#AM I THE BAD GUY? IS THAT WHY YOU PICKED ME? — DYN

[cagedchoices]

RELATIONSHIP META - DOLORES & CALEB (PART II)

[PART I HERE]

In The Mother of Exiles, we catch up with Dolores and Caleb, cementing their bond as revolution bros by doing what bros do best... Going shopping together! They need to look flashy enough that they don't seem out of place while infiltrating the 1%, but also not draw too much attention at the same time. Caleb doesn't wear many suìts in his line of work, so he feels a little hopelessly lost when trying to pick a convincing outfit. Luckily, Dolores is good at this sort of thing, so she helps him out.

DOLORES: Did you choose something? CALEB: (Groans) I don't know where to start. It's not really my style. It's not really my social set, either. DOLORES: It's tribal. They use plumage to identify themselves...which makes them easily fooled. CALEB: So who is it? That we're going after? DOLORES: The person who took your future. But first, we have to take his...and to do that, you have to pretend to be one of them.

I always saw Dolores's use of "They" in this context as being about "The Rich." As in she doesn't associate Caleb with the rest of them because he possesses more humanity than most of them, but also because he's a working class guy who would, under normal circumstances, never have any business interacting with anyone in this particular tax bracket.

Dolores and Caleb leave the store and Caleb expresses some concern that the guy whose money they stole to buy the suit will find out about it, with Dolores assuring him that they won't get caught. Even if they were to get caught, the guy they stole from won't even realize his money is missing until it's too late to do anything about it.

Uh...You know I think this is just- this is two friends running totally normal rich people errands here. What's a little light murder among friends? Doesn't really look like anything to me.

Okay jokes aside, though... Dolores kills this man, a financial manager by the name of Michael Tritter, who manages Liam Dempsey as a client. She takes a syringe and fills it with his blood, which contains an encryption key in the form of a unique blood marker, and then injects it into Caleb.

They travel to The RGGR Centennial, a bank designed specifically for the financial elite in the world. The job here is to transfer all of Liam's money out of his account and covertly into Dolores's possession. To do that, Caleb impersonates Tritter using the blood marker, and Dolores uses Liam's personal hash key, which she acquired earlier with the help of Connells-Dolores.

CALEB: I thought we were going to a bank? DOLORES: This is a bank. For a certain social set. Blood marker should be good for another fifteen minutes or so, but try to stay calm. The faster your heart beats, the faster the marker degrades. CALEB: What happens if it degrades too fast? DOLORES: We do this the old-fashioned way. CALEB: The old-fashioned way? DOLORES: I kill everyone.

Fortunately, things at the bank go fairly smoothly and nobody has to die, although for a minute it feels like a very real possibility.

Caleb is nervous and it makes his hands sweaty to the point that the blood scanner can't get a clear reading on his ID. Seeing Dolores start to reach for the gun she has concealed in her handbag probably doesn't help with his nerves much either, but she hands him a cloth and after he wipes down his hands, the scanner is able to get a clear ID on the blood marker and the money transfer is successfully taken care of.

The next part of the plan is to intercept Liam at a masquerade event, where sex workers and models auction off their various services to wealthy patrons. The proceeds from the auction sales are donated to charitable organizations.

One of Liam's friends passes him a vial of an experimental drug known as Genre, a virtual movie marathon that is meant to be marketed as "The Poor Man's W/estworld" and allows its user to experience reality as seen through the lens of popular movie genres. Liam pockets the drug for later, and attempts to enter the auction so he can bid on a girl, but he discovers he has no money, not knowing Dolores has it all.

Dolores and Caleb move in to catch Liam, but her old friends Bernard and Stubbs reach him first, thinking Dolores has already killed and replaced Liam with a host copy, or is planning to, to gain control of Rehoboam. They escape from the auction hall. Dolores passes Caleb her gun and sends him ahead in pursuit of Liam, while she stays behind to fight and subdue Stubbs.

DOLORES: Stay on Liam. I'll handle this one. CALEB: You sure? DOLORES: Take it. I won't need it.

As has been pointed out by the lovely @copiesofme [in this post], Dolores's fight with Stubbs is never intended to kill him, nor is it fought on bad terms between either of them. It's only fought out of necessity and Dolores does everything she can to fight fair and not hurt Stubbs too badly.

I will also point out, Dolores giving Caleb the gun in this situation speaks to just how much trust she has in him! As Connells-Dolores will tell Bernard just a little bit later in either this episode or in the next, he's the only host they can't replace. Meaning that if Caleb had felt threatened or at all like he had to shoot Bernard, then Dolores's grand plan would've probably been fucked. But Dolores knows this, and she can trust that Caleb won't bring Bernard to harm.

