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Even if we’re not back in Westworld, it sure feels good to be back in Westworld! The Season 3 premiere simplified the storytelling and took us into the real world to follow Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) on her mission to destroy us all. But even though things were easier to understand than they were in Season 2, there were still several questions that went unanswered. What is the System? Who is in charge of the System? Where the hell was Maeve (Thandie Newton)? How did Dolores do that thing with her dress?
But the biggest question of all had to be who is in Charlotte’s body? A little catch-up in case you forgot; Dolores was able to escape Westworld in Season 2 because she put her pearl, or host-control unit, inside of a host body’s version of Charlotte (Tessa Thompson). Once in the real world and at Bernard’s old house, Dolores made a new host version of herself and moved her pearl over to that body, but we also saw Charlotte — or someone inside her body — standing there as well. On top of that, Dolores brought five pearls with her off the island, one of which belonged to Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), which she also brought back to “life” in the real world.
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In the Season 3 premiere, Charlotte is very much present, leading a board meeting at Delos and trying to tamper down the massacre at Westworld. So who’s in Charlotte’s body now? Let’s look at the likely suspects.
Teddy
James Marsden, Evan Rachel Wood; Westworld
Teddy (James Marsden) shot himself in the head because Dolores went totally nutso in her quest to eliminate all of the human race, but this is Westworld, and death is hardly the end. We’re led to believe that Dolores uploaded Teddy’s consciousness into the Sublime, the robot heaven Ford created to give his creations true freedom from meddling humans. However, there were few people who cared for Dolores more than Teddy (or who Dolores cared for more), so Teddy would make a primo ally for Dolores on her next endeavor out of the park — she’d just need to find a way to get him back from the Sublime or maybe she never sent him there at all. It would take some convincing on Dolores’ part to get him on board with the plan that he already killed himself over, but convincing a robot is as easy as swiping up the right dials on an iPad that’s tapped into their control unit.
Armistice
Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Westworld
One of the few characters totally on board with Dolores’ reign of terror was Armistice (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal), the robot with the dragon (OK, snake) tattoos, another female character with a knack for doling out punishment. Armistice is a great candidate to be either in Charlotte or at least in one of the other pearls as an Ally to Dolores. But there’s a big problem that many of these other options also have: How can they be so knowledgable about Delos’ business? Maybe a better destination for her is in Liam’s bodyguard’s (Tommy Flanagan) duplicate, as he’s a brawn and weapons kind of guy.
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Peter Abernathy
Louis Herthum, Westworld
One of the few people Dolores truly loved was her dad Peter (Louis Herthum), so it would make sense she would try to bring her back. Dolores took the pearl from his head late in Season 2, and it contained a lot of guest information inside it as well as a really broken-down and glitching version of her dad, so it’s unclear what she would have to do get him up and running again. And would he even be able to play any role as a human? The guy was certifiable by the end there. He may be one of the other pearls.
A digitized version of Charlotte Hale
Jeffrey Wright, Tessa Thompson; Westworld
Westworld wasn’t just about rich dudes playing cowboy and banging robotic farmer’s daughters, it was actually a complicated data collection system designed to map the human consciousness in order to put them in new artificial bodies. We saw young William (Jimmi Simpson) try to ctrl-C, ctrl-V his dad’s consciousness into a robo-replication of his dad with mixed results, but who’s to say that experimentation stopped there? It’s possible Dolores found a digitized copy of Charlotte somewhere and put her in a new body. Who better to play Charlotte then Charlotte herself? Who else can take charge of a Delos meeting that easily? Who else isn’t going to freak the f out when they look in a mirror for the first time once they’re in Charlotte? The challenge here would be convincing this “new” Charlotte to go along with Dolores’ plans, because it seemed Charlotte had plans of her own.
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Another copy of Dolores
Evan Rachel Wood, Westworld
Look, I don’t know how any of this technology works. It’s all made-up mumbo-jumbo to me. But if we can copy-and-paste a Google doc into a Word doc in 2020, can’t Dolores just xerox herself into a new pearl? On the other hand, if you were Dolores, would you want someone else as ruthless as you were out there somewhere?
Westworld airs Sunday nights at 9/8c on HBO.