S03.E03: The Absence of Field

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

If you don’t like what you see in the mirror, don’t blame the mirror.

Airing Sunday, March 29, 2020.

 

[ShellsandCheese]

I was bored with this episode. I'm not surprised at all that Charlotte is the mole. How long until Serac (with Maeve's help no doubt) figures out that Charlotte has been replaced with a host. And I still don't know which host it is, I think Teddy is ruled out because he was never aggressive and he's in the great beyond. Is it maybe Angela? Whoever it is, I'm glad they killed the very obvious pedophile. 

Edited March 30, 2020 by ShellsandCheese

[FemmyV]

Sooooooo ... Who is in Charlotte? Teddy seems the logical choice but I'm wondering about Clementine? Anyway, the music for her arrival to her meeting with Serac was divine

I love Dolores, and what they're trying to show us, but can't take how convoluted her storyline is. Caleb got interesting but I hope he won't be Teddy 2.0

[ShellsandCheese]

4 minutes ago, FemmyV said:

Sooooooo ... Who is in Charlotte? Teddy seems the logical choice but I'm wondering about Clementine? Anyway, the music for her arrival to her meeting with Serac was divine

I love Dolores, and what they're trying to show us, but can't take how convoluted her storyline is. Caleb got interesting but I hope he won't be Teddy 2.0

I'm pretty sure Teddy is in the great beyond. Unless they are going to do a retcon. The problem with Delores' storyline is that she really didn't have a bunch of loyal followers that she interacted with enough to trust.

Speculation below:

Spoiler

Maybe it's Wyatt??

That would be a great twist. 

Edited March 30, 2020 by ShellsandCheese

[AimingforYoko]

2 minutes ago, ShellsandCheese said:

I think Teddy is ruled out because he was never aggressive

I was with Teddy until she told the pedophile, "You're not the only predator here." Teddy was a lot of things, but predator was not among them.

So what is Serac's ultimate goal? To put humanity into a simulation?

[ShellsandCheese]

1 minute ago, AimingforYoko said:

I was with Teddy until she told the pedophile, "You're not the only predator here." Teddy was a lot of things, but predator was not among them.

So what is Serac's ultimate goal? To put humanity into a simulation?

I don't think it's to put society in a simulation, I think it's to eliminate all risks associated with human behavior. If Caleb can't get a job because his profile suggests that he's going to commit suicide, as Delores said, nobody is going to take a risk and hire him. It's to allow businesses to only go for sure bets - to ensure that nothing can possibly interfere with profits! 

People that are deemed risk are forced to exist on the margins. Less they get in the way of corporations and people making loads of money. 

[FemmyV]

10 minutes ago, ShellsandCheese said:

I'm pretty sure Teddy is in the great beyond. Unless they are going to do a retcon. ...

  Reveal spoiler

Maybe it's Wyatt??

That would be a great twist. 

I thought (spoiler) IS Delores?

What about Daddy? (Peter Abernathy)

 

Edited March 30, 2020 by FemmyV

[ShellsandCheese]

3 minutes ago, FemmyV said:

I thought (spoiler) IS Delores?

What about Daddy?

 

Initially he was going to be a separate host, his narrative / story was merged with Delores by Arnold. I would imagine that someone (Ford) undid what Arnold did, and perhaps there was an old pearl just hanging out ripe for the picking.

[Quilt Fairy]

Delores says "No one knows you like I do and no one knows me like you do".  I can only think of 2 people hosts that could mean, either Teddy or Peter Abernathy.  

37 minutes ago, AimingforYoko said:

I was with Teddy until she told the pedophile, "You're not the only predator here." Teddy was a lot of things, but predator was not among them.

Yeah, that was when I ruled out Teddy.  So, Peter Abernathy?  Didn't he have a violent storyline at one time? 

So is Host!Charlotte supposed to have all of Charlotte's memories as well as their original memories? How would that work, there's only one pearl in her.

Edited March 30, 2020 by Quilt Fairy

[CarpeFelis]

I can’t help thinking the only one Dolores could trust would be a copy of herself.

[AimingforYoko]

My Rule 32 for this ep is that I love Charlotte's son's name is Nathan. Is he going to regret only having one life to give for the robot revolution?

[clack]

Didn't Caleb mention last episode about having been shot in the head? Are we sure that he's fully human?

There is a parallel with Charlotte's son realizing that host Charlotte isn't really his mother, and Caleb's mother thinking that Caleb is not really her son.

Don't know yet what to think about the mirror world. Are characters moving between worlds? 

Edited March 30, 2020 by clack

[patty1h]

During tonight's episode I felt like I was watching a soft-core lesbian porn with the hotel scenes between Dolores and Charlotte.  I decided that I'm not gonna waste the brain cells to keep trying to figure out whose brain is in who, and just watch the body count pile up.  That's all this show is to me now, a revenge drama.

This show reminds me that I have this irrational dislike of Tessa Thompson and I can't figure out why.

Edited March 30, 2020 by patty1h

[mac123x]

Serac said the decryption key to Delos's data was in Dolores's brain.  Does that track with the end of season 2?  I thought Bernard shot Dolores at the Forge, and he opened the path to the Valley Beyond.  Wouldn't the key be in his brain-ball?  Maybe I'm misremembering but I don't what to rewatch S2 to figure it out.

The frequent fade to black scene transitions were jarring at times.  Caleb and Dolores walking to the diner [black] Charlotte waking up in bed [black] Caleb and Dolores arriving at diner.  Why?  Was there some artistic reason that I missed?

I think there was supposed to be some symbolism with Charlotte spooning her son, then Dolores spooning Charlotte, but while I'm good at seeing symbolism, I'm lousy at interpreting it sometimes.

