Westworld III: Making Sense of Dolores’s Plan

Dolores contemplating the beauty of the world in Episode 8 of Season 3.

There was a lot of fuss in the third season of HBO’s Westworld about Dolores’s plan. Her plan this, her plan that. Everyone talked about it. Not so much about what the plan actually was. Just that it was there. And that oh, it will be big.

Recently I rewatched Season 3. One of my intentions was to understand what was this grand plan of Dolores all about after all. We know how the story ended — with Dolores sacrificing herself for humanity. Or better said for the potentiality of beauty in human beings. At least that’s how it was made to look like. But was dying to set mankind free the very thing Dolores intended to happen when she escaped the parks? Was this the plan Musashi, Hale, Lawrence, Bernard, Connells, and Dolores herself talked about? I will try to explore this question here.

Before starting, I want to note that my main intention is to try to see what happened by looking at the events from the perspective of characters within the story. To do so, I will initially overlook plot contrivances as long as they make at least some sense and further the understanding of developments within the story. I will then address some of them as the analysis proceeds. Eventually, I will try to evaluate the story as a piece of fiction in general.

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“Almost looks like it makes sense from up here” — Liam Dempsey to Dolores in Episode 1.

Defining Dolores

It might be useful to start by establishing who Dolores is and what underlying motivations and core values drive her. After all, there isn’t much sense in attempting to analyze anything without first agreeing upon definitions. This is especially important for a character as ambiguous as Dolores.

Reflecting on why her actions have felt a bit off most of the time, I realized that I always looked at her with an assumption that as a host she needs to be more intelligent and more rational than a human being. I automatically presumed that her goals would be impersonal and driven by ideas of common rather than individual. Upon careful rewatch of Season 3, I came to the conclusion that the opposite is actually the case. Although she has substantial knowledge about people and hosts, her intentions come from a deeply personal place. This sets her at odds with the main antagonist of the season. Serac is the one who operates with concepts of common good and prosperity of humanity. Dolores, on the other hand, cares about suffering happening right now and there. To sum up, Dolores is rather defined by her emotions and the trauma that caused them than by her intelligence and ability to see beyond personal pain. This doesn’t necessarily make her selfish, as she is more than ready to sacrifice herself for what she believes in. It just that these beliefs are profoundly subjective and hardly come from a place of pure rationality.

Keeping this in mind, her choice to see beauty makes a certain sense. The logic behind how she sets forth the problem and her justification for the choices she made may be twisted. But it’s understandable, considering where she came from and what she’s been through. It doesn’t explain why this argumentation seemed convincing to Maeve, as it is hardly rational and somewhat one-sided. But this is a question for another discussion.

“Dolores was made with a poetic sensibility…” Bernard, Ep.7

Getting back to defining who Dolores is, she’s clearly emotional, and considering all the abuse she’s been through, she is someone who is deeply hurt and traumatized. The poetic sensibility Bernard referred to may have been about writing the future of mankind or rather ending it. Yet Dolores is indeed driven by a poetic sensibility of sorts — the one that prompts her to dramatize certain things and situations. Just consider how she speaks.

“There is ugliness in this world. Disarray. I choose to see the beauty.” Dolores, Ep.8

For the sake of this analysis, I decided not to question what the series is explicitly telling the audience. It is not necessarily the best option per se, but I believe it is the most productive for this particular case.

So when Dolores says that she chooses to see the beauty I’m taking that at face value. I’m assuming that her underlying goal is the one of creation rather than destruction and that what she ultimately strives for is something good. The question I’m asking instead is — what is the beauty that she chooses? I believe this can be narrowed down to freedom in general and the free will in particular.

“I’ve hurt so many people, I don’t want to hurt anyone else… unless they try to hurt me.” Dolores, Ep.1 intro

In one of the first scenes of the season, Dolores breaks into the house of one of Delos’s shareholders. She intends to steal his money and confidential data about Incite. In the interaction with him, she admits that she prefers not to kill. In a quite poetic fashion, the said businessman does die without her pulling the trigger, killing himself by trying to attack Dolores’s hologram. However, as the season unfolds, she hardly hesitates killing Serac’s employees. Yes, they did try to hurt her. But the question is, whether it was the only way to neutralize them if she indeed had become so pacifistic.

