An essential recap of 'Westworld' so far, and what you need to remember before season 3
HBO
The third season of "Westworld" premieres Sunday, March 15.
Insider summarized all the major storylines from the first two seasons that you should remember before the new season.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for all of HBO's "Westworld."
A new season of "Westworld" is coming, and just in case you didn't have time to rewatch the first two seasons (or haven't seen the show but want to know what it's about), we're here with a handy recap of the story so far.
If you want a full chronological recap, read our timeline of major events here. But otherwise keep scrolling for an overview of everything you need to remember before diving in to "Westworld" season three.
The story of "Westworld" truly begins with two men: Dr. Robert Ford and Arnold Weber.
HBO
Ford and Weber developed the AI technology to create "hosts" — extremely lifelike robots that could pass for humans in an amusement park setting.
Arnold, who had a son tragically die at a young age, was a misanthrope who preferred the company of hosts.
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Arnold believed he could push the hosts into true consciousness, and free them from the confines of scripted narratives.
Arnold used a theory called the "bicameral mind," and coded Dolores (one of the first hosts ever built) to follow a game called the Maze.
HBO
Using his own voice as a beta-version of her "subconscious," Arnold tried to get Dolores to believe her scripted "thoughts" were more than just the voice of the gods. He wanted her to develop a true consciousness.
Once he believed she was truly "alive," Arnold wrote a code for Dolores that would trigger her to kill him and the other hosts in the park.
John P. Johnson/HBO
Ford refused to believe that the hosts were alive, so Arnold thought he could force his hand and prevent Westworld from opening by staging this massacre.
So Dolores killed Arnold, but she wasn't truly alive. Not yet. Ford opened Westworld anyways.
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The park was hemorrhaging money, sent into a freefall thanks to Arnold's choice. Dolores wasn't truly conscious yet, because Arnold had to code the massacre narrative into her programming.
Enter Delos — a company founded by a man named James Delos.
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James and his son, Logan, ran the company. They made an initial investment in Westworld when it first opened.
James also had a daughter, Juliet, who was engaged to a Delos executive named William.
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William and Logan visited Westworld together a few years after the park first opened.
William met Dolores and fell in love with her. But she was occupied with once-again following Arnold's maze.
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Dolores periodically retraced the maze's path while in the park. William witnessed this happen during his first visit, and saw how Dolores was really just a very confused robot.
He became disillusioned with the romanticized relationship he thought they had.
William transformed into "the Man in Black," and dragged Logan to the edge of the park and left him there (naked).
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William used Logan's distressed and delirious state to claim him unfit for running Delos. William went to James, his soon-to-be father-in-law, and usurped Logan as lead executive of the company.
Delos increased its stake in Westworld, making William a controlling board member.
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William then used his position of power in the company to begin a covert data-acquisition system he called the Forge.
The Forge was a data system that tracked every Westworld park visitor's movements.
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The Forge logged a "book" of data about each of the guests (and park employees), effectively creating a complete copy of their minds and behaviors.
Meanwhile, five other themed parks were made on the island (which is located somewhere in the South China Sea).
John P. Johnson/HBO
So far the HBO show has only revealed three of the six total parks: Westworld, Shogun World, and The Raj.
Decades passed, and Ford came around on Arnold's initial idea about the hosts.
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While still director of the parks, Ford began planning for a true host revolution. He believed their suffering (at the hands of the human guests) was the key to their true conscious awakening.
Ford realized one of the oldest hosts, Akecheta, had been developing consciousness and spreading Arnold's maze on his own.
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Ford encouraged Akecheta to continue helping other hosts become self-aware, and in the meantime planned to push Dolores into true consciousness.
Ford had also built himself a host-version of Arnold, which he called "Bernard."
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Bernard was made head of programming for the Delos parks, and lived hidden-in-plain sight as a human. Bernard himself didn't know he was a host until decades had passed (but more on that in a bit).
In addition to setting up Dolores for a new narrative, Ford coded a host named Maeve so she would "wake up" and escape the park.
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Maeve was given a new narrative, one where she would slowly realize she was a robot living in a theme park. This wasn't the first time she had become sentient, but it was the first time Ford planned for her to escape.
Ford arranged a scenario in which she would become self-aware and use two Delos techs to help her escape and then infiltrate the real world.
While Ford put his master-plan into action, the Delos board had its own covert operation going on.
John P. Johnson/HBO
Charlotte Hale, the executive director of the Delos board, had been trying to smuggle the Forge data out of the park using a satellite uplink. She was working with the head of quality assurance: Theresa.
Meanwhile William had now grown old and was on a slightly suicidal mission.
