The Winter Line shed new light onto both Maeve and Bernard as the hidden war between hosts and humans rages on.
HBO’s Westworld Season 3 marching on with Episode 2, with the Maeve and Bernard-focused “The Winter Line,” in which the new status quo of multiple characters are fully revealed–and, unsurprisingly, some are a little better off than others. The new tone that was established last week in the premiere seems to be continuing with more asked-and-answered questions than ever before building into what looks to be a totally linear mystery with totally linear stakes. Maeve is going to be facing off against Dolores–something we gathered from the trailers–and this week, we learned not only why but how.
But for as on-rails as this season seems to be (temporally speaking, at least) there’s still plenty to think about and dissect, especially as things really start to pick up steam. From playful winks at other HBO properties to major color-coded clues as to just who is who in the upcoming war between hosts and humans, “The Winter Line” sketched out plenty of information with references, nods, and easy-to-miss Easter Eggs.
We’ve tallied up 15 in total. Were you able to catch any others? Do you have any big theories for the rest of the season brewing? Let us know in the comments below.
1. Welcome to WW2 World
Maeve “wakes up” (for lack of a better word) in what looks like another park–this time, clearly modeled after World War 2-era Italy. It makes a lot of sense for this particular park to be real, given the themes of Delos’s other parks, but Maeve quickly comes to realize there’s more going on here under the surface.
2. Hector
Welcome back, Hector! We last saw this host being brutally murdered by the “infected” hosts just outside the gate to the Valley Beyond back in Season 2. Apparently death just didn’t suit him–or did it?
3. Hector’s loop
Maeve begins to suspect something is off when she starts to realize the glaring similarities between Hector’s current behavior and his old narrative loop from back in Season 1. We first met Hector while he was stuck as Westworld’s most wanted, always trying to steal an empty safe.
4. Return to Westworld
The White Church (and the rest of the park, for that matter) have very clearly seen better days. Bernard’s return gives us a great perspective on just what’s been happening with the park since the revolt–which is to say, not a lot. Delos has completely abandoned the project.
5. Felix and Sylvester
Technicians Felix and Sylvester were two of Maeve’s reluctant allies in Season 2. We meet them here in Season 3 in a different context and their odd behavior is one of the major tip-offs that something isn’t right, even outside of the WW2 simulation.
6. Let’s call the whole thing off
Maeve’s throw-away line about wanting to remove herself from the game entirely, “let’s call the whole thing off, shall we?” is a reference to the 1937 show tune of the same name from the movie Shall We Dance starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It’s likely that Maeve pulled this line from whatever programming was added to her system to make her narrative based in WW2.
7. Sizemore
Like Hector, human narrative lead Lee Sizemore died back in Season 2–though unlike Hector, his death ought to have been a lot more permanent. We meet him here walking with a cane, apparently because of the gunshot wounds he sustained–though, that ends up not being the entire story.
8. The secret basement
Bernard travels to the secret basement of the farmhouse (Ford’s “remote diagnostic facility”) where host testing occurred back in Season 1. This place played a key role in the eventual reveal that Bernard himself is a host.
9. Stubbs
Delos head of security Ashley Stubbs has spent the last two seasons running around as a human, but apparently that was all a lie. There was at least one major hint dropped in the Season 2 finale that Stubbs might actually be a host, but here we get our absolute confirmation. Sorry, Stubbs, but it looks like your reality wasn’t exactly what you thought.
10. The Forge
We visited The Forge back in Season 2, and while it looked very similar to the simulation Sizemore brings Maeve to, it’s clearly not a perfect replication–more hints that something isn’t right here. For one, the entrance to the now flooded facility was deep within the desert, hidden away.
11. Stolen Maeve
Maeve was clearly stolen from her host shell by someone who believed she was responsible for opening the Valley Beyond and knew where the hosts had been sent–that’s why Sizemore brought her to the fake forge. The person pulling the strings behind Maeve’s simulated world has, apparently, been unable to locate Dolores.
We learn later in the conversation between Maeve and Serac that Serac had originally identified Maeve as the threat, but only because Rehoboam apparently was unable to detect Dolores at all. Pretty terrifying.
12. David and Dan
In a rare bit of fourth-wall breaking, the showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss of HBO’s Game Of Thrones have a very self-referential cameo as Delos technicians in what’s left of the company, apparently working on what looks like a Westeros-inspired fourth park. Westeros World, maybe? Though according to Stubbs, it’s unlikely the new park will ever happen–they’re all just “waiting to see if they get laid off.” If you weren’t able to clock Benioff and Weiss alone, the giant Drogon curled up behind them probably tipped you off.
13. Serac
The mysterious creator of Rehoboam (remember, the person that had everyone so scared back in Episode 1 that Liam didn’t even want to say his name out loud) is apparently the person responsible for freeing Maeve and building her a new host body. We’re going to take a wild guess and say that this dude probably isn’t to be trusted. But, on the upside, his arrival does send a pretty clear signal as to the rest of the season’s trajectory. Dolores vs. Maeve is just around the corner.
14. Black vs White
Did you catch Liam’s bio on the data pad Bernard uses? It shows that he chose the black hat route when he was at the parks. Meanwhile, both Serac and Maeve are dressed entirely in white for their scene. Symbolism.
15. The Winter Line
The episode title comes from a series of World War 2-era German and Italian military fortifications constructed across Italy to defend the western half of the country and a critical supply route to Rome from Allied attack.