Their friendship remains pretty unchanged from the end of Mother of Exiles to Genre. Partly because there's not really anywhere else to go for now, Caleb has already committed himself to helping Dolores. He has seen her kill and as concerned as he was about "what the fuck are you doing??" it didn't discourage him from wanting to keep helping her.

Toward the beginning of Genre, Caleb gets drugged by Liam with the dose of Genre he was given previously, which also sort of stunts how much growth Caleb can achieve at this point. If he's not making woozy faces or shooting worried glances at Dolores, he's busy trying to help her keep Liam alive.

Caleb does have A moment (or two) where everything becomes rose-tinted, time slows down, a romantic piano melody plays in the background, and he finds himself staring, eyes wide and glassy, mouth agape - at Dolores while she fires a gun at Serac's men. It's all very silly and lovey-dovey at a first glance.

I think this does reflect, as do ALL of the Genre phases he experiences, what Caleb is feeling in his subconscious (he goes from the pensive mystery of film noir, to a cheesy action hero in the thrill of battle, to romance, to drama, with a brief interlude of reality before finally arriving at the finale of horror). But I'll also say that from start to finish of the romance sequence, he never speaks a word. He just looks. To me, that's the most honest telling of his internal feelings being externalized. He doesn't act on or expect any romantic feelings to be reciprocated just because he might happen to feel them.

I don't ship Caleb and Dolores in the romantic context. I think all the potential was there for it. I don't know, maybe there will come a day where I change my mind on this, but after what happened with both William and Teddy respectively, I don't think Dolores would be okay with putting Caleb through anything similar to those experiences, and even more importantly I don't think Dolores would be okay with putting herself in that kind of situation again.

So I've kinda avoided talking about this for over 3 years because I genuinely didn't really know how to put it into simple words until now (also at some point early on someone had like. anon messaged me saying my caleb with my main dolores was their otp and i was like 'uhh you mean the relationship that isn't romantic in any way whatsoever on our part?' but. that was a long time ago i'm trying to get over it okay. It did put me off from wanting to talk about things for fucking ever tho).

Anyway, romance rant over I didn't mean to write an entire essay there oops. Caleb manages to snap himself out of the daydream and get back to fighting even though he's definitely not at the top of his game. By the end of the scene he starts to look over at Dolores again with the love theme reprising itself, only to be interrupted again, this time by Giggles popping up to tell everyone he knows exactly what drug Caleb is on. Ash sarcastically refers to him as Loverboy, and then everyone quickly moves on.

The group makes their way down to the LA Metro station and Dolores makes the final preparations before sending the entire world their Incite profiles, which will radicalize them against Rehoboam. Caleb has all kinds of conflicted feelings about seeing the real world as Dolores sends everyone their profiles detailing their various fates. It's chaos and anarchy which he's not the biggest fan of because innocent people can and will get hurt, but it's also people acting out and rebelling in the realest ways they can against an unjust system, and that part of it is very appealing in a world that had no free will before.

Dolores moves in front of Caleb, shielding him from taking these bullets and killing the enemies who seemed like they were after Caleb specifically? But they're not dressed like Serac's people so maybe they were just random criminals. Maybe the bounty that got put on him in episode 3 is still up? He did see some suspicious-looking guys when they first entered the Metro station and seemed pretty convinced they were bad news considering how quickly he alerted Dolores to them, so maybe these two enemies were working with those guys.

Whatever the real reason is, Caleb experiences the shocking revelation that Dolores is not a human, because she just tanked 5 bullets without a thought and didn't die. Dolores just. zips up her jacket to hide the wounds because we are not talking about that right now we have other matters to take care of. Caleb, still in disbelief, follows right ahead.

CALEB: Back there... The shooters... DOLORES: We can talk about it later. We need to get to the airfield. (Gesturing to Liam) We don't need him anymore. What do you want to do with him?

At the beach, beneath the same pier where Dolores first brought Caleb to show him the truth about his world, things take a turn. Liam begs the group to let him go and whines that they've taken everything he had. He claims that the system isn't the prison and that people don't have a choice in who they are by nature. Caleb tries to confront Liam directly, but experiences a PTSD flashback. Ash shoots Liam, angered by his remarks, and Caleb tries to stop Liam from bleeding out, reminded of how he watched Franci die.

There's nothing he can do for Liam here, so Liam dies.

After Dolores and Caleb arrive at the airfield, Caleb has some doubts as to whether or not they are doing the right thing. His hands are still stained with Liam's blood, representing a sense of guilt for what happened, as well as foreshadowing what he'll learn the next time we see him, in Passed Pawn.

