‘Westworld’ Season 3: Where’s William? Is He Dead or Alive?

If you’re watching Westworld Season 3 Episode 1 tonight, you might find yourself wondering where William is. We were left with a mysterious epilogue last season. Is he returning this season? Is he dead or alive?

This article has spoilers for Westworld Seasons 1 and 2 and very minor spoilers for Season 3 Episode 1. 

Ed Harris’s name appears in the opening credits of Westworld. So this has to mean that he’s coming back at some point this season. But sadly, the credits don’t mean he’s going to be here for the first episode. We can likely rely on him being back at some point in the future, though.

You see, William is not dead. He was shot and left for dead, but he’s very much alive, at least in some sense based on how Season 2 ended.

Here’s a refresher about what happened to him in the Season 2 finale.

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In the last epilogue scene, William woke up in what appeared to be a much older version of the Westworld headquarters, although he had the same injuries as before.

“I’m already in the thing aren’t I?” he asked. A host in a body that was just like his daughter’s said no, the system was long gone. “This isn’t a simulation… This is your world. Or what’s left of it. Do you know where you are, William?”

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“In the park,” he said.

She asked him how long he’d been there, and he wasn’t sure. “What were you hoping to find, to prove?”

That no system can tell me who I am,” he said. “That I have a f***ing choice.”

“And yet here we are. Again,” she said.

“How many times have you tested me?” he asks. He’s been brought to a room just like where he had questioned James Delos’ host.

“It’s been a long time William,” she said. “Longer than we thought. I have a few questions for you. The last step’s a baseline interview to allow us to verify… Fidelity.”

Here’s that scene again.

Westworld – Man in Black – Final Loop as he sees it.Here is the Man in Blacks final loop as he sees it.2018-06-29T07:20:30.000Z

In an after-credits talk, Lisa Joy revealed more about this scene.

“The very thing he created is his greatest fear,” she said. “By the time that elevator …lands, he’s somewhere else… His worst fear has come true… The entire quest he’s been on this season, up to the killing of his daughter, he’s repeated again and again and again because the hosts are testing for something, and they have yet to find the thing they are looking for.”

She said the last scene is “as he realizes the full import of his hell. He is.. in a prison of his own sins and he will be for many lives to come.”

We also learn in that same interview that his daughter’s now a host and they’re very far in the future.

So William found himself being given the same fidelity test that he used to give his father-in-law every time he woke up in a new host body. And as far as we know, he’s woken up far in the future. Does this mean Dolores ultimately won her battle? Or is this a red herring and they’re not even on Earth?

Whatever it is, William is technically “not dead” in present-day Westworld. At the very least, his consciousness is still alive in the form of his memories being copied and saved. But he was assured that he was not in a simulation. So he’s being placed in a new host over and over, it appears. Whether that test is going on now already, in present-day Westworld, isn’t known.

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