To be sure, most TV shows don’t enter the landscape with such a complex and specifically lofty goal in place, so no one needed for the creators of Friends or Law & Order: SVU to have the final act already pencilled out.
But for meticulously crafted series like Westworld and Game of Thrones and Better Call Saul (among others), there are always going to be expectations for the stories’ paths to have been all figured out from the get-go, as unfair to the creative teams as that might be.
All silliness aside, Lisa Joy makes a good point by telling Stuff that if she and her husband and co-showrunner didn’t already have a notion for how Dolores’ story would play out, then it would arguably be an irresponsible use of the show’s central through-line.