HBO is back in Westworld Sunday night kicks off its fourth season with new puzzles, new threats, and the return of a fan-favorite character we haven’t seen since. season 2.
Season 4 begins on the seemingly healthy William/Man in Black in Black (played by Ed Harris), who may or may not be the host’s version of the closing minutes of “Crisis Theory”/Season 3 finale. He arrives at a mysterious facility in the valley owned by an organization neighboring the cartel. This place and its contents are built over and around a huge lake, which is of great value to William. He claims that its contents were stolen from him and that he wants to recover it in full. The cartel members turned down his offer… and William killed them all.
The focus then shifts to a new character, Christina (the vet in the Evan Rachel Wood series), a video game writer whose aversion to fun irritates her outgoing roommate, Maya (Shmegadon!Ariana Deboss). It’s not unreasonable to assume that Christina is just another version of Dolores; Hector said it best last season: “Death is exaggerated for people like us.”
While it’s unlikely that Dolores survived the events of Season 3, there is a layer of Wood’s performance here that hints at exactly that. (One of the series’ authors, Jonathan Nolan, insisted that Dolores was dead, but who’s to say he wasn’t referring to one of her copies and not the original?).
Seven years after destroying the data monster Rehoboam, Caleb Nichols (Aaron Paul) finally lives his life on his terms. Good heart From. The supercomputer named after the Bible and its partner, Engerraund Serac (Vincent Cassel), is no longer in the picture. The destruction of Rehoboam made way for the new world, where “you can be whatever you want.” Apparently, Caleb’s version of “All You Want” is a junk gig pulling electrical coils across the tops of skyscrapers. He has a wife and daughter now too.
Meanwhile, Maeve (Thandwe Newton) has locked herself away in a hut in the woods. She navigates through many memories that we know she struggles to come to terms with, including the first set of memories from the way back in the park in season one. Presumably in hiding after beating Serac, who looked pretty defeated the last time we saw him. She heads to a nearby town for supplies and learns that people are looking for them. She hurries back to her lair, where mustachioed soldiers comb every inch of the winter forest. You kill them and confront their leader, who reveals himself as an Android before Maeve hacks him to pieces with an axe. She contemplates his memories and discovers that William is looking for her, after which she burns the cabin and leaves.
Back in Christina, we find out that she is being pursued by a man who asks her to ‘stop doing this to us’. There isn’t an abundance of clarity out there, but that’s not the view. This is shaping up to be one of the biggest mysteries in its arc.
After a night out with Maya, Christina encounters the stalker personally and attacks her before she disappears. The next morning, the man killed himself by jumping from the roof of her building.
In the end, Maeve makes her way to Caleb, who struggles to be satisfied with his monotonous (but stable) life. She saves his daughter from an attacker and tells him that William is after them. Caleb and Maeve left to intercept William’s next target: a California senator. Whatever William plans to do, it’s clearly a problem for the remaining characters.
The episode concludes with Christina’s tearful soliloquy on her balcony about how empty she feels, how she doesn’t know why she feels so lost, and that she wants a happy ending to her story. When she turns at night, Teddy (James Marsden) looks at her from the street below.
Can next one This week we’ll get some Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright)…
What do you think / do WestworldBack after more than two years? Will you stay informed?