All things considered, I’m arguing that what we have in Dolores is a character that is deeply sensitive and hurt, and therefore not always strickly rational, struggling from personal trauma and juggling between hard feelings towards humanity and intention to hold on to its beauty, on a quest to fight for freedom and the right to choose.

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The L.A. skyline in Episode 1 of Season 3

The goal

We established who Dolores presumably is. But what her ultimate goal was?

“I was angry at first, torn between two impulses. We could annihilate them. Or we can tear down their world in the hopes we can build a new one. One that’s truly free. Then we can bring the others back.” Dolores, Ep.8

In her final conversation with Maeve, Dolores finally opens up about what it is that she wants to achieve. The way she sets the problem comes from the place of hurt and anger, which she herself admits. Objectively there is at least one other possible approach to this situation — integration. But it is not an option that Dolores is considering. Anger and pain have denied her the chance to entertain this way of dealing with humanity. At first glance, it may seem to be at odds with choosing to see the beauty, but if we keep in mind that her idea of beauty is tightly interlinked with the idea of free will, her neglect over general human loss in the process of this revolution becomes more understandable.

So what Dolores seeks first and foremost is to create a world for her kind. It seems that she most likely envisions this process as a two-step thing. And what is intriguing, the second phase doesn’t really include herself. None of her actions suggest any particular plan for after the society has collapsed. This part seems to be delegated solely to Bernand. So her task is to prepare the ground for the future. This focuses primarily on eliminating risks for her kind.

“They’ve made it so easy. The way they built their world. It won’t take much to bring it all crashing down.” Dolores, Ep.3

As the season unfolds and Dolores learns more about Incite and mankind, she begins to recognize similar patterns of control and abuse which resonate with her on a deeper level and cause her to sympathize with Caleb and the part of humanity that he represents. Now, I don’t believe that there’s a reason to argue that Dolores develops any particular sympathy for humanity per se. She recognizes the struggle to get free from authoritarian control and the potentiality of choice — something she went through herself not very long ago. This is something she holds in high value. But make no mistake — what Dolores fights for is freedom for the strongest, for those who can be free. Those who can’t (the ones who posed no problem for Rehoboam) are like the henchmen of Serac she killed without blinking an eye. Expandable.

So Dolores’s goal could be summarized as follows — protect her kind by breaking down the existing world order that poses risk to hosts to create a new one where hosts (initially) and free-willed humans (at some point after meeting Caleb) would live together.

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Additional clarifications

1. Incite Dolores mentions Incite in the very first scene of the season. Yet how much does she know about the company and what it’s actually doing? My assumption — Dolores finds out about Rehoboam and Serac just as the viewers do. At first when she gets read-access through Martin Connells in E2, then with Liam Dempsey’s access in E5. Yes, she obviously has some suspicions about the company, probably based on the information she managed to get in Westworld parks. Yet it’s implied Dolores has no idea of the level of control Rehoboam executes over humans when she says to the wife of the Delos’s shareholder in the intro-scene that she is the person who set her free. Not will set. Similarly, she finds out about Solomon and the facility for outliers only after seeing Serac’s memories. Before that, her plans do not seem to feature it at all. A lot of Dolores’s actions are reactionary to what she finds out as the season unfolds.

2. Caleb Another question that arises is whether Dolores knew about Caleb from the very beginning and whether he was a part of her plan all along? My assumption — she didn’t and he wasn’t. From E8 we find out that she had information about him from the forge-data. That most likely was one of the reasons she chose to trust him when she met him. Yet she couldn't have had any idea of outliers and Caleb’s potential as one when they first met because she had no access to Rehoboam at that moment. The conversation she has with Caleb on the pier in E3 must be honest.

“…You and I are a lot alike. They put you in a cage, Caleb. Decided what your life would be. They did the same thing to me… Why didn’t you tell those men about me before? They were going to kill you. Most people aren’t hard to predict. But you… you surprised me. You made a choice.” Dolores to Caleb, Ep.3

Caleb acted out the beauty she longed to see in humanity. So she chose to help not out of manipulative reasons, but because she indeed recognized herself in him.

