Westworld offered a major reveal and a major new mystery in this week’s episode, “The Absence of Field.” This Charlotte-centric episode, written by Denise Thé and directed by Amanda Marsalis, doesn’t actually reveal who’s inside the body of Tessa Thompson’s ruthless Delos exec, but still offers a fascinating and compelling storyline for the character nonetheless. We also get some clarity on Engerraund Serac’s (Vincent Cassel) role in these whole proceedings, while Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Caleb (Aaron Paul) finally solidify their partnership. In some ways this was a table-setting episode, laying out the road ahead. But in other ways—particularly the Charlotte storyline—this was a thought-provoking deep-dive into themes of identity. Let’s dig in.

“Charlotte”

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Image via HBO

The episode begins with a flashback to the aftermath of the Season 2 finale, as we watch the real Charlotte Hale crawl towards a downed host in the middle of gunfire to record a message “for Nathan.” Later in the episode, we learn that Nathan is Charlotte’s son, and her tearful message expresses regret for leaving him so abruptly before she sings him the song “You Are My Sunshine” one last time. It’s a surprising show of humanity for a character who we’ve seen to be absolutely ruthless over the past two seasons—and it certainly makes an emotional mark on the host inside Charlotte’s body when he/she sees the message later in the episode.

But before that, we watch as this new Charlotte body is built by Dolores once on the mainland. “Not-Charlotte” is fearful and confused when she comes online, saying she doesn’t remember who she is. Dolores tells her she’s “a creature of beauty and power,” before urging her to remember who she is. She does, but we—the audience—don’t get to learn that just yet. For the remainder of the episode the true identity of Not-Charlotte is kept secret, which makes this Charlotte-centric episode all the more intriguing.

The host inside Charlotte’s body isn’t too crazy about the fact that she’s been inserted into Charlotte’s body, saying “she tried to kill all of us.” But Dolores explains that the hosts are alone and outnumbered, and without Delos there will never be any more of their own kind beyond the handful that Dolores smuggled out of the park. So she needs this host to pretend to be Charlotte in order to secure Delos for their side.

We then skip ahead a bit to when Not-Charlotte is now back at Delos, but she’s informed that a secret buyer has been snatching up Delos stock for years and now has 38% of the shares—more than anyone else. This is, of course, is Engerraund Serac (Vincent Cassel), and after some digging Charlotte’s Delos colleague discovers that Serac has wiped himself completely off the internet, but is also the richest man in the entire world—completely anonymously. He’s an impossibly rich ghost, which makes him all the more dangerous.

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Image via HBO

We follow Charlotte home, but she also begins receiving cryptic voicemail messages that sound like static. No time to investigate, though, because Charlotte discovers her (ex?) lover Jake inside her house. He begins asking questions, but Charlotte immediately kisses him. A hint that the host inside Charlotte’s body has some experience wooing humans, perhaps? The kicker, though, is not just the revelation that Charlotte has a young son, but that this son has apparently been kept off the books as far as Dolores is concerned. Not-Charlotte is entirely taken aback by the fact that she has a son.

Indeed the most chilling part of the episode comes here, as we watch Not-Charlotte try to comfort and tuck her son into bed, but Nathan knows something’s off. The words coming out of Charlotte’s mouth and even her face are terrifyingly robotic—like she’s mimicking what she’s seen other humans do but doesn’t quite understand it. This is not a host with motherly instincts. Tessa Thompson absolutely nails what must have been a mighty complex performance.

More problems arise at Delos, when Charlotte is informed that there’s a mole inside the company. A mole who was feeding information to Serac. There are only a few suspects given how high-level the mole had to be, but we’ll get to that in a second. First, we’ve got a full-on nervous breakdown to deal with.

Charlotte feverishly calls up Dolores, demanding to meet, and so they do. Timeline-wise this scene takes place after Dolores’ run-in with Liam Dempsey Jr. (John Gallagher Jr.) and after her rescue by Caleb. Dolores tells Charlotte she can’t always be there for her, but Not-Charlotte is having a pretty intense identity crisis right now, expressing discomfort at trying to be Charlotte Hale. Interestingly, we see that Dolores has full control over the host inside Charlotte’s body—she’s able to tell her to cease motor functions, reduce emotionality, etc.

The two go to a private room in a hotel, where Dolores tends to Charlotte’s self-inflicted wounds. But Charlotte explains it feels like “she’s trying to take back control,” an unintended side-effect of identifying with the personality of a ruthless predator. More hints as to who’s inside Charlotte arrive here, as Dolores says, “No one knows you like I do. No one knows me like you do.” She also tells the host, “You belong to me.” Teddy? Is that you?

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Image via HBO

Charlotte tells Dolores that Serac has a mole inside the company, to which Dolores responds that Charlotte must now track down and kill the mole all while also fending off Serac’s takeover of Delos. But Dolores also assures Charlotte it won’t always be like this—they’ll eventually be able to be themselves. Hinting towards whatever Dolores’ endgame is here, which I expect will come into view in the next couple of episodes.

