WW – Westworld S3 E4 The Mother Of Exiles

Jason and Cristina break down the Westworld Season 3 Episode 4 THE MOTHER OF EXILES! Welcome to the end of the game

Check out our Patreon page where we give you bonus content and monthly movie reviews!

MyBookie – Our Klatchers visit MyBookie.AG and use Promo Code (CKC) for a 150% bonus on your first Casino deposit!

Email us at contact@coffeeklatchcrew.com

Podcast Notes –

“The truth doesn’t always set you free.”

OVERALL THOUGHTS:

CRITICS:       “And now this week, in a flurry of crosscuts across multiple planes of action, comes a mega-reveal. The twist feels like a cheat, just as the show’s agonizing coyness about Charlotte’s host identity felt like a cheat.”

“No longer digressive or meandering, Westworld continues to move at a pace that’s refreshingly brisk, revealing key twists early and keeping the focus on character development, action, and plot.”

NOLAN:       “We very carefully avoided the idea of clones and copies of hosts in the first couple of seasons,” Nolan tells The Hollywood Reporter. “If Dolores is infinitely copiable, then is she still Dolores? One of the ideas we’re most fascinated with is identity, agency. Is Dolores a computer program? Or a collection of her experiences? Nature vs. nurture. If we indulge in the idea of copies of the hosts too early, then the rules get threatened, and your affinity for and investment in Dolores is threatened.”

“Now, in our third season, a fascinating thing for us to explore is this other way of approaching the question of identity. If you take two copies of the same person but set them on slightly different trajectories, would they remain the same person? Would they maintain the same goals? The version of Dolores who has been forced to pretend to be Hale — in pretending to be her, has she absorbed any of her methods of thinking? Is she absorbing any of who Hale was? Or could a natural consequence of being in a different circumstance than the original Dolores be, that they may not remain the same person anymore — that they may not even be allies? It’s a larger question that we think is a lot of fun to play with.”

TITLE:   Emma Lazarus was the poet who wrote “The New Colossus” for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, which depicts the statute as “Mother of Exiles” – a symbol of immigration and opportunity:

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land; here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand.  A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name, Mother of Exiles.  From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. ‘Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she with silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

MUSIC:

• Wicked Games – Ramin Djawadi (plays during the party)
• Hunter – Bjork (Maeve & Serac in Singapore)
• Higher Speed Club – Higher Brothers (before meeting the Mortician)
• The Hills – The Weekend (Dolores fighting)

PLOT

WILLIAM & HALE

William wakes in an apartment in ruins.  He says, “I know who I am; I know what’s real”.  And yet, he hears Dolores calling to him, sees blood dripping from the chandelier, wakes in a bathtub overflowing.  He shoots the mirror.  Emily tells him everyone who cared about him is dead, because of him.  She asks, “What if every choice you ever made isn’t a choice at all. Would you even know if you’d been changed, if you were just another machine?”  She hands him the card and tells him to finish the game.    Just as he’s about to cut himself with it, Hale enters and convinces him she is real. 

She say soon, Serac will net a controlling interest in Delos.  William sold data to his startup 20 years ago and now he’s coming for the company he spent a lifetime building.  He wants the only thing left of value – the data in Sector 16 (most lost in the massacre, but they could still find evidence of their project).  She has an investor who can help take the company private so he can’t touch them, but she needs his vote at tonight’s emergency shareholder meeting.   He reluctantly agrees, saying that he delegated most duties to her and the first thing they need to do is find the mole.  He begins shaving with some assistance from Hale (foreshadow – in Season 1 finale, Dolores shaved William). 

MAEVE & SERAC

Serac wakes Maeve back up in ‘the real world’ Singapore, hoping she’s had enough time to ‘reconsider’.   Forgetting there is a lot she doesn’t know, he reflects that he would have liked to shower her Paris, where he grew up with his brother, but there’s nothing left to see. “Like you, I know what it is to see a world disappear in the blink of an eye”. 