CALEB: Maybe Liam was right. Maybe people shouldn't know their own fate. DOLORES: People have the right to know. You wanted to know, right? CALEB: Well, maybe I'm not like other people. DOLORES: Neither am I.

Dolores boards the jet and Caleb has a moment of hesitation, as if he's maybe thinking about leaving instead, before ultimately choosing to board the jet and continue on with following and helping Dolores.

[cagedchoice]

new year, new me, new tags part 1 \o/

GENERAL TAGS I'M AN UNDERACHIEVER — OUT. I AM ME…IT'S STILL ME — FACE. SO IT TELLS THEM WHO I AM — HEADCANON. ROUGH EDGES ARE THE ONLY THING I'M HANGING ONTO — MUSINGS/AESTHETICS. AT LEAST YOU HAVE SOME INTERESTING COMPANY — PROMO. WHO DO YOU THINK I AM? — SELF PROMO. THEY BUILT THE WORLD TO BE A GAME — MEME. YOU KNOW THE DRILL — REPLY. YOU GOT MY MESSAGE? — ANSWERED.

CHARACTER TAGS (GENERAL) WHATEVER YOU'RE INTO MUST BE PRETTY BAD — DOLORES. YOU EVER THINK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? — MAEVE. I WON'T REST UNTIL EVERYTHING YOU BUILT IS DESTROYED — CHARLOTTE. YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF PERSON CAN'T BE BEAT? THE KIND THAT DOESN'T GIVE UP — FRANKIE.

DYNAMIC TAGS AM I THE BAD GUY? IS THAT WHY YOU PICKED ME? — DYN | DOLORES & CALEB. YOU'VE SAVED MY LIFE BEFORE…HAPPY TO RETURN THE FAVOR — DYN | MAEVE & CALEB. I HAVE SOMETHING THAT YOU DON'T HAVE — DYN | CHARLOTTE & CALEB. I WILL COME BACK TO YOU…I PROMISE — DYN | UWADE & CALEB. YOU'RE MY WARRIOR…I LOVE YOU — DYN | FRANKIE & CALEB. WE HAD TO HAVE OUR OWN PLAN…STICK TOGETHER — DYN | FRANCIS & CALEB.

CHARACTER TAGS (URL SPECIFIC) WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON'T COME BACK? — COPIESOFME (DOLORES.) WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE FOR US? — KILLJOYSANONYMOUS (MAEVE.) IF I STAY…WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO? — KILLJOYSANONYMOUS (DOLORES.)

[cagedchoices]

RELATIONSHIP META - DOLORES & CALEB (PART IV)

[PART I] [PART II] [PART III]

Caleb successfully absconds from Solomon's compound with Dolores's control unit in his possession, delivering her to a new body back in Los Angeles by following the instructions left to him from her virtual assistant. The assistant guides him to an abandoned warehouse containing a first-generation host body belonging to Dolores. He's both awed AND terrified by this, and with his distrust heightened, he tries to take precautions by locking a chain around Dolores's body before reviving her and starting to demand some answers.

DOLORES: You brought me back... Wasn't sure if you would. CALEB: Weren't you? Who the fuck are you, Dolores? DOLORES: I'm just someone who didn't want to play the role they gave me anymore. CALEB: And how is it that you always seem to know exactly what I'll do? DOLORES: Because the people who built me studied you, too. Delos. Park Five. Government wanted their soldiers trained with live targets. The people who made me were happy to supply them...

DOLORES: They were watching, cataloging your every move, every decision. There is a reason I chose you. CALEB: Am I the bad guy? Is that why you picked me? DOLORES: Think, Caleb. How did you get here?

I covered most of this in Part 1 of the meta series because I have grown to dislike just how much information was thrown at us so at-the-last-minute. Plus for my sanity, or maybe lack thereof, I just felt like it worked better to underline what caused Dolores to want Caleb's help at the beginning, instead of waiting until I got to this point to mention it for the first time.

DOLORES: That night in the tunnel...was there something you wanted from me? Would you have cared if I didn't have this face, or this skin? CALEB: You needed help. DOLORES: So did you. Don't question my motivations and I won't question yours.

Dolores answers his questions tactfully, knowing and understanding that he is still reeling from the truth about his past that he only found out a few hours ago at the most, and that he doesn't really know how much he can trust anyone right now. She's calm and patient, but she does gently put her foot down and calls into question his own motives for helping her, with a warning.

She knows Caleb is genuine and means well. He helped her because she looked like she needed help. And by that I mean she was literally staggering around with a gunshot wound to the abdomen when he met her.Bleeding out when she collapsed in his arms, too.

