HBO
Westworld finds itself in an odd place this season, as HBO tries to softly reboot the series while also paying off the (admittedly complicated) stories it established in its first two seasons. The results thus far have been mixed.
While I found the Maeve-centric second episode to be one of the best that the series has ever done, the two episodes that bookend it has been remarkably average and the reason is quite obvious: Westworld has a Dolores problem. Put simply, the series’ lead character just isn’t particularly interesting.
Whether it be poor writing, poor acting, or both, Dolores’ quest for world domination feels cold and distant when compared to the connection the audience feels to Maeve and her emancipation-seeking journey. That’s a problem, though, because Dolores is the lynchpin of the series’ entire A-plot — she simply cannot be abandoned and forced to cede into the background.
But what they can do is work around her — instead of moving Dolores around the chessboard, they move the pieces around her. Westworld did exactly that in Episode 3 — “The Absence of Field” — by focusing on the human formerly known as Charlotte Hale.
At the end of season two, the real Charlotte was murdered by Dolores, whose consciousness was inside of a Charlotte-looking host (you see how god damn confusing this is?). Dolores — as Charlotte — then escaped the park, smuggling herself and other host consciousnesses out of the park. Dolores then got back into her original body, leaving Charlotte’s vacated.
As we see in episode three of this new season, that Charlotte host has since been filled with a new consciousness: but who exactly is it? My money is on Teddy for one reason and one reason only: how much of a whiny little bitch he sounded like when Dolores brought him back online. Any other host would be hyped as fuck to be free from the park, ready to fuckin’ ride. Not our boy Teddy, though. Teddy already blew his brains out once to get away from Dolores and you can hear the disappointment in his voice when he realizes he’s, once again, under her control.
— Fake CBM Quotes (@FakeCBMQuotes) March 30, 2020
Another key is that Dolores expresses that she trusts whoever is inside of Charlotte. Given that Teddy was essentially her right-hand man, who could she trust more than him?
Last time we saw Teddy, even though he shot himself in the dome piece, his control unit was salvaged and uploaded to the Great Beyond, meaning if someone as diabolic as Dolores wanted to bring him back into the real world, they’ve got the capability to do so.
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Eric is a New York City-based writer who still isn’t quite sure how he’s allowed to have this much fun for a living and will tell anyone who listens that Gotham City is canonically in New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter @eric_ital for movie and soccer takes or contact him eric@brobible.com