Sumith Prasad
When William AKA the Man in Black sends men to kill Maeve Millay and Caleb Nichols in HBO’s science-fiction series ‘Westworld’ season 4, the duo set out to find William and put an end to the predicament. Their courage takes them to the new Delos park, where they encounter Charlotte Hale and the ways she conceives to annihilate the human species. The encounter paves the way for severe life-altering consequences as Caleb starts to question his own existence. Since the fourth episode of the season leaves ambiguities regarding Caleb, let us try to decode the same! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Is Caleb a Human or Host?
Ever since Caleb Nichols’ introduction in the third season, the viewers had been wondering whether he is a human or a host. Eventually, it gets revealed that Caleb is indeed a human. The fourth season begins with the human Caleb building a family with Uwade and Frankie, until William, most likely under Hale’s command, moves forward with attempting to kill him. He teams up with Maeve once again to not let William affect his family, only to walk into the dangers Hale has planned for him. Whether it be Hale’s flies, parasites, or humans who get controlled by her sounding device, they all end up targeting Caleb.
Caleb gets badly hurt and stabbed. Still, he tries to escape from the park with Maeve by taking Hale with them. He contacts his peers and shares his location so that they can come and pick him up and Hale. However, Caleb doesn’t make it out of the park alive since he dies the day he tries to escape from the park with Hale. She creates Caleb’s host version and incorporates the human version’s memory into it so that he can relive the last moments of the latter. Caleb’s meeting with Hale in an office room in Olympiad Entertainment happens twenty-three years after the death of Caleb’s human version, making it clear that the current Caleb is nothing but a host.
Even though Hale makes Caleb’s host version, she does it differently. Hale makes the host versions of Clementine Pennyfeather and the Vice President by killing their original versions to enroll them into her Host army. However, Caleb’s host version isn’t another soldier. She makes the version to do justice to his human version so that he can realize the terrors of being a slave of someone like Hosts were of humans. Hale wants Caleb to feel trapped in his existence as a host as she sees him as a representative of the human species. She doesn’t even hesitate to feed off Caleb’s fears and terrors.
As far as Hale is concerned, Caleb is the savior of the human species since he destroys Rehoboam. As she sets out to annihilate what Caleb has saved, she wants him to witness his potential failure. Hale doesn’t want to leave Caleb to death as she longs for him to witness the true potency of the Hosts over humanity. Caleb or at least his host version realizes that Hale is conquering the world using her parasites, controlling every action of the human beings. He is only capable of encountering Hale’s victories helplessly as he becomes her toy. Hale knows that the courageous Caleb’s helplessness is the best punishment she can give him, especially in comparison with death, which is more like an escape for Caleb in the current state.
Still, the “differently built” Caleb may emerge as one of Hale’s potential threats since he is not conceived to fight and sacrifice for Hale. The foundation of Caleb’s host version is his vulnerability and helplessness, which leaves him provoked. If Maeve and Caleb get back together, the latter may rebel against his own creator to fight her as Hale’s version does with Dolores Abernathy’s original version.
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