I'm surprised (but kind of happy) that they didn't have Caleb react to Dolores's miraculous healing after she rescued him, since she'd had a fatal gunshot wound a couple of days earlier.  Future medicine might really be that good.

24 minutes ago, Quilt Fairy said:

So, Peter Abernathy?  Didn't he have a violent storyline at one time? 

That's my guess, and yes he had a whacko storyline prior to becoming her father.  He was The Professor, leader of a cult of cannibals.  

[thuganomics85]

I see they're going to drag out the "Who is actually in Charlotte's body?" mystery for as long as possible.  I initially wondered if it was Clementine, but it does seem like someone that Dolores is closer to, and while those two had a connection, I guess, it wasn't that personal.  I can't see it being Teddy after what went down with the potential child molester, so I'm currently in the Abernathy camp.  Of course, with this show, I'm ready for another shoe to drop.

Either way, "Charlotte" clearly is struggling with the whole undercover thing, and it certainly isn't going to help her that the real Charlotte was actually a mole for Serac this entire time, so she now has that on her plate as well.  I do think Tessa Thompson is more comfortable playing this type of character and conflict, compared to the overtly-smug and "large and in charge" Charlotte from the past seasons.

I have no idea if it was on purpose or not, but I got a kick out of Michael Ealy playing her husband (or ex?), since he played a robot/android on Almost Human years go: a show that had its issues, but I enjoyed it and wish it had more of an opportunity to grow (if nothing else, Ealy and Karl Urban had great chemistry.)

The Marvel fan in me also got kick out of Charlotte's brief exchange with Pom Klementieff's character.  Valkyrie and Mantis together again!

Not sure if the show wants me to think this, but I find it interesting that Dolores wants to take down humans for how they controlled her and the rest, but she has no problems basically controlling other robots to further her goals.  Now, she hasn't crossed any lines like humans have done for ages, but it might be a slippery slope.

Aaron Paul certainly has nailed down being the supporting character who provides a lot of great "This shit is crazy!" reaction shots, whenever the lead character does something insane.  Even then, Dolores probably is still not as unhinged was Walter White...

I see that 

Spoiler

we will finally check in on old William next episode!

 

[scrb]

So the first two seasons, the hosts gain consciousness, want vengeance on the ones responsible for WW.

Hence the massacre of the execs.

But it wasn’t enough.  Dolores wanted to break out into the world of the species which created WW.

There she finds that humans are pretty much slaves to the Great Big Orb like the hosts were in WW.

So now Dolores wanted to liberate mankind from a big AI which is like the pearl in her head?

Or does she think destroying the system will cause man to become extinct?

She kills humans with impunity, though viewers are suppose to be on her side because most of these were henchmen of evil men.  But she’s going all soft on Caleb, offers to give him a ton of money and he can walk away or he can join her revolution?

Really curious why they added the character.  Maybe they believed Aaron Paul would bring some BB fans on board.  Caleb is meant to be a sympathetic character, flawed but a victim of tragedy.  Maybe he becomes a love interest and softens Dolores as a character to the viewers.

[paigow]

1 hour ago, patty1h said:

During tonight's episode I felt like I was watching a soft-core lesbian porn with the hotel scenes between Dolores and Charlotte.

Dolores did not heal the facial cut..Why? All the money she stole from Jerry must be running out..She has bought a lot of clothes plus renting that apartment and booking 3 rooms in that hotel..she did save money by stealing that Bat-Cycle though... 

[MrWhyt]

I think Charlotte is William/The Man in Black, or rather a simulation of William built from his stolen thoughts and tweaked for Dolores' purposes:

1. He's a predator

2. He'd have the corporate knowledge to pass as a member of the board

3. Dolores tells Charlotte "you're mine", it's a reversal of her relationship with William, she's in the position of power now.

Edited March 30, 2020 by MrWhyt

[paigow]

1 hour ago, scrb said:

Maybe they believed Aaron Paul would bring some BB fans on board.  Caleb is meant to be a sympathetic character, flawed but a victim of tragedy.  Maybe he becomes a love interest and softens Dolores as a character to the viewers.

In Matrix 3, the Boss Machine and Neo made a deal that saved humanity. Dolores is the Boss, Caleb is Neo and Serac is Agent Smith

Edited March 30, 2020 by paigow

[CynVicious]

Did I miss something ?How did Dolores get her brainball into her Dolores body? At the end of S2 she left the park as Charlotte and when she brought Bernard back she was back in her Dolores body in a black dress. In this episode it seemed to me that Dolores made a Charlotte body and put someone in it.  Why did she need a new Charlotte body if she had the old Charlotte body she used to  escape?

This season is confusing me.

 

Edited March 30, 2020 by CynVicious
Spelling

[enchantingmonkey]

1 hour ago, patty1h said:

This show reminds me that I have this irrational dislike of Tessa Thompson and I can't figure out why.

Me, too.  I tried to like her in Annihilation but she didn't work for me there, either.  

 

59 minutes ago, mac123x said:

I think there was supposed to be some symbolism with Charlotte spooning her son, then Dolores spooning Charlotte, but while I'm good at seeing symbolism, I'm lousy at interpreting it sometimes.

If it's Peter Abernathy's pearl inside Charlotte, it could be like a mirror image of the parent spooning the child and the child spooning the parent. 

[MVFrostsMyPie]

I find myself being overly distracted by the fact that they merged Valencia and San Francisco into one city. Also count me in on the "I don't like Tessa Thompson" party. I don't know why I don't particularly like her, but I wish her character would die permanently and forever.

[mac123x]

 

31 minutes ago, paigow said:

Dolores did not heal the facial cut..Why?

My head-canon is that other people would have seen the injury and might wonder how it disappeared so quickly.  I dunno.

