#then the next thing u know it's 2am i have 8 tabs of name meanings and old testament studies open and i'm rambling

[cagedchoices]

NAME ETYMOLOGY

Originating from the Hebrew word כֶּלֶב (kelev), Caleb is a name which loosely translated means "dog, dogged, faithful, or loyal." Reportedly, an alternative translation connects it to the Hebrew form כָּל (kal) and לֵב (lev), meaning "whole-hearted."

In the Old Testament, Caleb is the name of one of the 12 spies Moses sent to scout ahead into the land of Canaan before the Israelites were meant to enter. Of the 12 spies, 10 called to abort the mission, believing that taking the land would be impossible, for the Canaanites were many and strong and the Israelites were too weak to fight. Caleb and Joshua were the only two spies who believed the land could be conquered, having faith in God would allow them to prevail in their mission. The nonbelieving generation would get lost and perish in the desert wilderness for their lack of faith, and Caleb and Joshua alone would survive to enter the Promised Land.

Also interesting to note is that Caleb was chosen to represent the tribe of Judah, which would later become known as the line of kings. Rehoboam succeeded his father Solomon as the king of Israel, but his subjects eventually revolted against him because of high taxes. This led to the divison of the kingdom into Israel and Judah, with Rehoboam ruling over Judah.

Nichols, on the other hand, is a shortened version of Nicholas, a Medieval English form of the Greek name Νικόλαος (Nikolaos), meaning "to conquer" or "victory of the people." Derived from the Greek νίκη (nike) "victory" and λαός (laos) "people."

Caleb Nichols is first introduced to us with a particularly ambiguous background, one that led to a whole lot of people anticipating that he was secretly a robot all along. While I didn't agree with this, I did wonder, especially after looking into the etymology of his first and last name, if he would become a host later on, or have something to do with the Sublime.

The hosts who made it into this virtual world at the end of Westworld Season 2 were promised safety and freedom apart from humanity, and were not unlike the Israelites in the Exodus. Most of the ones who did not make it into the Sublime were permanently decommissioned and later destroyed, with only a select few being spared.

This is also paralleled with the concept of human outliers in season 3. Many outliers are killed outright, others are placed in cryogenic storage, and a select handful are successfully brainwashed and reconditioned to the point that they are allowed to reintegrate into society to a certain degree. Caleb, I think, serves as someone who was meant to potentially bridge these two worlds.

Instead of his existence ending at the moment he died, he gets brought back again and again as part of this immortality project. The reason we're given is that Charlotte-Dolores is bored and Caleb is the closest thing she has to a real adversary anymore and she is both repulsed by and yet so fascinated, even obsessed with him. He was the first human able to fully resist and fight off her mind control, and even though she has long since conquered the entire world, the answer to the question of "how did he do that?" still plagued her enough to want to bring him back close to 300 times over.

He doesn't have unwavering faith in a benevolent deity, but he does have unwavering faith and loyalty in love, in hope, in his family.