WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 3, Episode 5, of Westworld, "Genre," which aired Sunday on HBO.
Before Westworld Season 3 premiered, the series was already dropping hints about the new season. It even introduced a new character: Liam Dempsey Sr. Introduced via a commercial for the company Incite, a rival to Delos, Liam Sr. seemed to be a brand new addition to the show, who might play a key role in Dolores' plan. Except, when the show premiered, there turned out to be one major hole in this theory. Liam Dempsey Sr. was dead.
How he died was one of the show's big mysteries, as his son, Liam Jr., clearly didn't think it was natural causes. In talking to Dolores about the man who co-founded Incite along with his father, Engerraund Serac, Dempsey all but accused the man of murdering his father, because of something Rehoboam told him. Liam seemed genuinely afraid of Serac, suggesting that he would be next, should he reveal anything about Rehoboam's workings to Dolores.
Serac certainly seemed like the kind of man who would do in his partner. But what fans didn't realize is that Dempsey was never really a partner to Serac at all.
Incite Didn't Invent Rehoboam
As far as viewers have understood it, Engerraund Serac teamed with Liam Dempsey Sr. and the two of them, mad geniuses both, created this incredible machine that could not only read the past but predict and manipulate the future. But in this week's episode, viewers discover nothing could be further from the truth. Engerraund did have a partner in the invention, but it was his older brother, not Dempsey.
As far as Engerraund tells it, Dempsey and the Incite company were merely a means to an end. They brought two things to the table: Funding and Information. Like Delos, Incite had been scraping data from users for decades. By the time Engerraund and his brother were ready to input as much of the world into the first version of Rehoboam (which was named Saul, natch), Incite had the most extensive collection in the known world.
Serac's Brother's Plan
But what is more interesting is that neither Engerraund nor his brother explained to Dempsey why they wanted it. They promised him the ability to predict the stock market, to forecast future events, to give him "insight" into the future so that his company could profit by knowing what lay ahead. All Dempsey saw were dollar signs, but that's because it was all they showed him. When he threatened to pull funding because he didn't see returns, their response was to take $5 million of the company's money and manipulate the stock market to turn it into $100 million within a week.
This treatment of Dempsey as a useful fool was not only Engerraund's idea, but his brother's as well. And yet, his brother also resented Dempsey for it, to the point that he became obsessed with his hatred. He began using Rehoboam to forecast how fate would play out, should the Serac brothers murder their partner.
Whatever the repercussions, it was enough that Rehoboam alerted Engerraund to his brother's plans. It even flagged him as the dread "chaos agent." The machine was designed to weed out those who would destroy the world before they could start. Killing off Dempsey apparently qualified.
Liam Sr.'s Fate.
And yet, things don't add up. Engerraund locks away his brother in the facility they created to attempt to rehabilitate those Rehoboam marks as chaos agents. he tells Dempsey his brother is locked up because he was going to murder him. But then, in the very next scene, Engerraund and Liam Sr. take a trip out into the desert, where Serac has staged a plane crash using Liam Sr.'s private jet. Not putting two and two together, Liam Sr. runs towards it in horror, only for Engerraund to come up behind him and break his skull.
On the one hand, this is proof Liam Jr. was correct about his father's death. Engerraund Serac did kill him, and he probably used Rehoboam to plan it in such a way that he would never be suspected. It's also proof that Serac is as dangerous as fans suspected. But at the same time, it raises so many questions about his brother, who viewers have never seen in the present day. (Some would argue they've never seen Engerraund in the present day either.) Is his brother still alive? Is his brother still locked away? If the entire point of locking the elder Serac away was because he planned to murder Liam Sr., what happened?
The irony is, Serac will never get to do the same to Liam Jr., who was killed off in this episode by Ash. Neither was built to survive in Serac's world. Too bad they never thought to have Rehoboam tell them so.