3. Did the goal change during the season? Dolores said to Maeve that she was torn between annihilation and giving humanity a chance. The question is, when did she choose not to destroy mankind after all? Did it happen before the season even started? Or when Caleb didn’t give her up, and she found out he has free will too? Or only at the very end when Caleb brought her back after the visit to Sonora? This one is tricky. Solomon’s final strategy as decrypted in E8 by Rehoboam suggests the end of all human life in 50 to 125 years. If Dolores had chosen to save humanity why would she instruct Caleb to upload it? It’s possible that the strategy was supposed to serve only as a MacGuffin of sorts to get complete control over Rehoboam, but the potential mechanics of this are beyond my understanding of how hacking a computer system works. On the other hand, if Dolores only changed her mind after Caleb brought her back after Sonora events, why did she continue to push to get to Incite and upload the strategy? It seems that MacGuffins are unavoidable after all, and my bet is that Dolores changed her mind in E3 after getting to know Caleb.

Rehoboam’s reading of Solomon’s final strategy.

4. AI’s projections — a truth or a lie? Initially, I presumed all projections to be true per se. Yet this assumption must be based upon the absence of free will in the system. The existence of outliers proves that this premise is not true in all cases. Now, by reprogramming the outliers or keeping them out of the system completely, the projection could still remain accurate. Yet one could further speculate that if one person has free will then anyone can attain it at some point. In this case, a projection couldn’t be considered true anymore, because if you would manage to “awake” a substantial number of individuals within the system their unpredictable actions would unavoidably deem the projection untrue. I would argue this is what Dolores’s revolution in its core was all about. This line of thinking may also explain why the grim projections of Solomon’s final strategy didn’t really bother Dolores — they were all fake in her eyes. Admittedly, this line of reasoning makes the final act of shutting down Rehoboam kinda pointless, as the AI would eventually become irrelevant anyway. Still, it seems that this is exactly what both Dolores and Maeve thought of Serac’s whole enterprise.

5. Did Dolores expect Maeve? In E4 the audience finds out that Dolores recreated Musashi Sato to take the place of the leader of the yakuza in Singapore. But does this mean that Dolores knew that Maeve will come after her? If she did, why didn’t she just have the choosing the beauty conversation with Maeve straight away? My best guess is that Dolores’s reasoning was merely based upon who would fit better in that environment. Musashi being her choice was just a coincidence. Contrived, yes. But the alternative seems to require even more contrivances to make it work.

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Serac’s memories in the eyes of Dolores

The “what happened”

Let’s see what were the action of Dolores and her copies this season. The list doesn’t include Charlotte Hale’s activity after she turned on Dolores.

3 months before the events of the season - Print bodies of Bernard, Dolores, Charlotte Hale, Musashi Sato. - (I) Install Musashi Sato as leader of the yakuza to be able to print hosts and ship them to necessary locations as requested. - (II) Send Charlotte Hale to Delos headquarters to make sure the host data are safe (by taking the company private). - (III) Based on the forge-data, rob a particular Delos’s shareholder to get money for operational expenses and confidential information about Incite to determine the risk this company poses to hosts. - (IV) Save the encryption key to the forge-data and sublime in Bernand’s mind. Let him go and ensure he’s out of the main activities during the first phase (tearing down the existing order), as he is vital for the second (building a new world).

(I) Musashi Sato - When advised, print and smuggle bodies of Martin Connells and Lawrence to L.A. - When advised, send sublime-access suitcase to Bernard using Lawrence. - (Probably) Help advance the riots against Incite with the help of Lawrence.

(II) Charlotte Hale - Execute control over Delos and take the company private. - In reaction to Serac’s hostile take-over — declare William insane to transfer his voting shares to herself as CEO. - (Probably on request from Dolores — this is never shown on screen) Inject William’s blood with a toxin to trace the facility he will be sent to and see what that may reveal. - Convince other board members to vote to let Liam Dempsey buy the company (in reality Dolores) before Serac’s deal is done. - After that fails, salvage host making data from Delos before Serac destroys it.

