‘Westworld’: Evan Rachel Wood Found out Dolores’s Fate in a Disturbing Way

Westworld fans have been getting to know Christina (Evan Rachel Wood) in season 4 now that Dolores is gone. Wood’s new character kept her on the show, but it was still hard to say goodbye to Dolores. Wood played Dolores for the first three seasons, and learned of Dolores’s season 3 fate rather unceremoniously.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for Westworld Season 3.]

Wood was a guest on the Happy Sad Confused podcast on June 29. Before discussing Westworld Season 4, Wood reflected on Dolores’s fate. Westworld airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. on HBO.

‘Westworld’ creators breezed over Dolores’s death

Season 3 dealt with Dolores outside the Westworld theme park. She became aware of Rehoboam and sacrificed herself to make sure it didn’t come to power. Westworld creators Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan could have handled that news more delicately. 

“At first it was passed off as a joke,” Wood said on Happy Sad Confused. “Before every season, we all usually have a call or a sit down with Jonah and Lisa and they sort of give us a blueprint of the need to know things about the season, the vibe, where we’re going but all the details really get filled in as we’re going. So they were describing it to me and they’re like, ‘Yeah, maybe this is going to happen, I don’t know, and then she dies and we bring her back.’”

Evan Rachel Wood asked for some clarification on Dolores

Wood asked questions but didn’t get more answers until it came time to film the final episodes of Westworld Season 8. She was still in the dark about Christina. 

“And I was like, ‘You said that so flippantly, so nonchalantly, just like: and then maybe you’re going to die and you’ll come back. That seems like a pretty big plot twist. Might want to expand on that a little?’” Wood said. “It wasn’t until we were nearing the finale I got to ask more questions and get the lowdown. They were like, ‘No, she really is dying. You will be back but you will not be Dolores. You’re going to look and sound like you but you’re not going to be you.’ But that’s all I was told. So it wasn’t until I was coming onto Season 4 that I got to know who exactly I was.”

Evan Rachel Wood is used to changing character

Wood pointed out that Christina isn’t as drastic a change as Westworld fans might think. Although she’s officially a different body, Wood points out that Dolores was never the same Dolores from season to season.

“It’s always mixed feelings every season because I already feel like the character has changed every season already,” Wood said. “There was OG Dolores with the southern accent who just saw the beauty in everything and she was just so pure and open. And then season 2, all the walls are up and she’s on a mission, terminator. That’s when she turned into Wyatt so I felt like I was playing another character in season 2. Then season 3 she’s a more modern woman and there’s the duality with Hale. You get into her interior world a little bit more but she’s still very guarded.”