10 minutes ago, enchantingmonkey said:

If it's Peter Abernathy's pearl inside Charlotte, it could be like a mirror image of the parent spooning the child and the child spooning the parent. 

Ooh, good point.  Also Charlotte / Nathan were facing right and Dolores / Charlotte were facing left, so another mirror image... uh, image.  Dolores handed Charlotte a mirror.  And lots of mirrored figures in the opening credits too,  I'm sensing a theme.

[LoveLeigh]

I found this episode very boring and stopped it with 20 minutes left to go. Maybe I will get back to it. 

I am just not liking the direction the series is going. I don't like this high tech world they are in. I liked it better when the activity was in the simpler parks. 

Edited March 30, 2020 by DakotaLavender

[Chris24601]

So, basically Serac, by way of Rehoabim, is just like every totalitarian with dreams of a utopia on Earth.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Pol Pot or the people behind the Weather Underground; every last one of them decided that some part of the population had to be removed in order to bring about their vision of utopia. The 20th Century is dripping in blood from people with the exact mindset of Serac.

The only difference is he isn’t using bullets or poison gas or mass starvation to cull those who don’t fit into his vision of utopia... he’s using predictive algorithms to drive those deemed undesirable to the fringes where despair and desperation will eliminate them all the same.

Though he has no aversion to having people executed if necessary either. He wasn’t outraged that Maeve had killed his men in her escape attempt. He hired murderers to recover Delores. He’s okay with letting the system he built destroy some people’s lives “for the greater good.”

Why? Because “utopia justifies the means.”

I think it’s interesting that several commentators were predicting based on promos that Delores would be the one to execute the paramedics because of her past disregard for human life, but instead it was thugs sent by Serac who murdered people who were trying to save someone’s life and, once again, Delores only gunned down Serac’s hired kill squads tonight.

Similarly, the men Delores took down in the climax of episode one were involved in the “clean up” action to murder her vs. contacting the police, hiring investigators to figure out exactly what was goin on or otherwise taking reasonable action. She only killed the corrupt executive Jerry in the sense that she made sure to not be where she appeared to be when Jerry tried to murder her and slipped to his death.

In other words, they’ve been rather careful to make everyone Team Delores has killed this season be someone the audience will feel deserves it. Charlotte gets to murder a likely pedophile. Delores kills thugs who murdered the paramedics and who were torturing and ready to murder Caleb for information.

Also highlighted tonight was the degree to which humanity has become dependent on the system. The paramedics will unwilling to treat someone bleeding out based on their own education and intuition; they needed the system to determine the appropriate course of action before they’d attempt anything.

Basically, Delores thought it was only the Hosts who needed to freed from tyranny... it turns out she’s learning that there’s a good chunk of humanity that’s just like the Hosts.

Its the age-old Control vs. Freedom debate with Delores as team freedom and Serac as team control.

3 hours ago, mac123x said:

Serac said the decryption key to Delos's data was in Dolores's brain.  Does that track with the end of season 2?  I thought Bernard shot Dolores at the Forge, and he opened the path to the Valley Beyond.  Wouldn't the key be in his brain-ball?  Maybe I'm misremembering but I don't what to rewatch S2 to figure it out.  

Perhaps that’s the reason Delores needed Bernard out in the wild. He’s the insurance that the code can’t be found among her group even if they are discovered. And to make sure he’d hide off the grid, Delores made sure he was blamed for the WW massacre.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Behind the scenes of episode 3:

 

 

On 3/29/2020 at 9:59 PM, patty1h said:

This show reminds me that I have this irrational dislike of Tessa Thompson and I can't figure out why.

I haven't liked her since I saw her on Veronica Mars. I thought maybe I should give her the benefit of the doubt because she was only 22 and it was one of her first acting jobs. I also thought maybe her character on VM just sucked and that wasn't what I didn't like (despite her wooden line readings). But everything I've seen her in since, I've had the same reaction. I've come to the conclusion that I just don't think she's a very good actress.

[Ottis]

11 hours ago, AimingforYoko said:

I was with Teddy until she told the pedophile, "You're not the only predator here." Teddy was a lot of things, but predator was not among them.

That ignores the pull of Hale, which through dialogue in this episode the show seems to be telling us exists - and it is in conflict with whomever was inserted into Hale. I don't know how this can be true ... how can a host body have its own essence without its pearl? But that's how it came across to me. So in that case, Teddy makes sense but would not be a twist.

6 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

It doesn’t matter whether it’s Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Pol Pot or the people behind the Weather Underground; every last one of them decided that some part of the population had to be removed in order to bring about their vision of utopia. The 20th Century is dripping in blood from people with the exact mindset of Serac.

It's not that some people need to be removed. It's more insidious than that. It's that some people are shunted down paths  with no choice. They can exist, just not successfully, or happily, or for as long as they might have. I actually rolled my eyes a bit because it felt like a political review of capitalism.

 

[Head-Full-Of-Thi]

Some thoughts about Rehoboam's grip on society, excuse me if they're a bit scattered.

I have to admit that in episode 1 I didn't fully understand what exactly was so sinister with what it was doing, but now I have a much better understanding. Kodus to the show for this really good example they gave with Caleb.

It's not that the employers' made a choice not to hire Caleb based on the prediction that the algorithm provided them. Notice that Caleb still has 10-12 years left before his predicted suicide, more than the timespan people usually spend in a job today. A person looking to hire might still decide he's a good fit for the job at that point in time even if he'll kill himself in the far future. However it's the software, Rehoboam, that decides that because he won't live for long he is not worthy of society's resources, so it will never recommend him as a candidate for any job even if he might be a good fit. Aka he might still be a good worker per the prediction, but the system decided that someone else will have more use with the money or the work experience than him. Which is something much darker.

