WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 3, Episode 3 of Westworld, "The Absence of Field," which aired Sunday on HBO.
Since the Season 3 premiere of Westworld, there's been an omnipresent force hanging over every interaction in the real world: the machine known as Rehoboam. The Rehoboam timeline circle preceded nearly every scene in the first episode. However, it was notably absent in Episode 2, "The Winter Line." The action was outside its jurisdiction, either in the park or in a virtual recreation of it and the circle only showed up once, an image on the wall when Maeve woke up in the "reality."
But in Episode 3, "The Absence of Field," Rehoboam was once again front and center. Oddly, the images of it monitoring the situation were once again absent, suggesting the action in this week's installment was also flying below its radar. But that doesn't mean it did weigh heavily on the minds of at least one character, as Dolores showed her poking and prodding had led to the machine spilling its secrets.
Moreover, those secrets might be enough for Rehoboam's real nightmare -- a world where both humans and hosts work together to overthrow its control over the world -- to come true.
SO WHAT, DOLORES?
Caleb's response to the reminder giant companies are recording his whole life for unknown purposes is one typically heard today. Facebook and Twitter record the images we post and the locations we log, and the stories we share and compile them into composites for advertisers to target. Apple Watches and Google's FitBits log our health data for giant billion-dollar companies to use as they please. So What, Dolores?
And yet, when Dolores spells out the detail in which his life is logged, Caleb is appalled. She pulls out a transcript of conversations recorded the day his mother's schizophrenia drove her to abandon him in a diner, every detail from the clothes he wore to the food he vomited all on record. It's one thing to assume companies are following the board outlines of our lives. But Rehoboam has gone one further, with every nitty-gritty detail of the past collected.
MARRIAGE NOT RECOMMENDED. CHILDREN NOT ALLOWED.
But it's not just the ugly details past that has in its records. By taking every action of each person on Earth and feeding all of them into a single processing unit, Incite's program can use algorithms to play out the most likely path for each life born into this world. But it doesn't just predict the future, it also then makes choices on who it deems will live lives worthy of promise. Those children it deems to have potential as promoted, given breaks, pushed forward. Those it deems not worth the time, energy, or money are pushed down.
In short, Rehoboam turns its predictions into self-fulfilling prophecies. If a person is deemed to have potential, they will magically find the roadblocks part for them to reach it, but someone like Caleb does not. His inability to land a good job isn't because he's not capable or smart or poised for it. Rehoboam has decided his mother's mental illness, his PTSD from the army and his general life trajectory means he'll commit suicide in a decade, so there's no reason for him to be hired, for him to have a relationship.
A MIRROR WORLD
But perhaps the creepiest part of all this is Dolores' passing note that the way Rehoboam creates its predictions. "The founders of this machine fed it everyone's raw data," Dolores tells Caleb, "in order to create a mirror world of this world." On the surface, that sounds like a reasonable way to create algorithms. But viewers have already seen Incite's founder Serac and his virtual recreations of the park, and there are already theories that believe Maeve is not in the real world.
Could Maeve be in Rehoboam? Are Caleb and Dolores in the real world, or Serac's mirror? The Westworld showrunners are known for their twists that question the nature of perception, time, and reality. So far, Season 3 seems relatively free of such games, but so did Seasons 1 and 2 in the early going. Fool me once...
Airing Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO, Westworld stars returning cast members Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Tessa Thompson, Luke Hemsworth, Simon Quarterman and Rodrigo Santoro, joined by series newcomers Aaron Paul, Vincent Cassel, Lena Waithe, Scott Mescudi, Marshawn Lynch, John Gallagher Jr., Michael Ealy and Tommy Flanagan.