The following story contains spoilers from Sunday’s Westworld finale — proceed at your own peril
When is a Westworld character really, truly dead? When the HBO drama’s creative overlords say so. And when it comes to the apparent demise of Evan Rachel Wood’s Dolores in Sunday’s Season 3 finale, co-creators and co-showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy are indeed saying so.
“Dolores is gone,” Nolan confirms to our sister site Variety. However, when asked if that means Wood is leaving the show ahead of Season 4, the EP cracked, “I f—ing hope not,” before adding, “We’re not yet discussing publicly the direction the show is taking, but the fun thing about [Westworld] is, you know, from the beginning Lisa and I wanted to make a show that constantly reinvented itself, that could be a different show every season.”
In Sunday’s closer, Serac hooked Dolores up to Rehoboam’s computers and wiped out her memories until there was nothing left (read Kim Roots’ full recap here).
“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,” Nolan continued. “We love Evan Rachel Wood and we haven’t started talking publicly about exactly what the show looks like going forward. But it looks very different.”