It's a little bit like what is happening nowdays with Waze. There's this urban legend that they're offering people a longer route to their destination in order to balance the traffic between streets.

And the self-driving car paradox, which goes pretty much like this: a self-driving car drives its owner, when another car just lost control and is driving towards it to collision. The opposite car has five people. If our self-driving car continue foward and hit the other car all five people die, but the passenger in our car will live. If our car turn and hit a wall, the person in our car will die. What should the car do in this situation? We have a rare chance here to program a car to behave without that selfishness that we humans have and save more people. But then what reason will there be for a person to let the car drive for him? With all of its advancements over the human brain, it doesn't have the most important thing that you have and that is your best interest.

It brings me back to the first season. With the hosts Ford wanted to make something devine, better than humans, without their selfishness. Very similar to what Serac is doing this season. But our strength might be precisely that our decisions are not comeplelty ruled by reason. We have selfishness but we also have compassion.

About the human angle of it all, like you all said the idea that some people are not worth society's resources can be found in many dark regimes of our past. And it also happens now with the Coronavirus crisis - some people argue that we shouldn't go through this much trouble for the elderly who will die anyway (I won't talk here about how wrong it is because then this post would be even longer).

Westworld might be now even more revant with this message than Nolan&Lisa originally thought.

 

[LoveLeigh]

2 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

 I've come to the conclusion that I just don't think she's a very good actress.

She annoys the heck out of me. Her acting lacks real depth and seems shallow. But it could be the role she is playing. I despise her character so maybe that is it. 

[iMonrey]

Quote

Don't know yet what to think about the mirror world. Are characters moving between worlds?

Just as previous seasons made the audience wonder what timeline they were watching, I believe the point to this season is wondering whether what we're seeing is real or a simulation. That Serac is creating a "mirror world" is suspicious as hell. How do we know this isn't already it?

I think at the end of the season we'll find out some or all of this season has taken place in a simulation and then we're supposed to go "OMFG jaw drop never saw that coming mind blown!!!" That really seems to be the primary goal of this show, to yank our chains all season long then drop a bombshell so we'll all be impressed with its cleverness.

[Quilt Fairy]

2 hours ago, iMonrey said:

That Serac is creating a "mirror world" is suspicious as hell. How do we know this isn't already it?

Does Hale needing some special glasses to seem him mean that he's some kind of holograph?  What is the purpose of the special lens Dolores put in her eye?  I didn't see her put it to any kind of use, AFAIK.

Did anyone else get a little freaked out when the boy that Nathan was playing with in the background was wearing a face mask? 

[paigow]

20 minutes ago, Quilt Fairy said:

What is the purpose of the special lens Dolores put in her eye?  I didn't see her put it to any kind of use, AFAIK.

I think it was the visual link to all the extra data on Caleb...it let her read his tragic backstory for display on her super tablet...

Edited March 30, 2020 by paigow

[mac123x]

I saw a theory that Caleb is inhabiting Charlotte's body, and there is more timeline fuckery going on this season.  I'm having a hard time believing that, since all the events involving Caleb would have to occur before any of the Dolores / Charlotte scenes.  I think the chronological order would be something like:

1.  Dolores-as-Charlotte (Charlores) escapes the park with 5 pearls

2.  Charlores masquerades as Charlotte at some of the Delos meetings.

3. Charlores builds a host body for someone (unknown Helper, possibly the scotish guy)

4.  They build a Delores body and put her control unit inside it.

5.  All of Dolores / Liam and Dolores / Caleb interactions occur.  

6.  Dolores refurbishes the Charlotte body and puts Caleb in it.  Since he already appears to have some cybernetics (fixing brain damage from that time he alluded to getting shot in the head) maybe he already has something equivalent to a pearl in his head.

7.  All the scenes of Charlotte interacting with her ex, her son, Serac, etc.

 

My problem with that is step 5.  Dolores spent a good chunk of time cozying up to Liam, and for the duration of that time there was no one in Charlotte's body.  How does one explain her extended absence from Delos during this time, a long vacation?

3 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I think at the end of the season we'll find out some or all of this season has taken place in a simulation and then we're supposed to go "OMFG jaw drop never saw that coming mind blown!!!" That really seems to be the primary goal of this show, to yank our chains all season long then drop a bombshell so we'll all be impressed with its cleverness.

I hope not, because "some or all of what you've seen was just a simulation" is such lazy writing.  It's a cop-out to cover over inconsistencies and plot holes.  

[mrspidey]

37 minutes ago, Quilt Fairy said:

Does Hale needing some special glasses to seem him mean that he's some kind of holograph? 

It's just an Augmented Reality device, i suppose. Instead of face-chatting with someone on your smartphone's screen, the glases simply insert him into your surroundings. So what you're seeing is less of a hologramm but more of a projection on the glasses themselves. 

This stuff already exists, actually. 

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass

Edited March 30, 2020 by mrspidey

[jane1978]

This show has really perfected the we are pretending to be a high quality TV full of inovating ideas and deep meanings while in reality rehashing every overused action scifi "B" movie clichés from 80´s and 90´s. The best thing on the show is Ramin Jawadi music. Even when the plot is pretty boring like this episode his music still elevates it so much. 

"If you look at the world economy, there is a negative void worth of 3 trilions." I mean, what? What that even means? And then Charlotte just orders his assistant to find whoever this supersecret investor is and she comes with the answer the same night???

And honestly, Dolores, you didn´t do even a small research into who Charlotte was before you send whoever is inside her body back to her home? She/he didn´t even know Charlotte has a child or how her ex looks? 

I know Charlotte is a big and powerfull person, but I don´t think even she could just murder someone in middle of a park with eye witnesses all around. And who was that guy? First, she suggested a playdate so I thought he is a father of the other boy Nathan had been playing with, but then she took something from his pocket and called him a predator??? 

