Westworld Season 3 Episode 4 recap: The Man in Black returns as Dolores continues her plan

The Man in Black (Ed Harris) returns for the first time since the Season 2 finale in Sunday night’s episode of Westworld, which marks the halfway point of Season 3.

The preview for Sunday night’s episode teased that The Man in Black, a.k.a. William, may have been trying to re-create the suicide of his wife Juliet (Sela Ward).

The preview also seemed to hint that Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) interacts with William again.

The episode begins with William stepping on glass as someone keeps whispering his name and he keeps firing bullets into glass mirrors.

There are drops of blood coming into his face from a chandelier when he wakes up in an overflowing tub, when his dead daughter Emily returns.

William says she’s not really there and she admits that she’s not real, but she cryptically adds that he’ll never be sure what’s real or not.

He apologizes for shooting her, claiming he didn’t know if she was real or not, saying that, ‘my choices are my own.’

‘Are you free and evil or blamelessly and helplessly enslaved?’ Emily says, as she adds, ‘Would you even know if you’d been changed?’

Emily adds ‘Finish the game, Dad. Finish it,’ as sunlight starts coming into the room. 

William snaps out of it and sees he’s in a room with Charlotte (Tessa Thompson), who says she’s real.

She tells him that Serac will own a controlling interest in the park, and she tries to get him back in the game.

However, he doesn’t care, saying that he’s ‘welcome to it,’ with Charlotte revealing he’s trying to get a hold of it for the data in Sector 16, adding that Serac has someone on the inside. 

Charlotte says that she has an investor that will help make Westworld private again, to keep the park away from Serac, but she needs him to vote for this with the board.

‘Come back, William. Come back to who you were,’ Charlotte says, as the title sequence begins. 

The preview begins with Dolores stating to someone, ‘I guess there is some justice after all,’ which is likely William.

‘A prisoner of your own sins,’ she adds, as William is  seen wandering around his home, stepping on broken glass.

‘I know who I am,’ William defiantly states, as Dolores adds, ‘If any of this was your choice, then you already know.’

‘I know who the f**k I am,’ William tells Dolores as the preview comes to an end.

While The Man in Black was long believed to have secretly been a host, it was revealed in the second season that he’s actually the owner of Westworld.

In a post-credits scene during the Season 2 finale, it’s revealed that the younger William (Jimmi Simpson) is testing his father-in-law James Delos (Peter Mullan) for ‘fidelity,’ revealing that James is a host.

Dolores had previously revealed that her over-arching plan for this season is to destroy the human race, and she gets a new partner in Caleb Nichols (Aaron Paul).

Caleb discovered Dolores breaking down in an alley in the Season 3 premiere, and he agreed to help her in last week’s episode.

Also returning this week is Serac (Vincent Cassell), who runs the mysterious system that Dolores is trying to destroy. 

The mysterious Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) also returns, though it still isn’t known which host’s core is inside her.

The real Charlotte was killed by her duplicate host in the Season 2 finale, and Dolores put one of the five cores she smuggled out of Westworld inside of her.

The fifth episode of Westworld’s eight-episode third season, Genre, airs Sunday, April 12 at 9 PM ET on HBO.