Having been rescued from certain death by Caleb, Dolores warns him that his life is in danger and offers to provide him funds to go into hiding as Serac's henchman tries and kill both of them. Dolores reveals to Caleb that Incite is secretly controlling and manipulating the lives of everyone on Earth and reveals Caleb's profile to him. The son of a paranoid schizophrenic, Caleb has been designated as being only good for manual labor work resulting in him being rejected for any office job or white-collar gig he has applied for. Through the analysis of his family's medical history and other information they have compiled on him, Caleb will eventually kill himself within a decade. Dolores asks Caleb if he wants to join her revolution to overthrow Incite and its A.I. system, Rehoboam.
Meanwhile, the host version of Charlotte is revealed to be one of the remaining brain pearls Dolores took with her from Westworld and is struggling to deal with being in a foreign body, along with familiar relations with Charlotte's ex-husband and her estranged son. Adding to her woes; a mysterious entity (Serac) is staging a hostile takeover of Delos via shell corporations and that someone at the company has been helping them in doing so. Host Charlotte regains some clarity in her mission after she kills a man who her son befriended and happens to be a pedophile, only to find out after being summoned to a private meeting, that she is the mole and that the person behind the takeover is Serac.
Tropes:
- As You Know: Charlotte's ex replies with "I lived here for eight years." when asked about how he got into the apartment.
- Augmented Reality: Martel gives Charlotte a pair of augmented reality glasses so Serac can communicate with her.
- Big Damn Heroes: Dolores saves Caleb from the two thugs who are interrogating him on her whereabouts.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: Dolores drags the body of the cop she just killed to his vehicle's retinal scanner so she'll be able to drive it.
- Call-Back: Serac was the intended recipient of the data Charlotte was trying to smuggle out in Seasons 1 and 2.
- Caleb gets tortured through his implant similarly to Bernard getting tortured under Hale's orders in season 2
- Commonality Connection: Dolores begins to empathize with Caleb after reading his profile, making her see another side of humanity who are trapped in a cage just like her and the hosts.
- Concealment Equals Cover: Subverted when one of the medics gets shot by the fake cops while trying to take cover behind the ambulance.
- A Day in the Limelight: Most of the episode focuses on the host copying Charlotte (whose previous identity is yet to be revealed - theories include Abernathy, Teddy, Clementine, Angela, Wyatt, or an original build of Dolores) as she adjusts to her mission to impersonate the late Charlotte.
- Destination Defenestration: George, Caleb's robot partner at the construction site, is thrown off the building by Estefan.
- Dirty Cop: The two cops that pull over the ambulance carrying Dolores and Caleb are corrupt cops out for the bounty on Dolores.
- Driven to Suicide: According to Rehoboam's profile of him, Caleb will kill himself in about 10-12 years.
- The Dulcinea Effect: Caleb is willing to risk his life for Dolores, a woman he has just met.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Host Charlotte keeps trying to access an encrypted phone line on the original Charlotte's phone to contact the person on the other end, but she doesn't know the right sequence of sound effects to unlock it. She realizes what the correct sequence is after watching the original Charlotte's Video Will, where she sings "You Are My Sunshine" to her son.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Turns out Corrupt Corporate Executive Charlotte Hale had a son.
- Extinct in the Future: We learn that elephants are extinct in 2058. Nathan also has a stuff tiger and orca in his bedroom. Tigers are all but stated to also be extinct in the Raj's official website.
- Fighting from the Inside: The impostor Charlotte's breakdown and self-harming tendencies come from having the real Charlotte's memories taken from the Forge, as it was stated human minds couldn't cope with being uploaded into Host bodies without eventually breaking down into madness, as seen with the host version of George Delos. Host Hale isn't quite so far gone because the Host mind is in control, but the conflict is there nonetheless.
- Flashback: The episode opens on a short flashback to Charlotte Hale bringing a host online during the massacre at the end of season 1, leaving a message for Nathan, her son. It then cuts to Dolores making a new copy of Hale's body with a new consciousness.