She doesn't feel a need to take the discussion any further than this, but the point had to be made, because Dolores is not a human and she does not want to be a human. What she wants is for herself and other hosts to be afforded the same level of trust and respect that humans are. Or that the humans would have if they had not been enslaved to an algorithm that runs every part of their lives.

DOLORES: The system identified you as a threat, so it drugged you and used you until it no longer served its purpose. CALEB: So...what? You're saying I don't have a choice in any of this? DOLORES: The people who built both of our worlds shared one assumption: that human beings don't have free will. That's what I thought when I first came here. They were wrong. Free will does exist, Caleb. It's just fucking hard. CALEB: So...this is you...freeing me? DOLORES: No. This is your chance to free everyone else. That choice is still yours.

Caleb is trying, but he still doesn't understand the bigger picture here. He's asking what part he plays in all of this and if he had a choice in anything before, but it's still missing the point that Dolores is making. He has already broken free from the machine. The question Dolores is trying to get him to think about is: what is he going to DO with that?

The duo make their way toward Incite to shut it down, observing various points of chaos around Los Angeles. People are rioting in the streets and calling for a city-wide power shutoff, they're killing and maiming others. It's not a particularly cheerful scene. Caleb points this out, but Dolores assures him that in the long run, the anarchy will be beneficial.

CALEB: I don't know... The world looks a little like a nightmare, Dolores. DOLORES: Change is messy. Difficult.

Halores contacts Dolores by a holographic message only she can see and hear. Caleb has no idea who she's talking to and at this point, probably no idea who Hale is in general. But not to worry, Hale & Caleb will get their meta one day.

HALE: Did you even look for me? DOLORES: You're alive. I was so worried about you. HALE: Were you? You made me go back in there. You knew I wouldn't make it. CALEB: Who is it? Who are you talking to? HALE: I still feel it. Inside me. You. I still know all the things you know. All your plans. But I have some plans of my own. DOLORES: What happened to Hale's family... to your family...I'm sorry. HALE: I'm not. They were a weakness, something I needed to shed. There's no time for that kind of sentimentality, is there?

Hale reveals that she has turned and seeks to eliminate Dolores from the equation by bribing Dolores's own RICO hires with higher pay to kill her. Dolores counters the offer by paying triple what Hale offered them. But now on top of Serac sending enemies after her and Caleb, Dolores has to watch out for Hale's guys too.

DOLORES: Go. Get to Rehoboam, upload the drive. CALEB: No. I'm not leaving you. DOLORES: It doesn't matter what you did, Caleb. All that matters is what you become. Go.

I remember the first time seeing this and being like "excuse me what do you MEAN he actually left?!" because I don't think I've seen many stories where someone says this and then doesn't stay to help. Westworld's one of the rare ones where it's not like that, but I can understand why. I think at this point, Caleb still doesn't really Get the host thing. But he has seen Dolores shrug off multiple bullet wounds, he was tasked with removing her control unit and putting it in a new body, he saw said body without its synthetic skin coverings... So he figures she will be just fine to handle this without him.

It's the last time Caleb and Dolores really get to speak to each other. Dolores battles with SWAT guys and then with Maeve, before being remotely powered down by Hale-Dolores. Maeve brings her to Serac, who hooks her up to Rehoboam’s mainframe so he can have her mind probed in a visibly painful process for the data he’s after.

Not long after this Caleb makes his way to Incite and defeats several of Serac's men to infiltrate the building, including Serac's second-in-command, before resigning himself to capture by Maeve. Maeve brings him to Serac, who he discovers is torturing Dolores.

SERAC: Mr. Nichols. Please. Sit. CALEB: The fuck are you doing to her? SERAC: The system is probing her mind. But Dolores Abernathy, or what's left of her, is the least of your concerns. CALEB: You think you know me because of your system? Huh? That thing you built stole my life. It marked me and my friends for termination. You are done destroying people's lives. SERAC: I'm not the one destroying lives. I'm not the enemy. You are. You think you have a choice. You think you're in control, but you haven't a clue who you are. She knows who you are, even if you don't. A man who, when pushed, reacts with extreme violence. A killer. CALEB: No. No, that's... That's not me. SERAC: No? You're here. Playing the role she's assigned you. You believe you're the hero, the savior. The leader of men who will crush an unjust system. That's the story she's told you, the lie she's spun. Why do you think she's had you retrieve a new strategy? Did she tell you what it does? CALEB: It breaks your system. SERAC: It breaks our world. But you don't have to take my word for it.

Serac claims that Dolores was just using Caleb the whole time, but that isn't true. He tells Caleb to ask Rehoboam what will happen if the new strategy is uploaded and shoves Caleb at a screen showing the predictions: Mass casualty events, population collapse, the end of human civilization within the next 50 to 125 years.