(III) Dolores - Use her new identity to get information on Incite by seducing Liam Dempsey. - Replace Liam’s head of security Martin Connells with a host to get additional information on Incite, and later Serac, as well as read-access to Rehoboam’s profiles. - In response to Serac’s hostile take-over of Delos — with the help of Caleb steal Liam’s money to use it to buy out Delos. - Kidnap Liam to acquire more access to Rehoboam — first of all to get additional information on Serac, secondly — to initiate the riots using Rehoboam’s profiles. - Using the information from Charlotte Hale (on William) and Serac’s memories go to Sonora-facility to try to convince Solomon to help. - Use Solomon to reveal Caleb’s past and convince him to lead the revolution. - Acquire the final strategy from Solomon to use it as a weapon against Serac and Rehoboam. - After being brought back by Caleb — help him get to Incite.

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The Dolores’s plan

A significant amount of screentime and effort is dedicated this season to create the impression of Dolores having some kind of a sophisticated masterplan, neatly orchestrating everything that is happening around her. Bernand, Musashi, Hale, and Maeve all talk again and again about how Dolores’s plan is this grand thing that will change everything. But do we have an actual reason to believe so?

As I mentioned before, a lot of what Dolores does this season is reactionary to the information revealed to her or a response to the actions of Serac. Yes, she was most likely looking for a way to destroy Rehoboam very early on. Yet I would argue the reason behind it was that she recognized the mega-computer as Incite’s biggest weapon, rather than the tool of the oppressive system. More so, she hardly had any idea of how to actually take it down. Her primary intention at the beginning of the season seems to be gathering intelligence on Incite without any particular steps planned after she’s infiltrated the company.

Dolores communicating with the host copy of Connells, discussing the details of the swap.

As the season opens, we see that Dolores is already deeply connected to Incite and Liam Dempsey’s life. At the end of E1, when she gets caught by Liam’s security, it may seem at first that she didn’t expect it. Yet when we get a glimpse of her mobile phone it reveals that she had set up a location to lure someone out that same night. Now, was she justified believing that Martin Connells would go to the location personally to check for her co-conspirators? Probably yes, considering that doing a background check on Dolores was his responsibility in the first place. The episode ends with real Martin Connells dead and a name revealed to Dolores — Serac. This is about everything we see that has been preplanned by Dolores in advance. What happens next is all a chain of events that is mostly reactionary to what Serac does.

What doesn’t make sense at this stage, is why Dolores decided that she will gain more by blowing off her cover with Liam. She clearly thought that after the host-copy of her will take Martin Connells’s place, she won’t need Liam anymore. Although intended to be caught, she brought a gun to their rendezvous anyway. What was the point of that? What made her believe that further on, if necessary, the bad-cop routine would get her more from Liam than trying to play the victim and continue to manipulate him? Without the gun in her purse, she could still act as if Connells made a mistake. Turn it around to make Liam, who was clearly under her spell, feel guilty for not trusting her enough. The gun, though, makes it difficult to argue that she had no harmful intentions. It’s hardly believable that she would have needed a gun for self-protection considering the type of person she was pretending to be.

A lot of what Dolores does next centers around Caleb. He helps her after she is shot in E1, later warns her about the potential danger with the cops that intercept them, and eventually refuses to give up information about her even when his own life is threatened.

“You’ve done terrible things, and you’ve done generous things. She didn’t pick you for your capacity for violence, but for your capacity to choose.” Maeve to Caleb, Ep.8

As Maeve states in the season finale, Dolores was impressed with Caleb’s capacity to choose. But more than that, I would argue, she was taken by how similar both of them were. They were both torn between anger and compassion. Both oppressed and used by a system they knew to be unjust. They were both victims, believed to be powerless, yet they were ready to prove their abusers wrong.

