Charlotte Hale isn’t quite herself in Westworld season 3, but which host mind is currently occupying the Delos executive’s body? After Dolores killed the real Charlotte in Westworld season 2, she 3D-printed a copy of Charlotte’s body and used it to smuggle several “pearls” (essentially the brains of hosts) out of the park. In Westworld season 3, episode 3, “The Absence of Field,” the new Charlotte is struggling with an existential crisis over who she really is – and the audience has been left in the dark as well.
There are some clues from which to form a theory about which host is in Charlotte’s body. Dolores says that it’s someone she trusts, and the two of them appear to have an intimate relationship. Later in the episode, while strangling a pedophile who was grooming Charlotte’s son, Nathan, the new Charlotte thanks him for reminding her of who she truly is: a predator. Dolores also suggests that “Charlotte’s” confusion over her identity may be the result of the host mind discovering a kindred spirit in Charlotte’s memories.
Of all the people that Dolores trusts, her old lover Teddy Flood ranks highly – but Teddy was sent to the Valley Beyond at the end of season 2, and in any case doesn’t have the ruthless killer instinct that the new Charlotte possesses. Another possibility is that Charlotte’s body is occupied by a version of Dolores’ own mind – perhaps someone closer to the more innocent Dolores that we first met in Westworld season 1. There’s one possibility, however, that seems to fit the best.
Theory: Angela’s Mind Is Inside Charlotte’s Body
As we learned in Westworld season 1, Dolores is actually two people: the sweet farmer’s daughter that Teddy and William fell in love with, and the villain known as Wyatt. One of Wyatt’s closest followers was Angela, a ruthless and wily host who adopted different personas depending on what she was needed for. In Westworld season 2 we saw Angela hunting down humans as part of Dolores’ gang, and playing a key role in the host uprising. Angela is both someone that Dolores trusts, and a predator, making her a good fit for the host currently possessing Charlotte’s body.
There is, of course, an obvious sticking point in this theory: Angela is dead. The last time we saw her, she seduced a security officer to get him to come close to her and then pulled a pin on his grenade, destroying them both in a massive explosion. However, it’s possible that Angela’s mind was either backed up into a new pearl, or that her original pearl was retrieved from the wreckage. After all, the hosts’ hard drives are designed to be very resistant to damage, given what the “assets” of Westworld go through on a regular basis for the entertainment of the park’s guests. Moreover, the patterns that Charlotte carves onto her body – a circle, and a line extending from it – could represent the grenade pin, making them a manifestation of Angela’s trauma and an attempt to remind herself of who she really is.
If Angela is the host occupying Charlotte’s body, it seems that she’s not alone in there. In order for her to play the part convincingly, she not only had to look like Charlotte but also possess some of her memories and knowledge. Even before watching the video that the real Charlotte recorded in Westworld before her death, the new Charlotte knew to call Nathan “buddy,” and she knew her ex’s name – even if not the full details of their relationship. It appears that Charlotte is now a hybrid of two minds: a host and a human, who are at war with each other for dominance.
