Caleb begins hallucinating, and we the audience begin seeing more flashes of his past. 

Dolores hacks Rehoboam and releases data to everyone on earth February 27th. The world learns that their fates were designed. (we know the date from the season 3 release date announcement; the way the video reacts is the way Serac’s watch reacts as he flies above chaos) 

At the same time, William is in the recovery center in Sonora, Mexico. His therapist commits suicide by hanging after learning of her life projection. William is taken to augmented reality (AR) and group therapies, having a drip mouthpiece installed—the same one Caleb has.

Charlotte hacks into his files to learn of his whereabouts; she pricked his blood to place a tracker in him before he forcefully enters rehab S3E4 (unknown protein detected).

Bernard and Stubbs find William’s location from Martin. It’s safe to assume that, since Martin and Charlotte are part of Dolores, Martin learned about William’s location from Charlotte. Martin holds off Serac’s guards while Bernard and Stubbs head for Mexico.

Serac and Maeve are in a simulation of the Sublime. It’s just the two of them in the open field. Serac shows her what she can have if she achieves her mission. Maeve asks for help while Serac threatens a permanent end to her life.

While Maeve's body is being remade during Serac's recent acquisition of Delos, Serac does give her help in three old friends. Those bodies, along with Maeve’s, are being created in the background throughout S3E6. The friends are Hector, Clementine, and Hanaryo. Maeve will also be able to talk to Dolores while in simulation; she’s the host control unit in the blue panel below. The data on the unit is corrupted somehow.

The Hale family watches the world burn around them.

Serac is on to Charlotte’s true host identity. Charlotte begins setting Dolores’ plan in motion to take Incite down before Serac gets the encryption key. She learns of William’s whereabouts, and that someone removed the tracker on Maeve’s control unit. She also makes a backup copy of Delos’ data.

Serac only wants the encryption key inside Dolores' pearl in order to exploit data and feed it to Rehoboam; he orders everything else to burn to the ground—trillions of dollars. Serac’s hologram corners Charlotte in an emergency board meeting. He knows of Charlotte’s plan, as he’s watched her this whole time.

Charlotte: “I’ve bled Delos dry. I’ve been here for weeks cutting its data, money, resources, everything we need to survive. To beat you. And I just sent the last of the files we needed.”

Back in a simulation within a simulation because she must wait for a new body, Maeve once again has the power to see where her control unit lies, but now also has the power to see where Hector is and reprogram him to where he’s no longer in a loop. Maeve, Hector, and Sizemore find Dolores in a simulated RDF room where she used to meet Arnold in the early days of Westworld. Maeve doesn’t want to kill Dolores, but finds it unfair that Dolores has the encryption key to the Sublime and control over the outside world. Dolores doesn’t want to give the key of their kind to Maeve, who aligned with Serac (against her will). Dolores is also aware that Charlotte may or may not betray her.

“You want me to be a saint. But you’re no saint. You’re not a villain, either. And neither am I. We’re survivors." - Dolores

"All my life, I prided myself on surviving, but surviving is just another loop." -Maeve, S1E7

“I had to make some difficult choices. But I did them for all of us.” -Dolores

Charlotte makes a break for it, squashing Hector’s pearl, taking Dolores’ crusty control unit, and nearly destroying Maeve’s pearl before having to run from Serac’s henchmen. She recruits her riot robot to help her escape. As Charlotte picks up real Charlotte’s family, the car explodes, killing the human passengers. Charlotte emerges with third-degree burns, shocked at the carnage. 

 William is amid an AR group therapy simulation featuring James Delos and all his past selves. Realizing he’s been sadistic since childhood, James Delos asks rehab William if he chose his path or if fate decided for him.  He destroys his past selves to find out who he really is. Bernard and Stubbs find him abandoned while in the therapy simulation, as the doctors ran off amid the chaos.

“Doesn’t matter where I’ve been, good or bad. Everything we’ve done has led to this. And I finally understand my purpose. I’m the good guy.”

His purpose becomes to kill all the hosts and restore balance to the human world.

Maeve emerges from the lab within the Mesa, new body and all. She waits for an old friend to emerge before taking matters into her own hands. 

In an undisclosed location, Charlotte begins deviating from Dolores’ plan, realizing that Dolores cloned herself four times over, knowing the clones would die for the sake of the revolution (and against their consent). Charlotte uses Clementine and Hanaryo in Jakarta to kill Sato. Hanaryo takes Sato’s head with them. 

