Sumith Prasad
The third season of HBO’s science-fiction series ‘Westworld’ ends with Evan Rachel Wood’s Dolores Abernathy trying to destroy Rehoboam with the help of Caleb Nichols. Despite her efforts, she gets captured by Engerraund Serac, the custodian of the AI system. Serac gradually erases Dolores’ memory to force her to reveal the key to the Sublime. Meanwhile, she sacrifices herself for Caleb to erase the AI system. As Evan Rachel Wood returns to the fourth season of the show, the viewers must be wondering about Dolores’ fate and Wood’s new character Christina’s connection with the host. If that’s the case, we have got you covered! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Is Dolores Dead or Alive?
Dolores is dead. Co-creator Jonathan Nolan confirmed that the character did not survive her confrontation with Serac in the finale episode of season 3. “Dolores is gone,” Nolan told Variety. “I think it’s important with a show in which death can be impermanent — these are robots, after all — to mark the occasion with Dolores. That version of that character is gone,” he added. Dolores’ sacrifice turns out to be essential for Caleb to erase Rehoboam. After doing so, Caleb and Maeve Millay leave the Incite building without the dead host.
According to executive producer Denise Thé, the character completes her story arc in the season 3 finale. “For me, it was a very powerful kind of transcendent moment of her [Dolores] completing her arc and really coming full circle, choosing to love these beings that, in some ways, just tore her life apart, and rising above it,” Thé told Variety in the same interview about the development. Even though Dolores is dead, her existence is more complicated than such a conclusion. Since the host version of Charlotte Hale is a copy of Dolores, it can be said that an alternative version of Dolores exists through Hale.
Is Christina Dolores?
The fourth season of the show, after Dolores’ death, revolves around Christina, a game writer. Evan Rachel Wood, who portrays Dolores, plays Christina as well. Naturally, the viewers must be wondering whether Christina is Dolores or even a copy of the latter like Hale is. According to Evan Rachel Wood, as per EW, Christina is “a completely different character.” “She’s [Christina] a loner nerdy kind of writer that’s just trying to make it in the big city. […] “She longs for beauty and romance and poetry in this mundane world that she lives in,” Wood added to EW about her character.
However, Christina and Dolores have unignorable similarities. Christina also wakes up the same way Dolores does, which is a significant detail of the latter. The game writer also conceives a storyline that resembles the script attached to Dolores in Westworld. “She [Christina] has that ability, like Dolores, to notice when something is off in her world, and she’s got the mindset to actually question it,” Wood further added about the similarities between her two characters in the same interview.
Since coincidence is the last thing that dictates the narrative of ‘Westworld,’ it’s hard to believe that Christina and Dolores are not connected at all. In the first episode of the fourth season, the game writer discovers the symbol of Westworld’s maze in her apartment, indicating that she is someway connected to the amusement park. She is also stalked by an anonymous man resembling Teddy Flood, Dolores’ dead lover. Considering these factors, Christina and the anonymous man can even be hosts conceived with the appearance of Dolores and Teddy respectively.
Since Jonathan Nolan only confirmed the death of “that version of Dolores,” indicating the original version of the host, Christina can be Dolores’ copy. In the upcoming episodes, we can look forward to seeing the connection between Christina and Westworld to know whether the two characters are connected in any way.
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