An Exhaustive Breakdown of Dolores's Pearls in 'Westworld' Season Three

From Esquire

One orb, two orb, Dolores orb, Charlotte orb…

Oh! You surprised me. I was just sitting here, counting orbs, trying to figure out how many robot brains are accounted for in Westworld. I do this roughly 11 to 18 hours per day. Sometimes, I count orbs when I’m trying to fall asleep. If I’m exercising, I’ll call out a different orb-robot body pairing during each push-up. One day, when I have children, I will paint gumballs a shiny metallic black, and teach them how to count using homemade Westworld brain orbs.

So, you could imagine the great pain that befell me when it came to my attention that I may have missed an orb that Westworld was hiding in plain sight. In Season Three, Episode Four of Westworld, we finally figured out whose five brain orbs (referred to as “pearls” in the show) Dolores, in Charlotte Hale’s body, smuggled out of Westworld. More Doloreses. In my recap, I wrote that we finally had every orb accounted for, with Dolores orbs living in Charlotte Hale, Martin Connells, and Musashi. Plus, Bernard was lucky enough to end up back in his own body. When I filed the story, I breathed a cathartic sigh of relief, knowing that every orb was tucked away like little robot burritos, and returned to worrying about the current state of our planet.

Though, early on in that story, I speculated one additional thing: That I might just be an idiot. I fear I may have been right. It’s the same feeling I imagine a host has when they believe they’re human, but eventually realize they’re a hunk of machinery thinking in ones and zeroes. Unbeknownst to me, I have a legion of Westworld fans watching me, like INCITE’s Rehoboam supercomputer, tracking my every move, waiting for my one inevitable—maybe even fatal—mistake.

I'm about to stick a goddamn pencil in my forearm so I can run diagnostics and figure this out once and for all. The first scene in question: The Season Two finale, when Dolores, in Hale's body, takes a purse's worth of orbs with her out of the park. She opens the bag up to take a baby peek, and we see five orbs. Next up: The opening scene in Season Three, Episode Three, when Dolores shows Robot Hale four orbs on a table, and tells her one is Bernard. So, fans are thinking that in the first scene, you need to count the orb in Hale in the total brains count, which would make six orbs. Same goes for the second one—you add the orbs in Dolores and Hale's bodies, and boom, you get six too.

In that spinny Season Three, Episode Four finale, Westworld leads us into thinking that we're learning that the identity of every mystery robot is Dolores in real time—Hale, Connells, Musashi. If Westworld's fans are right, the show has another orb-related surprise left for us: One final stolen orb out there in the wild west of Westworld. Could be Teddy, could be Abernathy, could be another Dolores! I don’t know. My brain orb feels like someone smashed it with a baseball bat, and I need to rest up for this week’s episode.

Until then, thank you Westworld fans. We’re in this damn thing together.

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