Caroline Farrell
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[edit] History
[edit] Early life
As a student at Freemont College and after, Caroline was a dedicated anti-war and animal rights protester who conspired with her boyfriend Leo to break into the Rossum Corporation's college laboratory to expose their mistreatment of animals. However, she stumbled across fetuses in jars and information regarding far more complicated and illegal scientific experiments, specifically technology which relates to the Dollhouse.
Chased by security, Leo was killed and Caroline hospitalized. Just as Adelle DeWitt was looking for her, Caroline escaped from the hospital. Two years later, she was captured selected by Adelle DeWitt to become an Active instead of going to jail, or worse. Under duress, DeWitt convinced Caroline to sign up to become an Active under the promise that after five years, she would have her normal life back with no memories of her assignments. After an original offer made by DeWitt, Caroline goes on the run.S1: "Echoes" During this time, she encounters her "best friend" Bennett Halverson (programmer for the D.C. Dollhouse) and in the midst of ensuing destruction, leaves her trapped and costs her the use of her left hand (S2: "The Left Hand"). During her time on the run, Caroline uncovers more of Rossum's secrets and/or weaknesses (S2: "The Attic"), and Caroline is brought back to the Dollhouse where Adelle eventually persuades her to become an Active, although Caroline does not feel she has much of a choice in the matter (S1: "Ghost", "Omega"). For at least the next five years, all that is left of Caroline are the hard disk copies and what remains of her within her body, now the active known as Echo.
[edit] Re-emergences
FBI Agent Paul Ballard believes that the process of wiping people to become Actives is tantamount to murder. However, Echo seems to show traits of Caroline's and occasionally, her memories. For example, in "The Target", psychoactive drugs trigger memories of Caroline at college, and Echo (in the Alice persona) is spurred to return to Freemont College and abandon her assignment somehow to return to the place where Caroline lost her freedom, and continues to remember various things about Freemont and Rossum.
In "Needs", an experiment by Dr. Saunders sees Caroline's personality re-emerge without her memories, in an attempt to help the Active get closure and prevent future glitches. Caroline was successful in helping the similarly awakened actives November, Victor and Sierra escape the Dollhouse while she went back inside, where she contacted Agent Paul Ballard asking for help and forced Adelle DeWitt to temporarily release all the captive Actives, before she passed out due to the experiment's parameters: she found some sense of closure. During her breakout, Caroline recognized a file on Paul Ballard and was able to contact him by telephone, leaving a message which told him the Dollhouse was underground.
In "Briar Rose", Alpha escapes with Echo and the remaining Caroline personality wedge. In "Omega", Alpha imprints Caroline into a captured girl called Wendy (played by Ashley Johnson), who wakes up asking "Has it been five years already?" only to be shocked to discover her body is inhabited by another personality, Crystal. After berating Caroline for abandoning herself (her body, and "Echo"), he forces Echo into a composite event with hopes that she will kill Caroline and "ascend" to a higher state of existence. Echo however, regaining some of the Caroline personality alongside the 38 other imprints simultaneously, and retaining her sanity, jumps to Caroline's defence. Wendy/Caroline is shot through the neck by Alpha and dies, however. Alpha runs off with the Caroline wedge, and then discards it to throw Echo off his trail. The wedge is caught by Paul Ballard, giving him some sense of symbolic closure in having saved "Caroline."
As shown in an "Epitaph One" flashback set shortly after "Omega", the Echo consciousness is now fully self-aware and is pretending to be in a blank state to pass by. Using the skills and memories of the extra consciousnesses "added" to her, she is working with Paul Ballard to bring down the Dollhouse and discover more about Caroline.
[edit] Future
"Epitaph One" shows that Echo was restored to Caroline and escaped the Dollhouse with a means of blocking the wireless Active transformations. This is known as "the cure" in the post-apocalyptic future. Caroline knows the location of a paradise known as Safe Haven, and keeps this information to herself. However, she returns to the Dollhouse with Paul to back her memories up on hard disk so that one day she might try again if she fails. Whether the "real" Caroline's mission is successful is unknown. However, a small girl Active (played by Adair Tishler) is imprinted as Caroline and vows to help lead some survivors to the Safe Haven. Finding a picture of her original body, she hopes the "real" her is still alive.
[edit] Parents
Caroline's parents may be the dead bodies seen near Alpha at the end of "Ghost."[1]
