Westworld Season 3 finale post-credits scenes set-up an epic Season 4 twist

If you were waiting until the absolute last scene of Westworld Season 3, for a huge Westworld-y twist, you're in luck. The Season 3 finale, "Crisis Theory," had not one, but two patented twists. In fact, any wonkiness, unoriginality, erraticness, or just plain badness of Season 3 can almost immediately be forgiven by these two post-credits scenes. If anything, these two post-credits scenes — and everything in Season 3 — feel like a prologue to a possibly off-the-chain Season 4.

Here's what happened in the post-credits scenes for Westworld Season 3 Episode 8, "Crisis Theory," and why these two scenes promise a compelling, and refreshingly bold Season 4.

Warning! Huge spoilers for the ending of Westworld Season 3 ahead.

If you were hoping that the last episode of Westworld Season 3 would reveal major twists about the main characters, the answer is yes, but those weren't the twists that counted. Sure, we learned that Delos had a place called Park 5 where military personnel trained by shooting Hosts, and where Caleb convinced some of his solider friends not to rape several Hosts, including Dolores. We also learned that Sercac has been controlled by the super-computer AI Rehoboam with a super-generic little earpiece that essentially made him a human puppet. Of all the fan theories about Serac, this was the only one not on the table because it seemed way too obvious.

We also learned Dolores' plan wasn't so much to destroy the human race but instead to eliminate INCITE completely, and thus, really make the human race go bananas. She also wanted to bring Maeve over to the good side of the Hosts, and that she sent some super-secret data to Bernard because she didn't trust herself with it.

That's where things get interesting...

Westworld Season 3 post-credits scene 1, explained

Though Charlotte Hale/Dolores hasn't been around much since getting blown-up in a car, she did return throughout this episode to tell regular Dolores that she was going to start really messing some shit up. In the post-credits scene, when the Man in Black makes it to Delos, he discovers that Charlotte has made a Host copy of him, who is basically the worst version of the Man in Black you can imagine. This robot Man in Black kills the human Man in Black, and it's then heavily implied that Charlotte is making a ton of other Hosts.

This scene checks with the Westworld Season 2 post-credits scene in which a far-future version of the Man in Black also woke up in a Host body. It seems like this Season 3 post-credits scene could scan as the origin of that future, or some other stop-gap. Either way, after 3 seasons, Westworld has finally turned the human Man in Black into a robot, which is what Yul Brynner's Man in Black was in the original 1973 movie — a robot gunslinger badass who took on the world.

Westworld Season 3 post-credits scene 2, explained

During a post-show interview on HBO, Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy said that the dust covering Bernard in the post-credits scene means that "we know it’s been a super long time." But how long? Could this post-credits scene — combined with the previous one — mean that Westworld Season 4 will jump into a far-future world?

Think about it like this: Bernard is given access to "The Sublime," which we know from Season 2 is "The Valley Beyond." So what Bernard's got is a one-way ticket to the robot afterlife. What we're seeing in the final post-credits scene could be Bernard coming back to Earth after a very long time in a kind of Matrix heaven.

What will he find on Earth now that he's back? Well, if Charlotte made a bunch of new Hosts, its possible Season 4 of Westworld could pull a Planet of the Apes. What if Charlotte and the new Man in Black decide to take over the world with a bunch of Hosts? What would that world look like a hundred years later? Or even a thousand?

At the end of Westworld Season 2, Lisa Joy hinted at a distant future setting for the events of Westworld. Now, it looks like all the pieces are in place for us to see what that looks like. Other than Caleb, most of the heavy-hitters in the Westworld Season 3 cast are not human. Even the Man in Black is a Host now. So Season 4 could have literally the entire cast return as Hosts on a future version of Earth in which humans are super-scarce.

If Westworld Season 4 does make this kind of leap into the future, it could make that season of the show the best season yet. Who knows, maybe they could even go into space...

Westworld Season 4 is expected to start filming sometime in 2021.