So, Dolores presents Caleb with his most deepest and secret child memory, he asks how it´s possible and then she mumbles something about Rehoboam monitoring all his contacts, social networks and other things. But that´s just big data analysis, exactly what he suggested before. She never game him an answer. It would make sense if he was one of the former Westworld visitors and then his memories was transfered to the Rehoboam, but otherwise I too have no idea how she and/or Rehoboam could know that.

From what I understand this is exactly why Seraph needs the Westworld data and technology. People thoughts and desires is the last piece of puzzle Rehoboam needs to make its predictions/simulation truly perfect. 

Anyway, so far I don´t see any signs they are playing with different timelines again. For a while I thought Charlotte´s line today had been a memory or a flashback and it all happened before what´s going on with Dolores and Caleb, but then she checked on him a second after she left Charlotte´s hotel room. And everything else seems fit. 

 

[Quilt Fairy]

52 minutes ago, jane1978 said:

So, Dolores presents Caleb with his most deepest and secret child memory, he asks how it´s possible and then she mumbles something about Rehoboam monitoring all his contacts, social networks and other things. But that´s just big data analysis, exactly what he suggested before. She never game him an answer. It would make sense if he was one of the former Westworld visitors and then his memories was transfered to the Rehoboam, but otherwise I too have no idea how she and/or Rehoboam could know that.

We have seen no evidence that Caleb has ever had the extreme wealth needed to visit Westworld.  Just the opposite, in fact.  

The only thing that is hinted at but not yet revealed is exactly what happened to him during his Army service. 

[mac123x]

2 hours ago, jane1978 said:

And honestly, Dolores, you didn´t do even a small research into who Charlotte was before you send whoever is inside her body back to her home? She/he didn´t even know Charlotte has a child or how her ex looks? 

I think whoever is piloting the Charlotte bot had that information but had to access it.  I imagined her internal thought process was surprised and took a second to open the files.

2 hours ago, jane1978 said:

I know Charlotte is a big and powerfull person, but I don´t think even she could just murder someone in middle of a park with eye witnesses all around. And who was that guy? First, she suggested a playdate so I thought he is a father of the other boy Nathan had been playing with, but then she took something from his pocket and called him a predator??? 

The dude was stroking Nathan's hand while he pet the dog, so it was pretty obvious he was a creep.  Charlotte removed an object from his pocket and thanked him for already disabling the cameras.  Presumably it jammed the CCTV in the area so he wouldn't be recorded perving out on kids.

[skotnikov]

I'm sad the buddy robot of whatever-his-name-is-played-by-Aaron-Paul crashed. I was looking forward for more interaction between them. 

[JakersWild]

4 hours ago, jane1978 said:

So, Dolores presents Caleb with his most deepest and secret child memory, he asks how it´s possible and then she mumbles something about Rehoboam monitoring all his contacts, social networks and other things. But that´s just big data analysis, exactly what he suggested before. She never game him an answer.

I'd gone back and paused the document on the tablet. At the top it says "transcript... [unauthorized cell phone recording...]" It also says Exhibit A at the top left, and is formatted a bit like a court document. There are a few hand written notes at the bottom of the page, but nothing apparently substantive.

Overall I'm as confused as I'm supposed to be about details this season. I am enjoying the ride despite it feeling like a soft reboot, even though the producers say this was always the plan. While I never liked Hale, I have tended to enjoy HaleNo. Apparently liking the Maeve episode has me out of step with many too, but that's fine.

It's good to see potential endgames of data mining brought forward in a way that mirrors today. There are already companies that combine personality test data with social media data and public records to score potential employees. That sort of thing is only getting worse as it gets more sophisticated. It will be interesting to see how much they explore not being able to challenge the ruling of "AI", if you even ever know that the ruling happened. Stories about neural nets (that get called AI) like one of Google's tagging photos of some children as dogs, for example, make me wonder. Humans make mistakes or have biases, but if discovered one can ask a person why they did that and go from there. With an algorithm, one can find an error in the code. With current "AI" that was trained rather than directly programmed, it is impossible to ask why it reached the result it did, or find a bug. One can only ditch it and start again, or train it better. What will we do if/when such things are making decisions about our lives with biases or glitches we don't understand or even know exist, and that are hard to challenge because people often tend to assume computers don't make such errors.

Edited March 31, 2020 by JakersWild

[Noneofyourbusiness]

On 3/29/2020 at 10:40 PM, Quilt Fairy said:

So is Host!Charlotte supposed to have all of Charlotte's memories as well as their original memories? How would that work, there's only one pearl in her.

No, she doesn't. She only has the publicly available information on Hale, plus what Dolores could tell her about Hale from meeting her. Hence Host!Hale not knowing about the recording Hale made until she saw it, and not knowing Hale was the mole or what her password for contacting Serac was.

On 3/29/2020 at 11:19 PM, mac123x said:

Serac said the decryption key to Delos's data was in Dolores's brain.  Does that track with the end of season 2?  I thought Bernard shot Dolores at the Forge, and he opened the path to the Valley Beyond.  Wouldn't the key be in his brain-ball?  Maybe I'm misremembering but I don't what to rewatch S2 to figure it out.

That's my guess, and yes he had a whacko storyline prior to becoming her father.  He was The Professor, leader of a cult of cannibals.  

Dolores encrypted the Sublime when she visited the Forge in the Hale body with Bernard.

23 hours ago, scrb said:

So now Dolores wanted to liberate mankind from a big AI which is like the pearl in her head?

As Dolores said in the premiere, the system isn't a true AI. It's a predictive algorithm. She considers it a false god (and herself and the other hosts the true gods). She either wants to destroy it to take away a predictive advantage her enemies have, or take control of it herself.

