Westworld Season 3 Episode 2 recap

Westworld returns with the second episode of the eight-episode third season, introducing the new character Serac, played by Vincent Cassell.

In the preview for ‘the weeks ahead’ that debuted after last week, Serac tells Maeve (Thandie Newton) that he’s been waiting ‘many years for you and Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and the others to arrive.’

While Sunday night’s episode, dubbed The Winter Line, marks the first time we’ve met Serac, his name did come up at the end of last week’s Season 3 premiere, while fans were also treated to a surprise cameo by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

The episode begins where the premiere ended, in Nazi Germany, with Maeve overlooking everything from the window.

The man trapped in the room with Maeve screams for help, but Maeve tells the man who enters the room to ‘turn around slowly,’ and it’s revealed to be Hector (Rodrigo Santoro) who has come to rescue her.

She thought he was dead, but he said that dead is overrated, and he tells her that he thinks he found a way out. 

Maeve and Hector make their escape, with Hector showing a map that they will need to get out of Westworld, as they watch a Nazi death squad getting ready to execute a group of people.

Hector and Maeve make their way to a checkpoint when they’re searched by Nazi guards, who find the map, saying they will get a reward for catching them.

Maeve says to let them go immediately as she jams a pill Hector gave her into the guard’s eye and kill the other guards as they make their escape in a red roadster. 

She says she thinks she’s losing her powers, meaning the powers to control the other ‘hosts’ in Westworld, but Hector smoothly says she hasn’t lost her power over her.

When they get to a plane, Hector calls her Isabella, as she realizes that he has no idea who she really is. 

A gunfight breaks out at the hangar when the Nazi guards catch up to them, and Hector is killed, as Maeve realizes she’s never going to escape.

‘None of it matters, because none of it is real,’ Maeve says, before taking the gun and putting it to her head and pulling the trigger, before the credits sequence runs. 

After the title sequence, another graphic says there is a ‘divergence’ in the South China Sea, when e catch up with Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), who is on a boat to Westworld.

He manages to enter the park and walks through the scorched graveyard, while Maeve is back inside being worked on by Lutz (Leonardo Nam).

She squeezes his hand and they leave, as she starts to make her escape, but she finds Sylvester (Ptolemy Slocum) and he calls for security.

The two guards try to ‘freeze all motor functions’ but it doesn’t work, as she tries to drill through he nose when the head writer Lee Sizemore (Simon Quartermain).

Lee says he was shot many times but the bullets missed his heart, as she jokes that thankfully it was too small to hit.

Lee tells her that he put her in WarWorld because it’s close to The Forge, her daughter’s world.

She says she can finally reunite with her long-lost daughter, as Lee smiles and says, ‘It’s not often that I get to write a happy ending.’ 

Bernard carefully moves through the restricted areas of the park, finding Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth).

Ashley asks why he’s back in the park, and Ashley reveals he’s a host too, saying he aimed for the charge in the back of his neck and missed.

Bernard helps patch him up and Ashley says his last job given to him by ‘the boss’ was to help him escape, but he adds, ‘I guess you f***ed that up.’

Stubbs says his job was over until Bernard came to the park, and Ashley asks why he’s back.

Bernard says he’s trying to stop Dolores, though he doesn’t know what she’s going to do. He wants someone strong enough to stop her, as Ashley figures out he came back for Maeve, someone who is strong enough to stop her.

Stubbs says he will take Bernard to Maeve, saying it’s his job to get him what he needs and ‘wrap things up.’

Maeve finds herself back in WarWorld, wearing the same red dress, playing out her escape with Hector again, but this time she has a gun. 

She stops in the middle of the woods, and she says that through the woods is her ‘true path to freedom.’

Hector says he must be on the plane when it leaves as Maeve says her goodbye and hands him a key.

In the woods she finds Lee, who says that he couldn’t smuggle a vehicle out, so he brought them horses.

Lee takes Maeve to The Forge, but Maeve says she’s never been here before. Maeve says she got them to the world, but someone else must have locked it behind her.

Maeve realizes that Dolores must have locked them in, as Lee says Maeve has changed him and made him a better man.

‘When those bullets hit me, I should have died, but I had something to live for… you,’ as Lee kisses Maeve.