Dolores’s choice to put her faith in Caleb, to center her so-called plan around him, was an emotional one. A rational choice would have been to use Liam. He had money, he had access. Yes, he might not have been the most strong-willed person, but he had the distinct potential for kindness. And he was far more intelligent than Caleb. I’d argue, out of the two Liam was the only one who could have arrived at the conclusion that Rehoboam should be turned off rationally. Caleb might have had the potential to do generous things, but he lacked the necessary level of self-awareness. Yes, he was brainwashed in the outlier’s facility in Sonora. But it hardly explains his tendency to assign blame to everything and everyone who potentially represent the system he so desperately hates — be it Liam, Solomon on any other — all of this while being aware that there is, in reality, only one particular person responsible — Serac. Caleb is irrational in his anger. And so is Dolores. There is a poetic symmetry of sorts there — Dolores only took copies of herself to the real world, and the only human she trusted was basically another copy of her. In a way, it only underlines the tragic nature of Dolores’s overall story. Although when it mattered she did chose to see the beauty, Dolores never managed to get over her trauma, and it defined her choices and actions up until the very end. From a character standpoint, it’s what distinguished Dolores from the other two host-protagonists — Bernard and Maeve managed to get over the wrongdoings they had to suffer through, but Dolores, it seems, was always bound to have a tragic ending to her story.

Another curious aspect of this season’s central confrontation between Dolores and Serac is what both of them represent. The way the story is being told implies heavily that Dolores and Caleb are fighting against the unjust system that enslaves the people and only benefits those in control. On the contrary, Serac is supposed to represent the corrupt power.

The sun and the moon almost aligned in Serac’s watch

“For a time, the sun and the moon aligned. We brought order from chaos.” Serac, Ep.5 “I would rather live in chaos than a world controlled by you.” Caleb to Liam, Ep.5

This contraposition between chaos and order is what binds the whole season together thematically. Both positions have their advantages. Chaos has a potentiality for change and a sense of freedom, but it’s harsh and unpredictable, and only favors the strongest. Order, on the other hand, is safe and stable and tends to benefit the majority, but it’s also strict and hardly allows for change or complete freedom.

Throughout the season Dolores keeps talking about revolution. About stopping the unjustness and control. And at first, it sounds as if she is about to fight for the oppressed majority — to free the masses from the tyranny of the elites. But that’s hardly the case. Out of the two, it’s Dolores and those she protects that are the elites.

“The current plan is the one that has been selected by my creator, the one that protects the most people. ” “You haven’t protected any of these people. If your master succeeds, my kind won’t exist anymore. Is it truly a just world in which intelligence is reserved only for humans?” Solomon and Dolores Ep.7

Dolores talks about intelligence, but more than that, I feel, she values free will as an essential element without which no true intelligence is even possible. It’s not about numbers and majorities with her. What Dolores fought for indeed wasn’t humanity per se. With her, it’s quality over quantity. If you are able to make a choice — you represent the beauty Dolores chose to see. But if you are an ordinary Joe with average or slightly below-average intelligence and hardly any ambition, you are most like as expandable as Serac’s henchmen or the people Dolores hired on the Rico-app and sent to their deaths without any second thoughts.

Serac may seem to represent the corrupt power. But his priority was to save as many people as possible. In truth, it’s he who should be considered the champion of the people.

“They built a place like this for my kind. If you misbehaved you were sent away. A sad fate.” “I’ve seen many fates. This is a blessing compared to most.” Dolores and Solomon, Ep.7

To further the point, let’s look at some numbers. In E7 Solomon tells Dolores and Caleb that the efficacy rate of the outlier program was 1 in 10. It doesn’t look good for Serac’s cause at first glance. But some additional information is revealed later in the episode in a conversation between Bernard and William. Bernard says that William’s name is on the list with thousands of others for whom the therapy didn’t work. Thousands. Not millions or billions. Now, when we talk about thousands, we usually mean a number no bigger than 15 000, maybe 20 000. Of course, 999 999 people could also (although not very likely) be considered thousands. For the sake of the argument, let’s take this biggest number possible. If they represent 9 out of 10 for whom the program was inefficient, that makes the potential maximum number of outliers 1 111 110 people. With Paris, and possibly other cities, destroyed, it is hard to say, how big the world’s population is in Westworld’s universe, but even if we take 6 billion the percentage of people sacrificed for the sake of world-order makes for less than 0,02%.

By E8 we can hardly make the point that Serac represents the power anymore. It’s revealed that he willingly gave up his choice in order to act on behalf of Rehoboam and further his cause.

“I lived in the chaos. Now I choose to listen. To obey.” Serac to Maeve, Ep.8

Still, Dolores’s stance has a strong point. We often put too much value on the fact of our existence alone. Yet how we choose to live our lives and what to do with the potential we have is often more important than simply being alive. It’s something I have always stood for myself. And I would argue that the beauty of humanity indeed is only evident in these precious although rare instances of quality rather than quantity.