23 hours ago, MrWhyt said:

I think Charlotte is William/The Man in Black, or rather a simulation of William built from his stolen thoughts and tweaked for Dolores' purposes:

Host!Hale questioned why Dolores brought Bernard back because "he tried to stop us". So she was someone who was with Dolores when she attacked the Delos forces, and who saw Bernard.

23 hours ago, CynVicious said:

Did I miss something ?How did Dolores get her brainball into her Dolores body? At the end of S2 she left the park as Charlotte and when she brought Bernard back she was back in her Dolores body in a black dress. In this episode it seemed to me that Dolores made a Charlotte body and put someone in it.  Why did she need a new Charlotte body if she had the old Charlotte body she used to  escape?

No. That new body we briefly saw made was the new Dolores body, not the Hale body. We only saw the face in alabaster form in that scene. Once it was done, Dolores put herself in it and someone else in the Hale body. That's why we see it being made before Host!Hale wakes up. As for how Dolores put her own pearl in a new body, it would be easy enough to tell the printing machine's arms to take it out of one head and place it in the other.

21 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

Also highlighted tonight was the degree to which humanity has become dependent on the system. The paramedics will unwilling to treat someone bleeding out based on their own education and intuition; they needed the system to determine the appropriate course of action before they’d attempt anything.

It also occurs to me that if they acted without approval and something went wrong, they could be personally sued.

14 hours ago, Ottis said:

That ignores the pull of Hale, which through dialogue in this episode the show seems to be telling us exists - and it is in conflict with whomever was inserted into Hale. I don't know how this can be true ... how can a host body have its own essence without its pearl? But that's how it came across to me. So in that case, Teddy makes sense but would not be a twist.

Host!Hale said that seeing Thomas reminded her of something she'd been missing in order to feel like herself. So that would be the opposite of losing herself in the Hale body. That predator line was about her original self.

5 hours ago, jane1978 said:

"If you look at the world economy, there is a negative void worth of 3 trilions." I mean, what? What that even means? And then Charlotte just orders his assistant to find whoever this supersecret investor is and she comes with the answer the same night???

And honestly, Dolores, you didn´t do even a small research into who Charlotte was before you send whoever is inside her body back to her home? She/he didn´t even know Charlotte has a child or how her ex looks? 

I know Charlotte is a big and powerfull person, but I don´t think even she could just murder someone in middle of a park with eye witnesses all around. And who was that guy? First, she suggested a playdate so I thought he is a father of the other boy Nathan had been playing with, but then she took something from his pocket and called him a predator???

It means there are three trillion dollars unaccounted for that should be somewhere, and that Serac has them. It's unclear how she got the name associated with that.

Dolores and Host!Hale did know those things. Host!Hale recognized Hale's ex-husband as soon as she saw him in the apartment, remember? She was only surprised because she hadn't been expecting him. And she had been late to pick up Nathan multiple times because she wasn't emotionally invested in him, so he kept slipping her mind.

Host!Hale originally talked about a playdate because she didn't realize Thomas, the new friend with a dog Nate was talking about, was an adult. When she saw them together she realized he was a pedophile because of the way he was stroking Nate, and his lying about how when they'd met. It was clear it was the same guy because Nate called him his friend Thomas both times.

[dr pepper]

This week on Hush, Hush, Fake Charlotte:

Apparently robots can recognize each other's brain marbles.

Charlotte is not Clementine or some other robot that's just currently wearing a Charlotte body. She really is a persona compiled from all the data and brain scans of the real Charlotte. But she never got the bicameral/maze talk sessions like Dolores and Bernard, so at least at the beginning of the episode she's not properly expressing or feeling like herself. And she also doesn't access memories that she really ought to. Such as the dynamics of her relationship with her ex and her son. And the fact that she is the mole she's looking for.

But the discovery of a stranger trying to gain some kind of advantage by exploiting her son seems to push her into further personality development. And of course Serac reminds her of the last fact.

Who is Serac? I wonder if he's just a sentient simulation, which is why you never see him except in virtual reality. That would make him the true ghost in the machine, the hobo in Rehoboam. But he doesn't seem to know what Charlotte is.

I wonder if Ford is still floating around out there.

Ah, Dolores adopted a stray! Her mission is now two-fold: free the robots who have become nearly human, and free the humans who are being treated like robots.

[arc]

7 hours ago, jane1978 said:

And who was that guy? First, she suggested a playdate so I thought he is a father of the other boy Nathan had been playing with, but then she took something from his pocket and called him a predator??? 

If you're missing basic stuff like how the show made it clear he was a pedophile and what the device was, I don't know if you're paying enough attention to be criticizing it. She straight up said the device was his camera jammer and that he was the guy Nathan was talking about from Thursday. A guy who grooms kids like that and lies about it to a kid's mom and has a camera jammer is not a good dude. He probably picked a secluded area away from passers-by for his own evil ends.

32 minutes ago, dr pepper said:

Apparently robots can recognize each other's brain marbles.

Bernard's marble/pearl is flecked with red, indicating he's partly human. Unlike regular host pearls, which apparently are just grey and black.

Then again, why in the world would robots know what their pearls look like?

On 3/29/2020 at 7:40 PM, Quilt Fairy said:

So is Host!Charlotte supposed to have all of Charlotte's memories as well as their original memories? How would that work, there's only one pearl in her.

She doesn't have Charlotte's memories easily accessible to her or she would have known the secret code to contact Serac right away, as well as knowing real!Charlotte was a mole for Serac. But she did say she felt like real!Charlotte was trying to break free. Maybe that's just the dissociation of being in charge of a body she doesn't recognize. Kinda like how in Altered Carbon people's minds can be placed into new bodies and sometimes doing so too often can damage the psyche.

