Westworld Season 3 Episode 7 recap

The past of Caleb Nichols (Aaron Paul) is revealed on the penultimate Season 3 episode of Westworld, ahead of next week’s season finale.

HBO announced last week, that Westworld will return for a fourth season, which will likely debut in 2022, given there has been a two-year gap between the first and second season and the second and third season.

While it remains to be seen if Caleb will return for the fourth season, his past that has been only hinted at throughout the eight-episode third season gets explored more fully on Sunday night’s episode, entitled Passed Pawn.

The episode begins with another graphic that reveals a ‘divergence’ in Jakarta, as we descend upon a restaurant where we find Musashi (Hiroyuki Sanada) asking one of his men to deliver something.

He gets a call from Charlotte (Tessa Thompson), who asks if he’s surprised to hear from her, and he says he’s not, because that means her plan is working.

He goes to an upper part of the restaurant where he finds Clementine (Angela Sarafyan), one of the prostitutes from Maeve’s brothel in Westworld.

She tells Musashi that Maeve is not for sale, and a massive gunfight ensues in the middle of the restaurant. 

Musashi tries to escape when he runs into the blade of Hanaryo (Tao Okamoto), who says that Musashi was a good man, and not the man that he has become now.

Clementine and Hanaryo drag his body out of the restaurant as the title sequence begins. 

We then catch up with Caleb, seeing scenes from his past, as his men are putting gold discs on their tongues.  

The voice says his friend Francis dies in combat, and she asks ‘Who killed him?’

Another graphic reveals another ‘divergence’ has taken place in Sonora, Mexico, where Caleb and Dolores are seen riding their horses through a field. 

The preview for Passed Pawn, which aired after last week’s episode, Decoherence, begins with a cryptic shot of something being released from a satellite.

Then Dolores’ voice is heard stating, ‘Start at the beginning,’ before we see scenes from Caleb’s past as a soldier.

Caleb was first introduced in the season premiere, Parce Domine, where we learned he makes his living primarily as a construction worker, alongside a Delos robot named George, though he also makes extra cash by engaging in criminal acts through the Rico app.

The preview features a number of shots from Caleb’s past as a soldier, including one where he is putting a small gold disc on his tongue with other soldiers.

There is also another shot of his former partner Francis (Scott ‘Kid Cudi’ Mescudi), whose voice was recorded in phone calls as a part of therapy for Caleb earlier this season.

Caleb is heard saying, ‘I’m having a hard time remembering it,’ as we see him thrown back from some sort of an explosive blast. 

There are a number of shots of Caleb in action, along with Maeve (Thandie Newton), who is seen getting into a firefight herself.

Maeve is saying, ‘you’ve turned a young man before,’ though it isn’t clear who she’s speaking to, while Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) looks at The Man in Black’s (Ed Harris) file and it says Deceased.

The Man in Black has been ‘institutionalized’ over the past few episodes, as he’s seen in his all-white outfit in the preview, though it seems likely now that he’s a host, a question that has been plaguing fans for some time.

The trailer concludes with a shot of Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Caleb together, as she tells him, ‘You spent your whole life believing you were a follower… lead.’

Dolores has been teamed up with Caleb after he discovered her in an alley in the Season 3 premiere, and he’s been helping bring her plan to end all humanity to fruition.

Season 3 of Westworld concludes with the season finale Crisis Theory on Sunday, May 3 at 9 PM ET on HBO.