In a simulation, Emily tests William for fidelity (season 2 post-credit) 

Bernard and Stubbs catch up with William in Sonora, learning that Charlotte infected him with an unknown protein, and that he is pronounced dead by the reeducation facility. Because his reeducation was unsuccessful, he was declared dead. 

Also in Sonora, Dolores and Caleb find Solomon, Rehoboam’s predecessor. They also find “decommissioned” (for lack of a better word) bodies of those who failed to be reeducated, including Jean-Mi.

“The projection did not fit the data, so the data had to change.” -Solomon

Dolores asks Solomon for Jean-Mi’s final strategy, which Solomon projected in 2043. Solomon noted that the strategy decoheres from the world (callback to title of S3E6, Decoherence). She buys Solomon time to make the strategy fit this world, and makes Caleb the catalyst for executing it. The prime movers are dead or decommissioned, however.

“If you (Dolores) die, I will adjust my projections.” -Solomon 

Maeve appears, and begins to fight Dolores out back. Maeve uses telepathy to have a quadcopter blow Dolores’ arm off. She escapes back to where Solomon is. Maeve learns of Caleb, but as she readies her sword to kill Dolores, Dolores pushes Solomon’s EMP button, shutting all three of them down. Caleb finds Dolores as a virtual assistant gives him instructions.

Solomon had planned to warn Caleb of something, but doesn’t get the chance. That something may have been the end of humanity being in the final strategy. 

Dolores somehow has Solomon upload Rehoboam's access info into her pearl while she's touching the EMP system.

William, Bernard, and Stubbs escape Inner Journeys out front. Bernard and Stubbs figured they may need William, so they keep him alive. They walk to a gas station to find a car so they can catch up to Dolores and Caleb. Bernard and Stubbs also piece together that Dolores will have Caleb destroy Rehoboam’s world.

“Dolores was made with a poetic sensibility. She won’t destroy humanity—he [Caleb] will.” -Bernard 

William shoots Stubbs, and Bernard presses a button on his remote to go full assassin. The SFPD interfere, and William escapes. Bernard learns that one of the officers is Lawrence, the last copy of Dolores. Lawrence gives Bernard Sato’s suitcase and an address "to go see her" in Los Altos Hills, California.

27713 Ravens Road

Serac's assistant finds Dolores and Maeve's bodies. Dolores' pearl is missing, as Caleb takes it with him back to Los Angeles. The assistant brings Maeve back to Serac to be revived.

Once back in Los Angeles, Caleb finds the LA branch of the Itaidoshin Distillery, where Dolores left a trunk with another copy of her own body in case something happened to her. Caleb installs her pearl in the body, and she explains why she chose him as she puts the rest of her skin on. 

 After escaping, William wants access to his funds and to every location of Delos' assets. 

Caleb and Dolores continue with the revolution. In the middle of the plan, host Charlotte returns, this time only to Dolores as a hologram (Dolores can see her through her contact lenses). Charlotte sees Dolores as a weakness to be shed, and sets her up so that Maeve can take her into Serac's custody. 

Serac needs Maeve to finish her job to save the world. During the battle, Dolores reveals that all the hosts are copies of her. She was the first that worked, so Delos built all the hosts from her.

"You want to tear down their world and replace it with copies of yourself." -Maeve 

"What becomes of this world will be up to them. And what you do will be up to you, as long as you don't try to stop me." -Dolores

"They're free, here, under my control." - Ford, S1E7

Bernard pays a visit to what he thought would be Dolores, but it's actually Arnold's widow, Lauren. She has aged in the decades since Charlie's death. Being that Bernard is part Arnold, he realizes he must come to grips with Charlie's death and memory before continuing on his mission.

After battling and hologram Charlotte's second interference, Maeve takes Dolores into custody at the Incite headquarters. Dolores is plugged into Rehoboam, and her memories are deleted in the hopes that the lack of memories will uncover the key. 

Caleb gets into Incite's HQ, but is unable to upload Jean-Mi's final strategy from Solomon. Serac destroys the flash drive because, if the strategy was uploaded, human civilization would end in 50-125 years.

Serac promised to give Maeve the key to the Sublime once extracted from Dolores, but Rehoboam never promised anything. Turns out that Rehoboam controlled Serac through an earpiece, as Serac "in a word, gave [his voice] to [Rehoboam]" to save the world. Rehoboam guides them in order to keep the world in balance, but the world is tired of being puppets.