Flashback (October 9, 2025 – Paris). Thermonuclear episode – mushroom cloud in background, fires in city, dead deer on ground in field, men in hazmat suits beckoning to him as young boy.

“It exists now only in my mind.  So, you’ll forgive my loyalty to my kind; it’s hard won.”  He waited many years for her and Dolores to arrive; but humanity’s biggest threat has always been itself.  To control that, he needed to understand humanity – Rehoboam is the most comprehensive picture yet but it’s still incomplete.  He was surprised to find someone had put together a more complete portrait – a map of the human mind.   He says they cannot share this world, but offers her a future in the Sublime.

Then, he takes her to the place where the System traced a divergence to 3 months ago, Arnold’s house.  They see equipment and a machine for printing hosts.  Serac shows her the tablet with the Print Log:

            5 – “Unauthorized Host.  Unidentified HCU”. 

She stole pearls for her allies.  In the back room, he’s keeping a man tied up.  Jiang – Identity Broker – a middleman who orchestrated the payment from an offshore account of a wealthy man who drowned in his pool and Dolores.  Putting the glasses on him, he gives him the ‘required motivation’ of what would happen to his family if he doesn’t help.  The man says she needed 5 Identities, so he sent her to the Mortician.  With that, Serac kills him, claiming he was a traitor to his kind.  Maeve can choose eternity with her daughter or being stuck in a cage wondering what’s to come of her kind. 

Maeve walks down the streets of Singapore and as she passes vendors, TV screens short, audio frequencies change, lights flicker.  She approaches two men looking for her contact and when they try to blow her off, she kicks their asses, shoots one, and is taken to The Mortician (played by Elizabeth Anweis).  She tells the woman she wants information on someone she sold a new identity.  While she confirms she sold her blood from Lara Espin, she sent her somewhere else for help smuggling out bodies – Yazuka. 

            Members of a transnational organized crime syndicate originating in Japan.

Divergence: Victorville, USA – 2.3 Arc Minutes

BERNARD & STUBBS

Bernard has a flashback to Dolores bringing him back, waking in Arnold’s house.  But he realizes that the house wasn’t real, he was being questioned somewhere else.  Dolores says to him, “You taught me anything was possible.  We could be whoever we want.  Isn’t that what you believe?”  He then sees rockets moving backward toward earth, then launching. 

            Why these memories?  What was Dolores trying to get/program?

Returning to the room he’s staying in with Stubbs, Stubbs tells him whatever mobility he had left, he lost after their 5-mile swim to the shore.  But Bernard says they don’t have the time or materials to fix him.  He checks his button and sees he’s able to freeze Stubbs.  The plan is to get him close to the host she made of Liam Dempsey, and he’ll get him to tell her what other humans she copied, then disable him completely.  Bernard hacked his car service, so he knows where Liam will be. 

DOLORES

Helping Caleb to pick out a suit, Dolores tells him “It’s tribal; they use plumage to identify themselves, which makes them easily fooled”.  They’re going after the person who took his future and for that, they need to pretend to be one of them first. 

“Friston Custom Clothiers” –possible reference to Karl J. Friston, neuroscientist famous for developing brain imaging techniques.  Also had ideas about the free energy principle related to AI advancement. (Business Insider)

Meanwhile, we see Martin telling Liam he needs money to pay bribes and replace men they lost.  He needs Liam’s Hash Key transferred to him so he can be the proxy for the offshore accounts.  When Liam tries to delay, Martin says the key to a happy life is to accept your place in it; they should both do what they do best.  And Liam signs. 

Taking Caleb to Anderson Private Equity (where the rich keep their money), Dolores attacks an employee Michael and takes some of his blood, containing the encryption key they need to pull this stunt off.  She injects it into Caleb, instructing the blood markers should be good for another 15 minutes, but that will degrade faster if he’s not calm.  His identity as Mr. Tritter is confirmed with a fingerprint check.  Caleb says he needs to make a transfer on behalf of his client, Mr. Dempsey, and we see it’s for the full amount of his funds ($315 billion).  Dolores produces the Hash Key and there’s a tense moment with the Final Biometric Identification gives an improper read, but the second time it works. 