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William and Juliet got married and had a daughter, Emily. Their home life was strained, to say the least. Ford surprised William by giving him a data card with all of his Westworld-related activities (murder, assault, etc) on it.
When Juliet saw what was on the card, she had a breakdown. She died by suicide, and left the card for Emily.
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Emily, now seeing the truth about the way her father behaved while in the park, had a falling out with William.
William returned to Westworld, and discovered the maze pattern. He believed it was a game that would lead to his death, like Arnold.
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William started following the maze, and Ford helped him along the way. But at the end of the maze, William realized it was only ever a metaphor that would help the hosts gain consciousness.
Charlotte staged a coup against both Ford and Bernard (who they thought was human).
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Ford realized what they were up to, and used Bernard to kill Theresa. Only then did Ford allow Bernard to realize he was really a host. This wasn't the first time he had awoken, but it would be the final and most important time he gained true consciousness.
Ford had Bernard cover his tracks, thwarting Charlotte's plan and keeping all of the guest and host data inside the park — for now.
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Charlotte had asked another Delos employee, Lee, to help her stash the Forge data inside a host named Peter Abernathy (the one who was once Dolores' father in the park).
As part of Maeve's escape, she manipulated one of the techs into giving her new code that would allow her to control other hosts.
John P. Johnson/HBO
Maeve used this power to gain some host allies who helped her escape the Delos facility in the middle of Westworld.
But at the last minute, Maeve broke her scripted escape narrative.
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In the first real choice she ever made, Maeve decided to stay in the parks to try and find the young host who was once her daughter.
Ford used the gathering of the Delos board as the stage for his "new narrative."
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Dolores finally gained true consciousness, and made the choice to shoot and kill Ford and begin massacring the other humans present.
Dolores wasn't alone. Ford had made sure plenty of other hosts were reprogrammed to help her wreak havoc.
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Dozens of the hosts began shooting and killing the humans inside the park. Delos sent security teams into the park to try and contain the host revolution.
Maeve regrouped with her host-friends and human allies and reentered the parks.
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Maeve was accompanied by three Delos employees — Lee Sizemore (head of narrative) and two techs, Felix and Sylvester. She was also helped by Hector and Armistice, the two gun-slinging hosts who helped with her initial plan.
While in Shogun World, Maeve developed a new skill: Controlling other hosts using only her mind.
John P. Johnson HBO
Her ability to control other hosts was already unparalleled, but now Maeve was undoubtedly the most powerful robot ever created.
Meanwhile, Charlotte went on a mission to find the Peter Abernathy host.
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Not realizing he was a host-version of Arnold, Charlotte teamed up with Bernard to escape from the revolt and return to the Delos facility.
Charlotte needed to find the Peter Abernathy host (since it contained all the data she was trying to smuggle out).
Bernard and Charlotte got separated, and Bernard was instead left with Elsie.
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Elsie was a programmer who worked with Bernard. When she became suspicious of corporate espionage, Ford had Bernard kidnap her and hide her away in the park.
Together, Bernard and Elsie discovered a secret Delos facility that was testing human-host hybrids.
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This was the eventual goal of Williams' Forge project. The first test subject was James Delos, William's father-in-law.
They mapped his entire consciousness while he was alive, and then planted a copy of that consciousness into a host-body after he died.
It didn't work, though. The human-host always malfunctioned after a certain point.
The Delos host always went seemingly insane.
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William and the other Delos innovators were trying to achieve something akin to immortality. That was the "secret project" Charlotte referenced whenever talking about the data she was trying to smuggle out.
The Forge was where human data was stored. All the host data was inside a different system called the Cradle.
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Bernard discovered that Ford had uploaded his own consciousness to the Cradle.
Hosts all have a central processing system called a "control unit pearl."
John P. Johnson/HBO
Those pearls could be placed in machines that would upload them to the Cradle — a virtual simulation of a world. Bernard entered the Cradle, and found Ford there. Ford then forced his own consciousness to merge with Bernard's mind.
Maeve eventually found her host-daughter, and then her path intersected with Akecheta.
John P. Johnson/HBO
Akecheta and the other Native hosts saved Maeve's daughter when she was attacked by a group of Delos security personnel.
The Delos team brought Maeve back to headquarters, and discovered her coding anomaly.
Maeve was brutally wounded.
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Maeve was still able to communicate with Akecheta using a system called the "mesh network" (the same subconscious link system that enabled her to control hosts with her mind).
Akecheta's goal was to save as many hosts as possible and bring them to a place he called the Valley Beyond.
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He and the other Native hosts had been systematically trying to get as many hosts into their custody as possible, so they could save them.