We get further flashes of the host inside Charlotte’s body when she goes to pick up her son Nathan, who is interacting with a man who is definitely a pedophile. Charlotte chokes him to death, noting that seeing his predatory nature reminded her “what it’s like to be me.” Hmm…

On her way home, Charlotte finally cracks the code of those messages—they play the song “You Are My Sunshine” if played in sequence—and says tells whoever’s on the other end she wants to meet. Her self-driving car then takes her to an undisclosed estate where she meets… Engerraund Serac! Yes indeed, Charlotte was/is the mole. That data she was so concerned with getting out of Westworld throughout Season 2? It was almost certainly for Serac.

Serac reveals that Charlotte is the one who came up with the whole idea after Serac’s A.I. algorithm Rehoboam predicted the massacre inside the park. Charlotte promised she could give him the data for the profile of every guest, using the massacre as cover to smuggle it out. But Serac has no patience—he wants the data and he knows it’s hidden inside Dolores’ mind. Things just got even more complicated for the host inside Charlotte’s body.

Caleb

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Image via HBO

After no appearance in last week’s episode, we pick up where we left off with Caleb and Dolores, as he’s tending to her gunshot wound following her escape from Incite’s henchmen. He hops in the ambulance with Dolores—a sign that he’s a genuinely good-hearted person—but they’re stopped by a pair of goons pretending to be police officers who have taken a Rico job to kidnap Dolores. Unsurprisingly, Dolores goes into “full-murder” mode and takes both of the goons out. She refuses to tell Caleb anything about herself, noting that he’s “a good man” and the less he knows about her the better, and she drives off.

A pair of goons subsequently nab Caleb at the hospital where he’s caring for his mother, and drill him for information on Dolores’ whereabouts. During this interrogation scene a new piece of tech is revealed: Caleb has an implant in his mouth that presumably administers painkillers, but can also be hacked to raise the person’s heart rate.

Before Caleb is killed, however, Dolores comes to the rescue. Apparently he made quite the impression, and Dolores decided to seek him out—a human member of her all-host team. But in order to successfully recruit Caleb, she must win him over to her cause.

She takes him to a restaurant—the same restaurant where Caleb had the worst memory of his life as a child. She recites, word by word, the events of that day, in which Caleb’s mother (who suffers from schizophrenia) abandoned him and he threw up a strawberry milkshake because he was so upset. Dolores recounts this event not to upset Caleb, but to prove to him that Incite’s system Rehoboam has been fed everyone’s raw data. Recorded and logged “in order to create a mirror world of this world.” Incite uses this mirror world to create a composite of everyone to predict their actions and effectiveness, which is used by potential employers, the police, etc. to decide what to do with you.

In order to really drill down her point, Dolores takes Caleb to the spot where Incite’s algorithm predicts he will commit suicide in 10-12 years. She shows him that employers won’t invest in someone who’s going to kill himself, “but by not investing they ensure the outcome.” It’s here where Westworld Season 3’s themes of determinism and an algorithm-based society come into clear view. The show’s previous two seasons dealt heavily with the idea of free will—if it even exists. And now out in the real world, Dolores realizes that many humans are just as caged as she was.

Dolores gives Caleb a choice. She can give him money and he can run, or she can join him to “start a revolution.” She explains that at work he would kill the signal just to see how people would react, and she’s going to do the same thing to Rehoboam. Heartbreakingly, Caleb says Dolores is “the first real thing that’s happened to me in a long time.” But while Dolores is indeed a host, hasn’t this show been about drilling down the idea that the hosts are just as “real” as humans? With their own desires, emotions, goals, and fears?

So obviously Caleb agrees to join the fight, and thus the beginning of a beautiful (or tragic?) partnership is born.

Episode MVP: Tessa Thompson. Just consider for a moment what Thompson is doing here. She’s asked to play a host inside Charlotte’s body, but not tip her hand as to which host is in there. On top of that, said host is having a full-on identity crisis, wrestling with who she/he really is. To do all that and make the character still compelling and emotionally available is a tremendous feat, and Thompson knocks it out of the park.

Final Thoughts

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Image via HBO

Westworld is somewhat up to its old tricks this week in introducing a mystery without giving away the answer, but I have a feeling we’ll find out who’s inside Charlotte’s body soon enough. Regardless, I found this episode wildly compelling—particularly the story between Dolores and Charlotte. We see an almost maternal side to Dolores as she’s forced to care for this newborn host she’s brought along with her, and it’s not exactly going as planned. If Dolores’ endgame is really wiping out humanity to bring about a robot uprising, she’s just now navigating her way through her role as Mother Host, and that’s a fascinating and refreshing role for Dolores to play. Complicated by the fact that she's taken a liking to Caleb, a human with whom she has more in common than she thinks.

Moreover, the final twist here—that Charlotte was working for Serac all along—adds more intrigue to whatever the show has planned for Serac as its Big Bad. I worried the series might suffer from introducing a new outside antagonist here, but this episode did a swell job of making the case that Serac has been a presence all along. We just didn’t know it.