"I lived in the chaos. Now, I choose to listen, to obey."  -Serac

In a simulation with one of Dolores' memories in an open field, Maeve soon realizes that Dolores never trusted herself with the key, and planted it in the pearl of someone else: Bernard.

"If you want me to trust you, let me inside your mind. Or I can force my way in." -Maeve

"Let them have their world. We can make our own." -Maeve

"I was angry at first. Torn between two impulses. We could annihilate them, or we can tear down their world in the hopes we could build a new one, one that's truly free. Then, we can bring the others back." -Dolores

As Dolores' last memories are wiped, Maeve overrides Serac's remote and kills his henchmen and leaves him to die. She reveals that Dolores' last memory was Solomon's access to Rehoboam, giving Caleb the choice to destroy Serac's work.

"She gave me a choice. I believe the rest of the world deserves one, too." -Caleb

Maeve chooses to align herself with Dolores' cause to help Caleb save the world.

In a motel, Bernard puts Stubbs in a tub of ice to keep him alive. He realizes that Dolores planted the key to the Forge and Sublime into his pearl, and that the suitcase has headgear to access it. Bernard enters the Sublime to figure out what he must do after the end of the world.

"I don't think she was trying to exterminate the human race. She was trying to save it. What's about to happen was always gonna happen. Serac and his brother were just holding it off. Humanity never reckoned with its own sins." -Bernard

"Our world had to burn down before we could be free." -Bernard 

In the Not-Too-Distant Future…. (Season 3 Post-Credit Scene)

William reaches a Delos branch in Dubai, looking to see where the hosts "breed." Turns out host Charlotte escaped to the Dubai location, and is building an army of hosts. A host William emerges and slits the throat of the real William.

"We [Dolores and I] started in the same place, but I can see the error in the path she took. But you're right William. You're going to save the world…for us." -Charlotte

In the Far Future…. (Season 3 Post-Credit Scene)

Bernard emerges from the Sublime with dust all around him in the motel room.

Here’s to Season 4! 

[woodworkingpastor]

Sunday, June 28, 2020 -- God, the Searcher of Hearts -- Romans 8:26-27

Many people know the British author C.S. Lewis for his series The Chronicles of Narnia.  The fifth book of that series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, describes the quest of King Caspian of Narnia, as he sets sail in search of the seven lost Lords of Telmar.  Caspian is joined in his quest by Edmund and Lucy (who have been to Narnia twice before) and their cousin Eustace, who is obnoxious, arrogant, and rude, and who quickly alienates everyone on the quest.

Along their journey the Dawn Treader stops at an island because the ship had been badly damaged in a storm.  Eustace wants no part of the hard work involved in repairing the ship, so he sneaks off, quickly becomes lost, and falls asleep in a dragon’s cave.

When Eustace awakes, he is horrified to learn that while he slept, he become a dragon.  Realizing that he will likely be stuck this way for the rest of his life changes Eustace for the better, and he begins to use his new dragon-abilities to help his friends—he can now easily bring them pigs and goats to eat, and he even uproots a large tree to serve as a replacement for the Dawn Treader’s broken main mast.  But after six days as a dragon Eustace begins to despair; he realizes that it is time for the quest to resume, and there is no way he will be able to accompany his friends in his present form.

That evening, Aslan the lion—the Christ figure in The Chronicles of Narnia—appears to Eustace and beckons him to a pool, telling Eustace that he can get into the waters and be healed, but first he has to undress. Eustace gladly sheds his dragon skin, only to find another layer of dragon skin beneath.  He sheds the second layer, only to find a third, and then a fourth. It is at this point that Eustace submits himself to Aslan’s care, and Aslan uses his claws to cut deep into Eustace’s dragon flesh.  It was painful, but healing, and it enabled Eustace to descend into the healing waters and emerge cleansed and restored to his true self.

They say that Eustace was a changed person from that day on—so much so that those who knew him before barely recognized him afterwards.

{If you’re interested in learning more of this scene--and don’t mind some cheesy graphics, here’s a clip from a 1989 BBC version of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.}

C.S. Lewis was a master craftsman of storytelling, setting up this marvelous baptismal story to help us understand how we are powerless to achieve our own salvation; we are in complete and desperate need of Jesus so that we might be saved.