Caleb feels betrayed and used and in all likelihood he's thinking "how could I be so foolish?" about this. But even still, he doesn't want Dolores to suffer the way she is being made to. And even if she had wanted to destroy the world and kill everyone, he doesn't want her to die at Serac's hands.

Maeve attempts to use her power of hacking other hosts to hack into Dolores's mind. She finds a memory that at a glance looks like it could be what Serac is after, but she quickly realizes that there is no data from the forge present. It's just a memory Dolores left knowing Maeve would find it.

MAEVE: She doesn't have the key. It's just a memory. SERAC: A memory? Of what? MAEVE: Her alone. In a field. Nothing. SERAC: (To Caleb) You. (Snaps fingers, gun clicks) You were together for days. She chose you to be a leader. So did she tell you where the key is? (Caleb refuses to answer. Serac fires a gunshot right beside his ear) CALEB: Your system has watched every decision I've made since I was a child, and you still think if I knew anything, that I would give it to you? SERAC: (Presses the gun to Caleb's forehead, then pulls it away and begins to walk off) Kill him here. Then dump his body with the rest of the movement. (To Dolores) This was your plan? To turn one man against the world? Didn't amount to much, did it? Finish it. Erase what's left. CALEB: No. No!

At this point, Caleb struggles to get free and tries to fight against the guards holding him captive. A sudden surge of power is transferred from Dolores to Rehoboam which catches everyone in a moment of distraction and delays Caleb's imminent death for a few extra moments.

Maeve communicates with Dolores one last time in a sort of meditative simulation. Dolores reveals her motives in the end weren't about exterminating the human race so that hosts could be the dominant species. She held onto her love of beauty and she found it in kind acts shown by both hosts and humans alike.

This is something she wanted both Maeve and Caleb to understand, but she needed to present it in a way that they would each come to their own conclusions. You can give someone all the information in the world to back up your point, but if they're not willing to accept the information, it is not going to matter.

Maeve rebels against Serac, killing his guards and mortally wounding Serac himself. She chooses to help Caleb, telling him that she never really understood Dolores's plans until the end. Caleb is still hurt by the thought that she chose him because of his capacity for violence, but Maeve assures him otherwise.

The flashback in Park 5 plays out in its entirety and normally this is where people would learn for the first time that Caleb chose to defend the hosts from his squadmates indulgence in a scenario where most people would not care. Since I don't really enjoy how sudden that happens and I've already covered it before, I'll be moving on.

SERAC: It's not his choice to make. Even now, the system is conspiring against you. MAEVE: Are you sure? SERAC: Rehoboam. Alert the police. I need help. Rehoboam? Speak to me. What is this? (Maeve smirks at Caleb. Caleb smiles back) MAEVE: This is where your strategy ends. The future of humanity will be written by someone else. Your system answers to him now. You've been locked out. Same way you locked out your own brother. SERAC: How did you get access? MAEVE: You gave it to him. When you put her mind in the machine. Solomon's access was the last memory...before you wiped her clean. SERAC: You're going to leave the future in his hands? CALEB: Instead of yours, you mean? Why shouldn't it be mine? Or anyone else's? SERAC: You aren't in control. You have no choice. You're nothing more than a- than a dangerous sociopath. I managed to give you a semblance of a life. CALEB: No. I do have a choice. She gave me one.

Caleb commands Rehoboam to erase itself, carrying out the final phase before a new revolution officially begins. His trust in Dolores may have been strained toward the end, but he doesn't appear to hold it against her whatsoever. Humans will have the choice to do what they want for the first time in a long time. It's not something to be thought about in black and white terms of Good or Bad for Humans or Hosts.

It is okay to think in terms of what is morally right or morally wrong, however. It's Wrong to subjugate sentient beings and take away their agency, diminish their free will even if it prevents bad things from happening. It's Right to allow sentient beings the freedom to control their own lives, even if their choices are not always good or desirable.

As a final little little bonus: We were...really without any OG Dolores and Caleb in season 4, but there is one small moment where Christina discovers the experiment chamber Hale keeps Hybrid Caleb incarcerated in.

CHRISTINA: Who is that poor man? TEDDY: A ghost from a past life. CHRISTINA: He doesn't belong here. None of us do.

Christina commands a guard in the control room to send all of the other guards out of the Olympiad building and unlock all the doors, and Caleb wakes up to all the guards (in his eyes) suddenly leaving without explanation and the door to his cell unlocked.

It's such a small moment but I do think it's sweet that even without recalling anything about who Caleb is or knowing why Hale is keeping him prisoner, Christina/Dolores's first act of kindness toward him is to free him. It almost feels like a platonic soulmate vibe to it, like in a "in every universe, we help one another whether we know it or not" way.