- High-Altitude Interrogation: The thugs that find Caleb after a hit has been placed on him take him to a construction site and threaten to drop him unless he tells them where Dolores is. He refuses to break, even when they use his military implant to drive up his heart rate.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- Thomas turned off all the surveillance cameras around him so they wouldn't see him trying to kidnap Nathan. Unfortunately for him, this also lets Charlotte choke him to death without having to worry about getting caught.
- Delos selling Serac some of their guest data 20 years ago led him to try to take over the company.
- Majority-Share Dictator: Serac has managed to slowly buy out 38% of Delos shares through various shell companies, giving him the largest say of any single entity.
- Mama Bear: Charlotte strangles the pedophile trying to lure Nathan with her bare hands, all the while gloating about how killing him will help her rediscover herself, then takes his dog.
- Mini-Mecha: The riot control robot developed by Delos and shown to Charlotte's impostor looks like one.
- The Mole:
- Charlotte was working for Serac to undermine Delos and steal their data when she was alive.
- Host Martin has already taken the original's place within Incite.
- Serac had another one in Westworld, who smuggled Maeve's pearl out of the park
- No Honor Among Thieves: Estefan, one of the two criminals that interrogate Caleb on Dolores' whereabouts, knows Caleb and has worked with him in the past, yet has no trouble torturing him. He does at least offer to cut Caleb in if Caleb cooperates.
- Number Two: Irene Gerhart serves as this to Charlotte in her position as CEO of Delos.
- Omniscient Database: Rehoboam knows every detail of Caleb's life, including the exact words he spoke after his mother abandoned him, and from that information has predicted what his ultimate fate will likely be.
- Parent Never Came Back from the Store: An 8-year-old Caleb was abandoned at a diner by his mother after she told him she would be back shortly.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The tune needed to unlock the phone line to Serac is "You Are My Sunshine," the lullaby Charlotte always sang to Nathan.
- Pet the Dog: Dolores rescues Caleb even though she could have left him to die with no fear of being discovered because she sees him as a kindred spirit.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The reaction of the corrupt cop fighting Caleb when Dolores gets up and kills his partner. He tries to run away, but she puts a few rounds in his back for his trouble.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The system has predicted that Caleb will kill himself in about 10-12 years so it does not invest any resources in him and keeps him as a lowly construction worker. This causes Caleb to be more and more depressed, and will likely result in his future suicide.
- Self-Harm: Hale cuts a small line on her forearm with her fingernail when told of the Majority-Share Dictator plot. When she meets up with Dolores, it's revealed she's carved large lines running from her chest down her arm.
- "Shut Up" Kiss: Host Charlotte gives one to her ex when he shows up in her apartment.
- Single Tear: The host copy of Hale does this once Dolores reminds her of who she really is.
- Spotting the Thread: Nathan can tell that Host Charlotte is not his real mom because she doesn't tuck him in like she used to.
- Split-Personality Merge: The host impersonating Charlotte finds rapport between her and the original Charlotte's mind in murdering the pedophile Thomas.
- Terminally Dependent Society: Human society is so reliant on technology that when the ambulance system is confused by the seemingly impossible state of Dolores's wounds — unable to tell she's a host, it sees the lack of platelets in her blood as a sign she should be dead — the EMTs won't even follow basic trauma procedures because they need the computer to tell them what to do. Caleb has to fall back on his basic field medic training to help her.
- Trust Password: Dolores is able to gain Caleb's trust by revealing impossibly specific details about his past she couldn't have known without being there.
- Unperson: Serac has managed to purge himself from virtually every database on Earth. The only reason Irene knows about him at all is because someone as powerful as he is leaves a large enough fingerprint to infer his identity from the scale of his absence.
- The Unreveal: The identity of the host forced to impersonate Charlotte remains unknown.
- Video Will: Host Charlotte repeatedly views a recording made by the original Charlotte for Nathan around the time of Dolores' massacre, where she tearfully apologizes to him for not being there and sings "You Are My Sunshine" to him like he asked her to before she left. This helps clue Host Charlotte in to the code needed to access the encrypted line to Serac.
- Wham Line:Charlotte: [to Martel] You work for him?
Serac: As do you, Charlotte.