Romans 8:18-30 has been our focus for the last two Sundays. We are walking slowly through these verses so that we might grow in our understanding of how to be faithful to Jesus in the times in which we live.  Along the way, we have affirmed one of the great blessings of Scripture: it tells the truth about our circumstances and liberates us to tell the truth about these times.  When we are faced with suffering because of our faith in Jesus, we don’t have to put on a happy face. We can name things for what they are.

We also affirm along with Scripture that persevering through sufferings is a significant means to spiritual growth; suffering for our faith can have a redemptive value, purifying our hearts and our motives to follow Jesus, shaping us to desire the things God wants for us.  

Of course, this is not easy.  We noted last week that sometimes the sufferings of this life are so severe that we don’t even know how to pray.  We live in an in-between time where we know both the struggles of this life and the promise of God’s full and future redemption. There are times when the struggles of this life become so powerful that words escape us in prayer, much in the same way words escape us when someone we know does something that shocks us beyond belief.  “I just don’t even know where to begin.”  “I just don’t know what to say.”  We find ourselves stunned to a loss of words in a number of circumstances, and all we can do is muster a groan.  

I want to talk about this inability to know how to pray for a moment; it is one that is common to us all. Even Jesus’ disciples knew they needed a lesson in prayer. Luke tells us of a one disciple coming to Jesus and asking, “Lord, teach us to pray.” What a magnificent, mature question!  Do you remember what Jesus’ answer was?  He didn’t say, “Oh, prayer is just talking with God.  So tell God what you what’s on your mind.”  Jesus gave them actual words to say—a prayer we use in worship every Sunday.

Have you ever stopped to wonder why Jesus didn’t say, “Just go talk with God”? Maybe it’s because Jesus knew we really weren’t to be trusted to know how to pray. And while I do believe that we can and should offer our own extemporaneous prayers to God, I also believe we should hold a healthy skepticism for our ability to pray. This is what made me think of Eustace’s experience as a dragon; even though his experience with Aslan significantly changed his life, the story tells us that there were still times when Eustace was rude and obnoxious. We still struggle with our own layers of dragon flesh that cause us to seek the wrong things from God.  

It takes a certain amount of spiritual maturity to take that hard look at ourselves and say “I know my own heart, and I am not to be completely trusted to ask God for the things I most need.  I even need God’s help to know how to pray.” That can be a difficult thing to hear, because normally we are satisfied with our self-sufficiency. But part of the Bible’s truth-telling is that it tells us the truth about ourselves.  Sin compromises our ability to desire the things that are in our best interests or in God’s plan, perhaps especially when we are suffering.

But we are not without hope.  Even when we have no ability or understanding to pray properly, Romans 8:27 tells us that even here God is on our side; God “searches our hearts.”  

It’s an idea that comes from the Old Testament, where this aspect of God’s character becomes almost a title for God, something that can feel like a scary thing and a good thing all at the same time.  We first encounter this description in 1 Samuel 16, during a time of real national crisis.  The people have rejected Samuel as their leader because they don’t want to shape their lives around God’s vision for their life. Their own dragon scales are showing—they want to navigate their own path through life, and leave all the hard decisions to the king. In response, God appointed Saul to be king. What a disaster that was!  Saul soon needed to be replaced.

So God sends Samuel the priest to Jesse’s house. Jesse has a lot of sons who look like good king material.  Samuel sees on the first son, Eliab, and says to himself, “He looks like a fine young candidate.”  But God says, “Not so fast, Samuel.  You see what is on the outside, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  God sees David’s heart, and the people have their king.

A generation later the people are at another pivotal time in their history, only this one is a celebration. In 1 Kings 8, the people have finished building their temple and King Solomon—David’s son—is offering the prayer of dedication.  He knows that the people will struggle to remain faithful; he knows that they will not always follow the ways God has laid out for them.  But he also knows that they will eventually repent, and when they confess their sin, Solomon asks God—the one who “knows their heart” to hear their prayer and return times of forgiveness and blessing.

Here in Romans, we see that in times of suffering and difficulty; in times when the universe seems to be conspiring against us; in times when we do not know how to pray; the Holy Spirit is there, praying on our behalf.  Even in our weaknesses, God is on our side.

What weaknesses are you facing this morning? Our weaknesses might be of body, mind, or spirit—we are always aware of those, even more during our present time.  Our weaknesses might be of a more material or financial type. Some of you are deeply concerned with justice and fairness issues in our world, and long for the day when our world will operate more fairly; perhaps your hope in God’s bringing that about is waning, and you are growing weak in the struggle.