She shakes her head and says, ‘Oh, my darling, you didn’t make it, did you?’ revealing that Lee is a host.

‘Oh it’s a good script, even you believe it,’ Maeve says, revealing that he’s not Lee Sizemore, ‘you’re just a copy of him.’

‘You didn’t help me because you desired me or wanted anything in return. You helped me simply because it was the right thing to do,’ Maeve says.

Ashley takes Bernard through the host copies when he finds Maeve but says they have a problem, because her core is missing.

‘If she’s not here, then where is she?’ Stubbs asks.

Back at The Forge, Maeve realizes it’s all an illusion, and that’s why Hector didn’t recognize her.

‘It’s all a construct. None of it is real. We’re not here, so where the f**k are we?’ Maeve asks.

Bernard tells Ashley he needs a computer to access the mainframe to find Maeve.

Maeve tells Lee that whoever did this is trying to test her, and whoever did this, ‘had their own agenda.’

Maeve tells Lee to accept that he’s a ‘pawn’ so they can win the real game, as Lee starts to realize that he’s a copy.

Maeve says the simulation is flawed because it was built by humankind, and not by her kind, revealing they, ‘plagiarized themselves and left me a way out.’ 

Maeve conducts a little experiment, where she throws a statue and it freezes in mid-air before dropping and shattering.

She goes into a room where the host Hector is being set up, but she wants to ‘complicate’ his story.

Ashley and Bernard walk by some techs, played by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, revealing that the park has been shut down and the techs are waiting to see if they get laid off.

When Ashley and Bernard walk past, we see what the techs are working on – a clone of Drogon, the last of Daenerys Targaryen’s (Emilia Clarke) last dragon in Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones ended its highly-successful eight-season run on HBO last May.

Bernard wants to scan himself on clean tablets, he can find out of his code his been corrupted by Dolores and find out what’s inside him. 

Bernard searches for any corruptions in his code when Stubbs is met by more security guards who try to kill him, but Stubbs takes them out, completing his mission to protect Bernard. 

While Ashley fights off guards with an axe, he tells Bernard they need to go as he grabs the tablet and leaves.

Back in WarWorld, Maeve plays out the escape story line, but they go right up to the Nazi leaders, as they find the map.

Just before they’re about to execute Hector, Maeve reveals they all have maps in their pockets, as they all start killing each other before Maeve freezes everything in the world, revealing she still has her powers after all.

She finds Lee, just before a bullet strikes him in the head, as she hacks into the system to reveal where they ‘really’ are.

Maeve reprograms one of the maintenance drones to retrieve her real control unit, as Maeve tells Lee he can’t come with her.

When the drone removes the control unit, Maeve collapses, as the robot takes care of the human guards.

The drone is ultimately surrounded and brought down by guards, dropping Maeve’s control unit.

On the beach, Bernard tells Ashley that he found the people Dolores had focused on, one being Liam (John Gallagher Jr.) as he sets out to find him.

Bernard re-programs Ashley to give him a new core directive, which is to protect Bernard at all costs.

Maeve wakes up in a new place, wearing an elegant white dress, as she meets Serac for the first time.

Serac welcomes her to ‘the real world,’ as Maeve says she’s been courted before, but this is a ‘bit much.’

Serac says they are in the middle of a war, and he needs her help to win it, though he admits most don’t know the war is happening.

Serac says his work is to ‘create’ the future, but he admits that if things continue on this path, there will be no future.

Maeve says she has no desire to help humankind, with Serac saying the system he created helped make a better world but then it stopped.

He thinks it stopped because of someone dangerous, you, but admits that she’s someone they hadn’t accounted for.

Serac says he wants Maeve to track down Dolores and kill her, but Maeve insists she doesn’t care.

She says she only does her own bidding, and she tries to stab him but he hits a button and freezes her, proving he can control her to some extent.

He says that, the next time they meet, he hopes he can persuade her that, ‘our interests are aligned’ as the episode comes to an end.

The preview for next eek’s episode shows Dolores telling Caleb that she’s going to start a revolution.   

Westworld’s gripping third season, which runs only eight episodes instead of the first two seasons that were 10 episodes apiece, airs Sunday nights at 9 PM ET on HBO.