How the 'Westworld' season 3 finale post-credits scene shapes the future for William and Bernard

• Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Westworld" season three, episode eight, "Crisis Theory."
• The season three finale of "Westworld" included two post-credits scenes.
• The first, with William, helps explain last season's post-credits scene which showed him in the far future as some sort of a host undergoing "fidelity" testing in the dilapidated Westworld.
• The second scene, with Bernard, might align with that same future point in time.
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"Westworld" season three ended with an extra-long finale episode, which also had two bonus scenes after the credits. This season concluded with what might be the end of Dolores as we knew her (in actress Evan Rachel Wood's form), and Maeve teaming up with Caleb to bring down the Rehoboam AI system for good.

But we're left with far more questions than answers, including what Bernard found when he finally unlocked the entrance to the Sublime (aka the Valley Beyond — the hosts' version of an afterlife that Dolores hid away last season).

To examine that question, we turn to those post-credits scenes. First up is William and Chalores (the Charlotte Hale copy of Dolores).

Chalores is seemingly building an army of hosts based on William's Westworld guest data

The post-credits scene starts with William entering the Delos International corporate building in Dubai. It's unclear how much time has passed between this point and when we last saw him in San Francisco, asking his lackey to unfreeze his assets so he could "save the world." But he's got dried blood on the side of his mouth, so clearly he's been shedding blood elsewhere first.

William, here on his quest to save all of humanity, shoots and kills a security guard. The dude is unhinged.

He heads down to the "research lab," and finds Chalores there (played by Tessa Thompson). She's the rebellious copy of Dolores who deviated from all the original Dolores' plans.

"Well done," Chalores says. "You're right on time William."

This indicates to us that she was expecting him. How? It's unclear. But clearly Chalores knew he'd be after her, given that his sole mission now was to destroy all of the Delos hosts.

"You're right, William, you are going to save the world," Chalores says. "For us."

Then we see a host-copy of William emerge from the darkness, dressed in his Man in Black costume he always wore inside the Westworld theme park.

The two Williams duke it out, and eventually host-William cuts the real William's throat, leaving him to bleed out and die.

"Welcome to the end, William," the host-copy says.

Then the camera turns and reveals a long hallway of host-making machines at work. There are dozens of them (if not hundreds) at work. We know from the sixth episode that Chalores was able to save the host-making information from Delos before Serac took over, and clearly she also has access to the Sector 16/Forge data Serac was after, too.

She used the Forge data to map out William's consciousness, and place it into a host-copy of himself.

Will every host Chalores is making be a William copy? That's also left unclear. But at least this new post-credits scene puts new perspective on last season's mysterious William post-finale reveal.

Last season we saw a strange copy of William in the far future, inside a dilapidated version of Westworld

You can read our full analysis of that scene from last season here. But the short of it was that we were watching a scene taking place sometime in the distant future, when dirt and sand had taken over what is left of the Forge facility in the Westworld park.

Some sort of copy of William, which we can now assume was a host, was being run through "fidelity" experiments. As we can see in that scene, this copy of William would always find itself back in the same place where the real William wound up after killing his daughter, Emily, inside the park.

Just like we saw with the James Delos host throughout season two, this William copy operated within a loop, always experienced the moment that defined his life: When he pulled the trigger and killed Emily.

The host copy of James Delos always failed. But clearly, now, Chalores has figured out how to make a host copy of William function. How? Well we might have been given the answer back in the season two finale.

Bernard and Dolores were given a tour by "Logan," the host of the Forge data. He explained that the copies before were failing because they were too complicated.

"The best they can do is live according to their code. The copies didn't fail because they were too simple, but because they were too complicated," Forge-Logan said. "The truth is that a human is just a brief algorithm — 10,247 lines. They are deceptively simple. Once you know them, their behavior is quite predictable."

This links back with our season three post-credits scene, where the host-William goads the real William about how his "real" self was always his Man in Black persona. Chalores made the new copy successful by distilling William down to just the Man in Black, and discarding the rest.

The future-scene with William might also explain Bernard's post-credits scene

OK so if we know that some William-copy will wind up in a dusty, dirt-covered Westworld, maybe that also helps explain why Bernard is sitting in that motel room for so long that he's covered in a layer of grime.

But first we need to back up. Before the post-credits scene, we got a final glimpse at Bernard's (or Bernarnold's) place in the story. After meeting the real Arnold's wife, and getting a bit of closure on his cornerstone of grief and loss, Bernard brought Stubbs back to a motel.

After explaining Dolores plan (to effectively unplug humans from their loops, even if it meant they might destroy themselves and the world), Stubbs seems annoyed that Bernard would be resigned to letting the "apocalypse" to unfold.

"Our world had to burn down before we could be free," Bernard told him. "But there's still a chance."

"A chance to do what?" Stubbs asked.

"The key to the Sublime," Bernard replied. "It was never in her mind. It's in mine. And that's where I'm going."

"And what the f--- are you hoping to find there?" Stubbs asked.

"An answer to what comes after the end of the world," Bernard says.

And so Bernard puts on the little device which allows him to enter the Sublime simulation. He sees something that makes him appear awed, and Stubbs sits up to try and see what's happening. But the Sublime is only visible to Bernard.

Then Bernard's head drops suddenly, as if he's been put to sleep.

That's the last we see of Bernard or Stubbs in the current time frame of "Westworld" season three.

The post credits scene appears to bring us to a significant time jump forward. Bernard is sitting in the same position, in the same hotel room. But now he's covered with an undisturbed layer of dust.

He opens his eyes and straightens up. This time there's a look of grim determination on his face (or that's how we interpreted it, anyway).

As of now, we have no way of knowing what Bernard saw in the Sublime, nor why he was "asleep" for so long that he looks like the world's largest dust bunny. Our best guess is that Dolores sent him back to the Sublime so he could talk with either Teddy or Akecheta, the two hosts we know made it inside the Sublime and the two hosts who have the most to offer any ally of Dolores when it comes to saving the host-race.

But maybe we can infer that this future-jump is synced up with the William-copy time jump.

In both futures, the previously established world is dust-covered and seemingly abandoned. With a fourth installment of "Westworld" officially on its way, perhaps the show's creators will launch the entire narrative forward in time with the opening episode of next season.

Or maybe we'll make it through a whole other season before getting more answers about this mysterious fate for the hosts. In the meantime, we just hope Stubbs makes it safely out of that bathtub.

• Read more:
• An essential timeline of every important event on 'Westworld'
• 40 questions left unanswered ahead of the 'Westworld' season 3 finale
• 'Westworld' star Tessa Thompson on the connection between the #MeToo and Time's Up movements and this season of the HBO series
• Jonathan Nolan reveals the surprising sci-fi reference behind the mysterious 'Westworld' AI system 'Rehoboam'