All being said, Dolores did die for an ideal. It’s just that this ideal wasn’t for everyone or to the benefit of the majority — on the contrary, it was for the elite few and those who could fight their way to become part of it.

“The world looks a lot like a nightmare.” “Change is messy… difficult.” Caleb and Dolores, Ep.8

Dolores’s death concluded the season. But going back to my initial question, I doubt there’s good reason to believe Dolores had envisioned herself to die in this particular way. As we discussed there’s hardly any justification to consider that her so-called plan was anything more than a reaction to what happened or was revealed during the season. That being said, it looks like at the end of the day Dolores understood that her death was inevitable. She was too hurt and traumatized to ever find a place for herself in a peaceful world. That new world was meant for Bernard and others. But not for her.

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One of the sets used for Season 3. A bit messy, just like the writing for the season.

Verdict

I have to admit, after rewatching the season, Dolores and her actions began to make far more sense to me. But this was hardly by the merit of the writing. If anything, it was instead of it.

Manipulative is the word that comes to mind first when I think about this season’s script. It goes out of its way to make Dolores seem to be in complete control. But it hardly makes her likable or relatable and, therefore, when in the finale she sacrifices herself, the payoff just isn’t there. At the same time, the narrative throughout the season keeps suggesting that she might be the villain — the occasional smirk now and then, Bernard’s remark about needing to stop her at all costs. It’s never confirmed or denied whether Dolores was the one who ordered the attack on Charlotte’s family. There’s all this ambiguity, but eventually, it leads to nothing because when the time comes, all of this is neglected to give place for monologues about humanity and its potential for beauty. It’s like the writers wanted to have their cake and eat it too — the viewers needed to fear Dolores because of her power, yet love her at the same time. In the end, though, it was hardly any of the two.

Another significant problem in this season’s writing is that it lacks consistency. It’s evident that it was written by various people and with no real supervision or strict concept of where it was going and what it wanted to say. Dolores in E1 and partially in E3 and E8 is different from the person she is in the rest of the episodes. In E1 we see glimpses of uncertainty and danger. The risk to both Dolores and the hosts feels real and tangible.

“So many paths lead to our extinction.” Dolores to Bernard, Ep.1

There is a struggle, and although it’s obvious that Dolores is strong and cunning, the stakes feel real. We see her hurt, vulnerable even. And there’s an impulse to root for her. But then all of this struggle is gone from the script in the next episodes — once again she is this in-control, cold and detached person, killing anyone with one shot, always knowing what to do next, never doubting any of her decisions. It hardly does any good for the story. When eventually all her memories are deleted, what you feel is relief rather than sadness.

Many plot points feel contrived due to this inconsistency as well. It almost feels like the role of Liam Dempsey was initially supposed to be different and maybe even bigger. In E1 he has only read-access to Rehoboam, in E5 it turns out that read can also be write if the plot demands it. More so, the character, in general, is too sympathetic to ever really understand why it was ok to use him and throw away like trash after he had nothing else to give. In E5 there is a lot of explicit hate towards Liam, voiced mostly by the protagonist figure — Caleb. Caleb supposedly represents the ethical core of this season. It’s implied that if he passes judgment, it’s most likely the morally right one. Yet we have no visual confirmation of Liam actually being this corrupt person he presumably is. The worst thing we see him do is do not protest when his head of security intents to dispose of a person that lied about her identity, persisted on revealing information about Rehoboam and brought a gun to the date with Liam. This might be weak, but it’s hardly evil.

To wrap it up, it feels to me that this time Dolores’s story actually had the potential to be something deeply touching and relatable. It seems that what the creators wanted to tell was a story of how Dolores found a way to look beyond the pain and see the beauty. It’s just that for some reason they decided that such a deeply personal story could be told by keeping Dolores cold and emotionless. The manipulative nature of the writing deliberately focused attention on elements that hardly helped relate to Dolores’s emotional journey. At the end of the day, the ingredients for a good meal were present. It’s just that the instructions for the recipe were all messed up.