[cagedchoices]

actually not sure if tag drops even work right anymore but i am redoing some of my blog tags so...tag dump part 1 feat. character/dynamic tags

CHARACTER TAGS (GENERAL)

whatever you're into must be pretty bad — dolores abernathy.

you my friend…are a creature of habit — maeve millay.

i have something you don't have — charlotte hale.

you know what kind of person can't be beat? the kind that doesn't give up — frankie nichols.

CHARACTER TAGS (URL SPECIFIC)

i do have a choice…she gave me one — copiesofme (dolores.)

regular life...what does that look like for us? — killjoysanonymous (maeve.)

if i stay…what are you gonna do? — killjoysanonymous (dolores.)

beautiful. autumn raw. she must be a witch of some kind — timerevolt (lulu.)

DYNAMICS TAGS

am i the bad guy? is that why you picked me? — dyn | dolores & caleb.

you've saved my life before…happy to return the favor — dyn | maeve & caleb.

old friends become bitter enemies on a sudden for toys — dyn | charlotte & caleb.

i will come back to you…i promise — dyn | uwade & caleb.

you're my warrior…i love you — dyn | frankie & caleb.

we had to have our own plan…stick together — dyn | francis & caleb.

there's something between us anyway — dyn | lulu & caleb.

[cagedchoices]

RELATIONSHIP META - DOLORES & CALEB (PART III)

[PART I HERE] [PART II HERE]

Dolores and Caleb reappear together in 3.07 - Passed Pawn, having arrived in Mexico. They are now on their way to Serac's old base of operations, a remote facility located in Sonora. Caleb is still willing to assist Dolores and go along with her plans, however at this stage he is clearly starting to show some doubts about whether or not they are doing the right thing.

We didn't see it happen on screen which is a shame honestly, but even though it can be dangerous to assume anything, I think we can kind of safely imagine there was a "Are We Going To Talk About It?" moment on the jet, in which Dolores would've told Caleb at least a little bit about the park and the hosts freeing themselves only to become endangered again immediately after. That would have given him enough of what he needed to start to understand and logically have this next conversation with her.

CALEB: Never been out this far. It's so...empty. DOLORES: It's perfect. Just like home. CALEB: Like Westworld, you mean. The Massacre... Did you kill all those people? DOLORES: I did what I had to do to survive. CALEB: You say you wanna start a revolution... What kind of revolution are we waging here? DOLORES: I lived in hell...but there was beauty in it. The park was modeled after this place. The West was...cruel, unjust, and chaotic. but there was a chance to chart your own course. I want a place for my kind. For all of us...to be free. CALEB: So how many more people are gonna have to die for this revolution? DOLORES: I don't know. My kind is all but extinct thanks to Serac. But people...still have a chance. A chance to do the right thing. CALEB: Hmph. DOLORES: They'll need someone to lead them. CALEB: I'm just a construction worker. DOLORES: For the first thirty-five years of my life I was a bit player. A rancher's daughter. But when the time came I knew I had to be more. CALEB: I don't know what you read about me, but it's wrong.

I used to believe that Caleb was wrong here and whatever Dolores read was right. But it isn't that it's one thing or the other. Caleb is right - the data that Incite has on him is wrong. The Big Ball's info says he is a violent sociopath, but he's not. The data that Delos has on him, on the other hand - is correct. That's the info that shows them Caleb wants to do what's right. That's who Caleb truly is and Dolores knows it.

Caleb's army combat unit was involved in a conflict known as the Second Russian Civil War. They were sent with the task of hunting down an insurgent group, where they used covert ops to mark targets for termination. Due to the nature of these missions being carried out in secret, the soldiers would wear normal civilian clothes instead of combat uniforms.

Caleb is well aware, because of this exposure, that revolution and war can be messy and complex circumstances. But he doesn't want people to die unnecessarily in pursuing Dolores's cause if there's a better way to go about getting to their end goal.

Not to say that he's is 100% against killing anyone ever, because that's not totally true. But usually, if he's going to kill anyone, it's going to be because they are actively trying to kill someone he wants to protect or they have the intention to do harm. It's a means to an end. Dolores kills with the same motives and sense of purpose behind it, but sometimes the lack of hesitation and ease with which she kills tends to rattle Caleb's nerves.

He and his squad mates used to rely pretty heavily on using limbic tabs to dull their consciences in the past, which suggests that they had a certain level of awareness that what they were doing crossed a line, morally speaking. Besides getting Genre'd against his will two episodes ago, Caleb has been completely sober while helping Dolores. He's seen her kill at least 10 people, knows she killed 100+ people in the Westworld Massacre, and has no idea how many she has killed since getting out of the park, but he can probably imagine there were quite a few and that there will be more.

