Westworld season 3 has recaptured the imaginations of all those Redditors and social media snoops who take pride in dreaming up weird and wonderful fan theories. We’ve already had the ‘Who is Hale?’ debate definitively ended, and now one actor has put paid to another fan-favourite suggestion in a recent interview.

Possible Westworld season 3 spoilers follow.

So, Serac: the grey-haired business mogul that’s trying to pull the strings at Delos. What’s up with that guy? Many people believed he is less man than machine, with some, such as Redditor TheLadderGuy, even theorising that he is a physical manifestation of the hard to spell, even harder to pronounce AI program Rehoboam.

Vincent Cassel, who plays Serac on the hit HBO sci-fi series, isn’t so sure.

“Well, I think that the show proposes such a crazy world where everything is possible. I think it can drive the audience to think that would be a possibility, because there is stuff like that in the show” Cassel told SyFy when faced with the theory.

In a show full of misdirects, it would have been easy for Cassel to be decidedly ambiguous with what he said next. Instead, he chose to dispel rumours outright.

“It’s not the case,” Cassel said, before re-affirming that Serac “is a real guy.”

Maybe that’s what he wants us to think; maybe not. Everything we’ve seen from Serac so far – hologram aside – makes him seem real and that he merely controls the program, rather than being part of it.

But it says a lot about Westworld’s return to form in season 3 that an actor outright saying a theory isn’t true might not mean anything at all. We’ll have to tune in to the remaining four episodes to find out for certain.

Catch up on every episode with our guide on how to stream Westworld online