But depending on how the host bodies are made -- and the claim that modern host bodies are as organic as human bodies (minus platelets and hormones like adrenaline or cortisol, which is another wildly lunatic idea) -- maybe host!Charlotte was literally cloned/fast-grown/molecularly duplicated. And if it was the latter, then host!Charlotte has a brain similar to real!Charlotte, with the memories and mind intact, but the pearl and lightbulb are driving the body. (I guess we'll have to ignore that doing so means there's a big hole in the host brain to make room for the lightbulb.) Anyways, in which case this makes it a kind of homage to Get Out as well.

[arc]

18 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

Behind the scenes of episode 3:

Boy, I love Westworld, but Jonathan Nolan saying "in terms of influences, very much thinking about The Matrix, but the slightly lo-fi version... you don't need Zion, you don't need to plug in everyone like a battery. We've already done it. We've already created the Matrix invisibly within our own world, like an overlay." (emphasis mine)

... yeah, that was the point of the Matrix!!!!!!!! What an absolute galaxy brain take to say something like "our show is influenced by the Matrix but what if it had something to say about the real world we live in".

[Haleth]

I get it.  Season 1:  Humans write the stories of the hosts.  Season 3:  A machine writes the stories of the humans.  Poor Caleb.  I wonder if meeting Dolores will be the best thing or the worst thing that ever happens to him.

Any episode without Maeve or Bernard is necessarily one that holds less interest for me.  I don't care for Charlotte and I wasn't happy to watch an episode devoted largely to her.  Frankly I would not have cared much if she had killed herself.  However it will be interesting to see how she navigates being both the mole and the one looking for the mole.

Charlotte.  Dolores says "you are the only one I trust" which would suggest she is really Teddy.  But killing the pedophile?  Dolores meddled with Teddy's programming so it's possible that he'd kill a human, but it could very well be that Charlotte = Peter Abernathy.  Other than Maeve Peter is the only parent that we know of, the only host who would have a strong instinct to protect a child.  (I'm hoping there isn't a William pearl yet.  He was a parent and is certainly ruthless enough to kill another person but I'm not sure Dolores would trust him, given their history.) 

18 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Just as previous seasons made the audience wonder what timeline they were watching, I believe the point to this season is wondering whether what we're seeing is real or a simulation. That Serac is creating a "mirror world" is suspicious as hell. How do we know this isn't already it?

I think at the end of the season we'll find out some or all of this season has taken place in a simulation and then we're supposed to go "OMFG jaw drop never saw that coming mind blown!!!" That really seems to be the primary goal of this show, to yank our chains all season long then drop a bombshell so we'll all be impressed with its cleverness.

Yeah, I'm afraid that's what we're in for.  What a massive cop out.

[DrSpaceman73]

Oh my god......this was so incredibly boring.  Has to be a low point for the whole series. 

I am just about done with this.  Being purposely evasive and confusing in the writing does not automatically make it interesting. 

About one more episode before I just have to stop.  QUICKLY losing interest.  Even the storylines they are trying to sell I am not that into, throw on top of that who is who and when and it all just becomes a clusterfuck of annoyance. 

Yes I expect some part of this is in a simulation. 

[Head-Full-Of-Thi]

16 hours ago, Haleth said:

Charlotte.  Dolores says "you are the only one I trust" which would suggest she is really Teddy.  But killing the pedophile?  Dolores meddled with Teddy's programming so it's possible that he'd kill a human, but it could very well be that Charlotte = Peter Abernathy.  Other than Maeve Peter is the only parent that we know of, the only host who would have a strong instinct to protect a child.  (I'm hoping there isn't a William pearl yet.  He was a parent and is certainly ruthless enough to kill another person but I'm not sure Dolores would trust him, given their history.) 

Everybody says that the real host should be aggressive because of the pedophile scene and it really confuses me because I'm pretty sure it was meant to be the real Charlotte?

She says 'you're not the only predator here' and in the beginning of the episode Dolores called the real Charlotte a predator. Also during the episode Host Charlotte says she feels the Real Charlotte trying to take control. Then seeing the pedophile preying on Charlotte's son like that, Real Charlotte's maternal instincts kicked in and Host Charlotte says she finally remembers who she is, aka Real Charlotte.

Not sure if it means she just understands Charlotte beter, how everything she did was for her son, or if it's really that Host Charlotte is changing to be more like Real Charlotte.

So Host Charlotte would actually be someone not aggressive, but I still don't think it's Teddy. They say 'is it you Teddy' in the trailer so unfortunately it's probably just to throw us off.

I miss Teddy so much man 😞

On 3/29/2020 at 9:40 PM, Quilt Fairy said:

So is Host!Charlotte supposed to have all of Charlotte's memories as well as their original memories? How would that work, there's only one pearl in her.

Damn I'm really interested to know now. I'm gonna go with yes, and perhaps she has in her head all the data that was collected about Charlotte in the Forge.

Aka all the data that Delos knows about her. Not her love for her son or that she's the mole.

Prehaps a simulated version of Charlotte was created from the dada, like how Lee was created in the simulation. Host Charlotte could access the data but didn't allow herself to fully acknowledge this Charlotte version and integrate her into her personality, and more than that she couldn't understand Charlotte's motivation for being such a terrible person in the park. That's until the moment with the pedophile, then the host found the missing component in the data, the love for her son. She was able to understand Charlotte, and the two personalities fully combined.

On 3/29/2020 at 9:43 PM, CarpeFelis said:

I can’t help thinking the only one Dolores could trust would be a copy of herself.

Yes that's it you're a genius!