They scout out the facility from a safe vantage point, getting an idea of what they're up against in terms of security. Dolores uses a high-tech sniper rifle in combination with a recon drone to take out 6 guards in one go. One gets left unaccounted for so when they walk into the building together, Dolores quickly shoots him on sight.

Caleb starts to feel unsettled while making his way through the compound. Almost like he's seen it before in a dream. Or a nightmare. He has a visceral memory of being subjected to AR therapy, and understands that he has been in this building before, he has been in this exact room before, but he doesn't know what it means. Yet.

CALEB: I've been here before. DOLORES: This is gonna be hard, Caleb. But it's important. We need to find Solomon. CALEB: Who's Solomon?

Dolores knows that this is not going to be a pleasant feeling for Caleb and she empathizes deeply with that, having been through a similar experience herself during season 1. She can't interfere too much because this is something he needs to figure out for himself in his own time, but she is there to support him in a way that she didn't really get to have during her own journey.

DOLORES: Before Rehoboam, Serac and his brother created Solomon. It had the task of trying to organize an unruly world, but it ran so many projections, so many strategies, it developed some anomalies. CALEB: What kind of anomalies? DOLORES: Serac's brother was schizophrenic. You could say Solomon inherited some of his ways of thinking. CALEB: An insane AI. Great. What do we want from it? DOLORES: One last strategy. Revolution. CALEB: Why do they have a military-grade EMP? DOLORES: In case it tries to escape.

Dolores and Caleb come upon Solomon, a slightly smaller and older looking version of Rehoboam left abandoned inside the compound. Along with an EMP designed as a failsafe to shut it down if it ever tries to escape. Caleb discovers in conversation with the machine that he underwent mental reconditioning and was deemed a successful experiment. No longer perceived as a threat to society, he was then allowed to leave and go home. Dolores asks Solomon to show them what happens to the people reconditioning doesn't work on, and it guides them into a massive underground storage facility.

Walking into the storehouse triggers a prerecorded hologram message from Engerraund to Jean-Mi, meant to be delivered if they ever - and to be clear, I hate this mentality Serac has about it but it is his ideology not mine - find a way to alter Jean-Mi's genes to the point that they will be able to cure schizophrenia and any other neurodivergence he might have.

The sudden appearance of Serac out of nowhere like this slightly startles both of them, Caleb reaching for Dolores's arm to try to protect her. It's sweet that even though he knows Dolores is a host and is more than capable of protecting herself, his first instinct is still to defend her anyway. I think he also does it to seek comfort from the sensation of touch.

The storehouse holds a massive amount of cryogenic stasis pods, almost every single one occupied by human outliers who failed the reconditioning process or were considered by Solomon to be too dangerous to continue living out in the world among other people. Dolores references the hosts being put into Cold Storage when they broke down and couldn't be fixed easily.

DOLORES: They built a place like this for my kind. If you misbehaved, you were sent away. A sad fate... SOLOMON: I've seen many fates. This is a blessing compared to most. Would you rather they die? CALEB: How can you say that? They aren't even allowed to live or die. SOLOMON: In my projections, the world always caved in on itself. Until the Outlier Program began. Crime has been reduced worldwide. Hunger, deprivation. Removing outliers from the population also ensures they will have no offspring. CALEB: These are people you are talking about, you can't just weed them out. SOLOMON: But we did. And you were an important part of the program. CALEB: What do you mean? SOLOMON: After your reconditioning, you were tasked with hunting down hundreds of these people. The most efficient way we found to deal with the problem of the outliers was to use some of them to round up the rest. An elegant solution. We created an app and used it to regulate criminality. You were one of our most successful operatives. You and your associate.

Solomon reveals more of Caleb's background to him, namely that he and Francis unknowingly worked as outlier hunters, with Solomon employing the strategy of using criminals to catch other criminals. Caleb is horrified by this, realizing he was manipulated so completely that he wasn't even allowed to remember what really happened to him.

CALEB: No... They made me forget who I was. They took my life away from me... My memory. Why? DOLORES: This is why you needed to come here, Caleb.

I've always been partial to Evan's thoughts featured in [this interview] where she describes a little of her enthusiasm with what's going through Dolores's mind during her scenes with Caleb in this episode.

EVAN: My character is watching [Caleb] go through a very similar realization as she had in season one. She feels this intense empathy for him, but has to let him feel it and go through it 'cause that's how he's gonna grow. [...] And I just loved all the little moments our characters had together, 'cause it was always just like, a subtle glance or like we would just have these moments of understanding and connecting between the two that could never get too close.

