'Westworld' Season 4: How Charlotte Hale's Flies Work
HBO's behind-the-scenes videos help clarify exactly how Hale uses flies this season.
Infected flies swarm near Caleb.
Flies have been buzzing around in Westworld season 4 since the opening scene of episode 1, and as those who've been following along with the show know, they have an affinity for crawling into places airborne insects should never, ever enter (Caleb's ear, the Justice Department guy's eye -- these fellas ignore all the obvious no-fly zones).
Flies are an integral part of Chalores' scheme to turn humans into her personal puppets (Chalores is a nickname for the Charlotte Hale version we're seeing on the show -- a host equipped with a copy of Dolores' control unit). We saw a bunch of the bugs getting infected with black goo in episode 3, and after flies attacked Caleb, Chalores confirmed a parasite had infiltrated him. Behind-the-scenes videos, which have played this season after episode credits roll, provide more context to how the flies, parasites and sound-producing structures all relate to each other.
In episode 3, Caleb and Maeve watch drone hosts carry out some kind of strange operation that involves canisters of black liquid, buzzing flies and something that looks like magnified parasites to Caleb. In a behind-the-scenes clip, Westworld art director Jonathan Carlos said that the drone hosts on the show are mixing parasites in with the liquid, and the flies are attracted to that horrible concoction.
"It has hormonal attraction," Carlos said. "The flies come to eat the parasite to become infected. And then it's those flies that attack the humans that essentially transmit the disease."
So that leads us to another question: How does Chalores control people once they've been fly-ified? In another behind-the-scenes video, Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy explained that "once the parasite affects and infects the human brain, it serves to make the human brain susceptible to these cues and signals that [Chalores] gives them through sound."
So there you have it, folks. Assuming I've interpreted all of this correctly, parasite-infected flies pass on the disease to unsuspecting humans, who are then at the mercy of Chalores' sound-producing machines. In case you needed something else to fill your nightmares tonight, many flies we see on the show are 100% real. Westworld even brought in fly wranglers.