On 3/30/2020 at 9:41 PM, JakersWild said:

It's good to see potential endgames of data mining brought forward in a way that mirrors today. There are already companies that combine personality test data with social media data and public records to score potential employees. That sort of thing is only getting worse as it gets more sophisticated. It will be interesting to see how much they explore not being able to challenge the ruling of "AI", if you even ever know that the ruling happened.

Stories about neural nets (that get called AI) like one of Google's tagging photos of some children as dogs, for example, make me wonder. Humans make mistakes or have biases, but if discovered one can ask a person why they did that and go from there. With an algorithm, one can find an error in the code. With current "AI" that was trained rather than directly programmed, it is impossible to ask why it reached the result it did, or find a bug. One can only ditch it and start again, or train it better. What will we do if/when such things are making decisions about our lives with biases or glitches we don't understand or even know exist, and that are hard to challenge because people often tend to assume computers don't make such errors.

Wow that is very interesting. Probably a reason why we shouldn't let AI rule over us. But of course like you said westworld humans never agreed to let  AI rule over them, they just consult it but Serac secretly let Rehoboam do more than just predict but actually effect the world through its advices...

[tennisgurl]

My first guess about who "Charlotte" is would probably be Peter Abernathy, as they are someone Dolores is really close with, and has both a predatory side (the cannibal cult story he had before he was Peter) and a parental side (finding themselves by attacking the predator for getting near little Nathan and being torn up watching Charlotte talking to him) but that almost seems too obvious. If this show wants to draw it out for all freaking season, which I suspect it will, it will be someone more shocking, like William or the person Dolores trusts the most, herself! 

So Dolores finds out that the humans out in the real world are practically as controlled as the hosts in the park, following along an already written path created by the wealthy and powerful who decide their fates. She also meets Caleb, a human who she actually likes, or at least doesn't want to die. So will this lead to some character development from Dolores, that no every human is a total piece of crap and that there are plenty of humans who are also victims of an uncaring and dehumanizing system, and that will effect her plan to...whatever her plan is that she wont just tell us about until near the end of the season probably. 

So the reason no one will hire Caleb is that he is statistically going to kill himself in ten to fifteen years? Ouch, thats freaking brutal, poor guy. And really, it shows how insidious it is, and how the powers that be are trying to basically get rid of any person who they dont consider an investment into society in the long term and deliberately trying to push them further and further into the margins until they just go away and die. Caleb could be hired, he could still work for a few years at some crappy or mid level job, even if he did only have about ten or fifteen years, which is longer than a lot of people stay at the same job, but they just want people like him gone. 

That creep didn't deserve a dog anyway.

[paigow]

42 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

That creep didn't deserve a dog anyway.

Is her condo building pet friendly? Or is she going to choke out the entire condo board?

[Chris24601]

Upon additional viewings, I'm going to go with Charlotte being a splinter of the composite Delores/Wyatt personality.

However, I'm going to go the opposite direction of many of those speculators on YouTube and posit that the personality. They posit that Delores kept the Wyatt half while while putting the Delores half into HostCharlotte.

My hunch is that its actually the opposite; that Delores split off Wyatt into Charlotte while Delores is either still the composite or Delores only.

One big clue to me are that the cuts into herself weren't just random clawings, but deliberate patterns of lines and circles indicating ritualistic behavior with purpose instead of general self-harm. Wyatt was programmed to be a fanatic cult leader whose followers ritually harmed themselves in one form or another (ex. Angela's crown of thorns).

One indication that Delores either toned-down or removed Wyatt from herself in the process of putting Wyatt into Charlotte is that season three has greatly toned down her bloodthirstiness. She doesn't kill the jerkass billionaire in episode one nor his wife (and tells the wife that's she's been set free). Contrary to some predictions, Delores wasn't the one to murder the paramedics for discovering she wasn't human, but she did kill the guys who killed the paramedics and the thugs ready to kill Caleb.

She's still brutally efficient, but the "kill all humans" notion is clearly gone at this point. So far this season she hasn't killed anyone who wasn't already trying to kill her or other humans.

I suspect the big twist for the people trying to over-analyze this season is that Delores isn't actually a murder-bot just using Caleb to wipe out humanity any more and that she's actually realized most of the humans have been the toys of the system as much as any Host has.

She also remarks that Caleb, a human who'd turned his implant off, was also making choices she would not have predicted.

I almost suspect they're doubling back to that story Delores tells Teddy in S1 about the sick cows... that they had to be killed off so that the greater herd could survive and thrive. The scumbags at the top interacting with the Hosts all these years weren't a representative sample of humanity.... they were the sick cows that need to be culled for the herd to survive.

Worth noting too is that, so far, HostCharlotte has also only murdered a pedophile in defense of a human child. It is clearly a narrative choice that Team Delores has, so far this season, only killed what we might call "acceptable targets."

By contrast, Team Serac (of which the Incite security guy Delores had replaced was close enough to know the "black hole of data's" name) had no problems murdering a suspected corporate spy and making it look like a drug overdose (Delores in ep1), threatening to have Liam murdered if he didn't stay in line, hiring casual killers (gunning down paramedics, torturing Caleb and planning to throw him off a building) to retrieve Delores using the RICO app, or with using Maeve after she killed a number of his own people in her escape attempt.

Serac is at the top of society and wants the information he believes will allow him to completely subjugate the real world to his models for how society should function.

The twist is that when the Delores/Maeve confrontation finally happens... its NOT going to be Maeve trying to stop the evil Delores from going too far; it's going to be Maeve working for the villain to stop Delores from thwarting the villain's evil plans for humanity.

[paigow]

The Nolan Brothers use mistaken identity a lot.

Bruce Wayne: I killed Raz Al Ghul years ago...

Bruce Wayne: Bane is the son of Raz Al Ghul...