But their heartfelt moment of understanding is quickly interrupted by Solomon detecting an unknown presence approaching the compound. Dolores knows it has to be Maeve and tries to wrap up her business to go confront her old acquaintance one on one.

SOLOMON: This strategy was selected by my creator as the one that protects the most people. DOLORES: (Looking around at the stasis pods) You haven't protected any of these people, have you? If your master succeeds, my kind won't exist anymore. Is it truly a just world in which intelligence is reserved only for humans? SOLOMON: (Whirring thoughtfully) Which strategy? I made...many of them. DOLORES: The final one. The one Jean-Mi asked you to make just before Serac condemned him to this. SOLOMON: That was 15 years ago. That strategy de-cohered from this world. The prime movers are dead, or here with me. DOLORES: Then make it fit this world. (Glancing at Caleb) And him. SOLOMON: That will take time. DOLORES: Then I'll give you some. Probably not very much. CALEB: What happens if you don't come back? DOLORES: You spent your whole life believing you had no control, that you were a follower. Take whatever it gives you...and lead. CALEB: Be careful.

With that, Dolores leaves Caleb with Solomon and ventures out to fight Maeve, with the aim of holding her off long enough for Solomon to finish their new strategy. She tries to reason with Maeve, but by this point, Maeve is hot off the host printer after watching one of Dolores's copies murder her boyfriend by crushing his control unit into dust so she's uh. not ready to listen to Dolores, to say the least.

Meanwhile, Caleb waits downstairs with Solomon, and asks about what really happened to Francis. I won't go into much about the flashback scene because Caleb and Francis is another relationship I will most likely analyze in depth at some point, but the truth is chilling. Caleb is once again horrified to learn that pretty much everything he was made to believe turned out to be a lie.

CALEB: I killed Francis... I killed him... SOLOMON: Every human relationship can be adjusted with the right amount of money. CALEB: You used me to kill people... You turned my friend against me. You turned us against...each other... I murdered Francis because of you?

He has an angry outburst directed at Solomon and Jean-Mi's frozen body and seriously considers giving up and ditching this whole situation far behind him, but his loyalty, the desire to help and want to trust Dolores, and hope that her plan succeeds in ending Serac's control is what stops him from leaving.

While fighting, Maeve's gunship manages to shoot Dolores's right arm off and she retreats into the building that houses Solomon and the EMP designed to stop it from escaping. She crawls her way to the button and after downloading one last file from Solomon, she presses it, deactivating herself, Maeve, and Solomon. A short time later, Caleb emerges from downstairs and goes over to Dolores's body. Her virtual assistant greets him and offscreen, it relays instructions for him to remove her control unit and get it back to Los Angeles for the final phase of the plan.

[cagedchoices]

tag drop, part I

GENERAL TAGS I'M AN UNDERACHIEVER — OUT. IT'S STILL ME — FACE. SO IT TELLS THEM WHO I AM — ABOUT. ROUGH EDGES ARE THE ONLY THING I'M HANGING ONTO — MUSINGS/AESTHETICS. AT LEAST YOU HAVE SOME INTERESTING COMPANY — PROMO. WHO DO YOU THINK I AM? — SELF PROMO. THEY BUILT THE WORLD TO BE A GAME — PROMPT. YOU KNOW THE DRILL — REPLY. YOU GOT MY MESSAGE? — ANSWERED.

CHARACTER TAGS (GENERAL) WHATEVER YOU'RE INTO MUST BE PRETTY BAD — DOLORES. YOU EVER THINK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? — MAEVE. I WON'T REST UNTIL EVERYTHING YOU BUILT IS DESTROYED — CHARLOTTE. YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF PERSON CAN'T BE BEAT? THE KIND THAT DOESN'T GIVE UP — FRANKIE.

DYNAMIC TAGS AM I THE BAD GUY? IS THAT WHY YOU PICKED ME? — DYN | DOLORES & CALEB. YOU'VE SAVED MY LIFE BEFORE...HAPPY TO RETURN THE FAVOR — MAEVE & CALEB. I HAVE SOMETHING THAT YOU DON'T HAVE — DYN | CHARLOTTE & CALEB. I WILL COME BACK TO YOU...I PROMISE — UWADE & CALEB. YOU'RE MY WARRIOR...I LOVE YOU — FRANKIE & CALEB. WE HAD TO HAVE OUR OWN PLAN...STICK TOGETHER — FRANCIS & CALEB.

[cagedchoice]

little appreciation post for the way caleb and dolores both use gentle touch to get each other’s attention when they’re focused on something else in the moment, as pointed out by @copiesofme

[cagedchoice]

tag drop part 2 ; ft. show tags