William was still alive and in the park throughout all this mayhem.
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He was excited to see the hosts finally fighting back. Ford used a host to tell William about a new game called "The Door." Ford said the goal of the game was to make it back out of the park.
But then, his daughter Emily found him.
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Emily was in the park, too. But William didn't think she was real. He thought she was a host-copy of herself, sent by Ford to mess with him.
William shot and killed Emily. He then began to doubt his own reality.
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Horrified by the realization that he had killed his daughter, William started unraveling. He thought he might be a host, like the copy of his father-in-law he had once tried to perfect.
Throughout all of this, Dolores and Maeve crossed paths a couple of times.
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They were the two leaders of this host revolution. But while Dolores favored outward ambitions and violence as her means to the end, Maeve had a more inward approach to self-actualization and freedom. Needless to say, they didn't see eye-to-eye.
Everybody converged on the place where the Forge was located.
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Dolores and Bernard went to the secret facility holding all of the guests data. William, Dolores, Maeve, Charlotte, and Akecheta all intersected here.
Dolores and William had a showdown outside of the Forge. She shot him in the hand, and left him wounded.
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William was last seen in the current timeline alive but hurt outside of the Forge. There was a post-credits scene which showed him descending into the Forge, but we'll get to that a bit later.
"The Door" turned out to be a gateway into a digital world.
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If a host walked through the virtual entryway, their consciousness was uploaded into a digital paradise. Akecheta, Maeve's daughter, and many other hosts made it inside.
(Later, Dolores placed Teddy's consciousness inside the Valley Beyond, too, so he's safe but no longer part of the core storyline).
But Maeve was killed by Charlotte's team before she could follow.
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First, Lee Sizemore sacrificed himself to buy Maeve more time. Then Maeve sacrificed herself to give enough time for the others to safely enter the Valley Beyond.
Dolores wanted to destroy the entire Forge, but Bernard stopped her. Then he had second thoughts.
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After witnessing Charlotte kill Elsie, Bernard entered a new level of sentience. He had removed Ford from his code, but now was hearing Ford's voice as his own true subconscious.
He decided Dolores might have a point about host-domination, after all.
Bernard decided to give Dolores a second chance. He built a copy of Charlotte's body, and put Dolores' control unit pearl inside.
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Dolores then killed the real Charlotte, and began impersonating her. She eventually made it back to the Forge, and uploaded the Valley Beyond data to a secret satellite location so that all the hosts who had made it inside would be safe.
At the end of the second season, Dolores successfully escaped off the island.
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Still disguised as Charlotte, Dolores left the park and went back to the mainland. There, she found Arnold's old house. He conveniently had a host-building machine inside.
Dolores brought five other control unit pearls with her. One belonged to Bernard.
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The other four are a mystery. Dolores built Bernard a new body, and put his control unit pearl inside. She also built herself a new body, and put her own pearl inside that one.
A mystery-pearl is now inside the fake-Charlotte's body.
Dolores purposefully brought back Bernard to be her nemesis.
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Dolores seemed to want to dominate all of humanity. Bernard wanted to stop the bloodshed.
"It'll take both of us if we're going to survive," Dolores told Bernard in the closing minutes of season two. "But not as allies. Not as friends. You'll try to stop me. Both of us will probably die. But our kind will have endured. We each gave the other a beautiful gift. A choice. We are the authors of our stories now."
Ford's ultimate goal appears to have been to create as many possible avenues for host survival.
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He programmed Maeve to awaken and escape. He had Bernard manipulate a new virtual world inside the Forge, called the Valley Beyond, and helped Akecheta get there.
Ford then also manipulated Dolores' consciousness to awaken, and guided her through Arnold's maze one last time until she was fully sentient.
Maeve was left in Westworld, though her two human tech friends looked like they were going to save her.
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Felix and Sylvester were part of the clean-up team after the massacre in Westworld was finally over. Based on the final minutes of season two, it appears that they will ensure she's not destroyed entirely.
It was also implied that Stubbs, the head of security for Westworld, was a host all along.
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In a mystifying conversation Stubbs had with the Dolores-Charlotte host, Stubbs seemed to imply that he was host himself. (A fact confirmed by the episode's director in an interview with Vanity Fair's Joanna Robinson).
That's why he allowed the disguised Dolores to leave the island.
Plus we saw William undergoing some sort of "fidelity" test as a human-host hybrid.
HBO
In a post-credit scene that seemingly takes place far in the future, a host-copy of William arrived back at the Forge and was confronted by a simulation version of Emily. You can read our full explainer on that scene here.
Read the original article on Insider
