WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 3 finale of Westworld, "Crisis Theory," which aired Sunday on HBO.
Westworld's Season 3 ended with an emphatic bang as Dolores Prime (Evan Rachel Wood) sacrificed herself and lit the old world on fire using her copy, Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.), Caleb (Aaron Paul) and Maeve (Thandie Newton). The finale wove together many threads, creating a revolution that broke what Engerraund Serac (Vincent Cassel) and his Rehoboam A.I. had planned.
However, while showrunner Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy sculpted a very interesting set of ideas on man, machine and the illusion of free will, there were a few plot holes in the story as it paved the way for a new era of mankind.
DOLORES' CONNECTIONS
Dolores Prime doesn't seem too concerned with the whereabouts of her copies and the finale picks and chooses who she's connected to. She's linked to Lawrence but she doesn't even know Halores is back online. This allows Halores to hack her mind. In addition, Prime doesn't know Maeve's crew has Sato's pearl or that Halores stole Connell's pearl from Serac.
As the master, she should know Halores is back up and running and, also, that Sato was taken off the board. Instead, the show just focuses on her and Lawrence. It never crosses Prime's mind others could be extracting information from loose pearls. Meanwhile, after Halores declares war on her, Prime doesn't try to shut down her insubordinate copy.
CALEB'S GREAT ESCAPE
When Caleb has to get into Incite to switch Rehoboam off, he meets three guards. He shoots two of them down. However, he simply sneaks up on the third, holds his gun to the man's head and asks for his access pass to get into the building. Caleb instructs the guard not to fight for Incite and then just leaves him. He doesn't knock him out or stun him.
Yet, as Caleb runs off, the guard still has his gun next to him, which he could easily have picked up and used to shoot Caleb. But it seems like Caleb would have taken the gun himself, as two weapons are better than one, especially given he's on his way to face a legion of soldiers inside Incite.
SERAC'S ACT OF MERCY
Caleb eventually fails in his mission and is taken prisoner by Serac. After destroying the Solomon key, Serac decides Caleb is dispensable as he doesn't have any more info. He places a gun to his head but then retracts, asking his goons to take Caleb outside and kill him there. But Serac has shot people before on the show, so why take the risk of having others do the deed.
There's no reason to take Caleb away, especially as there's a risk the soldier could overpower his captors and come right back for Serac. The move is done to make the situation more dramatic, or maybe because Serac didn't want to dirty the company's nice, pristine floor with blood. Seriously, though, Caleb's an outlier and it seems likely Serac would have eliminated him on the spot, which would ultimately have saved Rehoboam.
DOLORES' HAIL MARY PLAY
Prime's intricate plan to get to Rehoboam and have her or Caleb infect it depends on them not dying in the war zone. They both have Solomon's destructive program but in Prime's case, she has to stay alive to attain Delos' Sector 16 data. Yet, Incite's soldiers keep trying to shoot and blow her up.
It seems they didn't get the memo Maeve did, or perhaps the writers just wanted the finale to include epic action sequences. Plus, Halores also needs Prime to end Incite's control, yet she had goons gunning for her 'mother,' even though she should have helped Prime or left her to her own devices. To top it off, none of Incite's or Halores' soldiers are good shots, because at point blank range, they still can't seem to hit Prime or Caleb.
BERNARD'S ULTIMATE ROLE
Bernard goes on a roundabout journey this season that makes no sense. Prime could have given him the briefcase with the tech for the Sublime and the address to meet Lauren for closure over their son's death from the start. Setting him loose in the real world has no bearing on Prime's plan to destroy Rehoboam at all. Bernard and Stubbs rescuing William is done for plot convenience, all so William could head to Dubai in the post-credits, which means Prime actually shoots herself in the foot with her actions.
She helps another enemy roam free, even if it's temporary, when all she had to do was let Bernard visit the digital minds in the afterlife. In fact, letting Bernard go his own way could have led to him being killed by William or Incite's forces, especially given he was an outlier presence. This meant Prime would have complicated things and lost the one person she trusted to go to the Sublime.
HBO's Westworld stars returning cast members Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Tessa Thompson, Luke Hemsworth, Simon Quarterman and Rodrigo Santoro, joined by series newcomers Aaron Paul, Vincent Cassel, Lena Waithe, Scott Mescudi, Marshawn Lynch, John Gallagher Jr., Michael Ealy and Tommy Flanagan.