This post contains frank discussion of Westworld Season 3, Episode 3 “The Absence of Field.” If you’re not all caught up, now is the time to leave.
This week’s episode centers on Tessa Thompson’s character Charlotte Hale. Though, of course, it’s not really Hale in there, is it? So who might it be? We’ve got some clues below. All season, Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast will have weekly breakdowns of the episodes, which you can find here.
But for everything else, here’s a rundown of some details you might have missed from the episode starting with that title.
“THE ABSENCE OF FIELD”: The episode gets its title from a Mark Strand poem “Keeping Things Whole” which includes the lines: “In a field / I am the absence / of field. / This is / always the case. / Wherever I am / I am what is missing.” In other words, the narrator of the poem is made uncomfortable by his intrusion on a natural space. He is displacing something just by being there. He keeps in constant motion just so as not to further disturb the world. In this week’s episode, most obviously, the Host version of Charlotte Hale is the intruder. Just by being there, she has displaced someone: the real Hale. That reality is even tougher for this Host to grapple with once she realizes that she’s not just robbed the world of another ruthless business executive, but deprived a young boy of his mother. Host Hale is the absence of Real Hale.
The other person in this episode who is known by their absence is Serac who, you may remember, is only identifiable in the global market by the space he leaves behind: a trillion-dollar space. He is referred to as a black hole. Honestly? Goals.