The following contains spoilers for Westworld Season 4, Episode 4, “Generation Loss,” which aired Sunday, July 17th on HBO.
Westworld‘s Charlotte — aka Halores, the evil Dolores — isn’t hiding her disdain for mankind during Season 4 of the HBO series. She wants humanity to suffer for torturing bots like her, and when Serac’s Rehoboam fell, she had the window of opportunity she needed to make that happen. Charlotte took control of Delos and began making robots/hosts of her own, plotting a takeover that the fourth season has shown in full swing.
Charlotte has been using William 2.0 (also known as The Man in Black) to take out society’s elites and politicians before deploying hosts to replace them. She’s also been engineering flies to take control of humans. Bernard, Maeve and Caleb have been working tirelessly to stop her. However, Season 4, Episode 4 “Generation Loss” handed Charlotte a significant victory through a clever misdirection in the narrative.
Charlotte gained the upper hand after her flies infected Caleb and took control of his mind. Luckily for him, Maeve defeated William down and shut down the sonic emitter that was controlling Charlotte’s human pawns, allowing Caleb to return to himself. But the resulting fracas accidentally freed more mind-controlling flies, which were dispersed out into the “Golden Age,” also known as the Mob World the heroes had infiltrated.
When Caleb and Maeve tried to sneak Charlotte out of the park, Maeve was killed — and Westworld revealed that the escape was all in Caleb’s mind. He’d died as well in the skirmish, and everything after that was a false memory Charlotte engineered to try to get information about the rebels. Charlotte had actually been in power for 23 years, and since Caleb and Maeve’s failed attempt to stop her, had made America her playground.
The revelation that Charlotte now dominated society made sent Caleb mad and caused the bot to run outside, only for Charlotte to use the sonic emitter to stop the entire crowd. The show then made clear that Olympiad Entertainment, where Dolores was working as a video game writer, was Charlotte’s new company. This reveal made perfect sense; the gaming technology there was a great way to latch onto humans and eventually control them.
At the end of “Generation Loss,” Caleb seemed resigned to his fate in this prison as he stared at Charlotte’s giant tower, which was emitting signals to control humanity. But there’s a glimmer of hope for the resistance because in this same episode, Bernard returned from the Sublime to reboot Maeve after digging her body up in the desert. He and his new ally — who could be Caleb’s daughter — could liberate Caleb.
Elsewhere in Westworld, Teddy’s working on getting Dolores back into play. But with the numbers in Charlotte’s army and the fact almost all of society’s working for her, the odds aren’t in the good guys’ favor. Bernard is going to have to hope Maeve can be revamped because as it stands, Charlotte’s macabre utopia looks unbreakable.
Westworld airs Sundays at 9:00 p.m. on HBO.