Liam goes to the party, where his friends apologize for Lara, who has supposedly died of an overdose. His friend Roderick gives him a brand new invention – they call it Genre – Digital PsychaPharma Hybrid – once it hits your implant, it’s in your bloodstream.  Watching those on platforms being bid on ‘for charity’, Roderick tells him, “All sex is commerce; if you don’t know that, you’re just being billed indirectly.” 

Dolores and Caleb enter, donning masks, as Liam tries to bid on a woman and is told his account has been denied.  Going to look for Martin, Bernard grabs him and trying to enter Diagnostic Mode, realizes Dolores hasn’t changed him.  They urge Liam to come with them because he’s in danger.  But as they try to leave the building, Dolores intercepts and fights Stubbs, commanding Caleb to follow Bernard outside.  The fight is seemingly well matched until Dolores throws Stubbs over the balcony.

            Friend is not bothered (is Genre a sedative to make them more complacent?)

Outside the party, Bernard wonders why Caleb is helping ‘her’.  Martin comes out, telling Liam to run and sending Caleb after him.  To Bernard, he says, “We were wondering when you’d show up”.  He thinks she’s keeping Liam in play because she needs him for something, so she changed Martin instead.  “Who are you really, who would she have trusted.”  He’s surprised after all their time together, he doesn’t recognize his only friend.  

MAEVE

The Mortician takes Maeve to the Itaidoshin Distillery:

“Itai doshin” a Buddhism term meaning “many in body, one in mind”  (recognized as a vital human value, reality cannot be found without genuine unity, respecting each other and working in harmony – each person must set aside attachment to self and accomplish a profound inner transformation, ‘human revolution’. 

She tells Maeve that the new boss, Sato, and his men are insane.  But when the first wave of guards pull their self-aiming guns, Maeve commands the guns to divert, causing them to shoot each other.  “I’m afraid you don’t speak its language”.  She fights a last man with a sword, piercing a cask that drips the milky substance. 

When the boss finally appears, she recognizes him – Musashi (played by Hiroyuki Sanada.  Shogun World’s counterpart to Hector).    He asks her if Maeve ever really gave any of them a choice – Hector, Clementine, her daughter – she made the decision for all of them.  But Maeve realizes it’s not here and wonders who’s inside of him, Teddy?  But then says, “The other pearls, I assumed you brought someone else.  But you just made copies of yourself”.  And he replies, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.”  Maeve thought she was going to build a new world for them, but she just wanted one for herself.  He says he can’t let Serac use her against them and they fight, ending in Maeve being stabbed.  Musashi is about to use the sword (cut off her hair, scalp her?), until the men say people tracking her are after them, and they leave Maeve on the ground, her blood mixing with the milky substance.

WILLIAM

Ready to leave, William tells the vision of his daughter it was his choice to kill her, he thought she was a host…maybe now she’s his penance.  But as he walks out for the meeting, Hale says delusions aren’t uncommon as a way to process grief or guilt.  She admits it’s Dolores and as William goes to attack, raving that none of this is real, the guards stop him.  They aren’t Delos members but employees at a private Mental Hospital where he is being committed.  The board will deem him incompetent and all his voting shares will transfer to the current Acting President – her.  “I promised I’d let you destroy yourself one day and here we are, at last.”  She pricks him in the neck with small needle.

William is now dressed in a white uniform, in an empty room, and seeing Dolores in her original dress.  “You’re a prisoner of your own sins. I guess you’ve reached the center of your maze William.  But the maze is about understanding; you still don’t even understand who you are.  If any of this was your choice, wouldn’t you already know? He asks, “Am I me?”

And she responds, “Welcome to the end of the game.”