Westworld

Dolores has rebuilt her friend Bernard (who's Head of Behavior at Delos but also happens to be a host replicant of the park's mysterious co-founder Arnold) as a ...

In a post-credit’s scene, the Man in Black shows up at Delos HQ to try to stop the Dolores-Charlotte host, but his grip on reality is so shot that he’s easily bested and killed by none other than a host replicant of himself. But in the season’s final scene, presumably sometime in the future, a Bernard brings himself back online. Dolores instead gives control of the Rehoboam to Caleb to deactivate it, as only a human can destroy the supercomputer through a pure act of free will. The Dolores in Charlotte’s body has a different idea, though. Repeating a line of her dialogue from season one, Dolores’ narrative has come full circle, but the difference is it’s a choice she’s made consciously. She is determined to save the humans and rebuild a truly free world. There is ugliness in this world, disarray, but I choose to see the beauty.” To initiate the human rebellion, Caleb and Dolores release the data from Incite, the company responsible for creating Rehoboam. In learning their fates have been predetermined, chaos ensues. Dolores has rebuilt her friend Bernard (who’s Head of Behavior at Delos but also happens to be a host replicant of the park’s mysterious co-founder Arnold) as a kind of check against herself. “For the most part, humanity has been a miserable little den of thugs stumbling from one catastrophe to the next. But much like there is a trace of every deleted file on your laptop, so too do the hosts harbor memories deep within the recess of their codes. After all, a lot happened in the show’s previous season and the intertwined narratives are only getting more complicated.

The HBO hit series, created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, returns tonight. It's been two years since season 3, and Westworld is not an easy-watch or a series ...

These days, the world of entertainment is ruled by streaming services. If you miss it, know that the episode will air again right after. That said, I recommend you rewatch season 3, or at least the last couple of episodes, if you haven’t already. HBO or HBO Max? And, most importantly, what time do you tune in? Westworld is finally back tonight and we can’t wait to continue the HBO sci-fi journey. But so much has changed since we last took a trip to Westworld, that audiences are wondering where and what time the new season will premiere.

Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy, showrunner Alison Schapker and stars Ed Harris and Aaron Paul tease what's ahead in season 4 of the HBO show.

“The show is always questioning what’s real, and what’s important, and in some ways, I think, for children to be our cornerstones is very relatable, whether it’s a human or a host,” Schapker says about why the theme of children is so important within the show. “So all the things that used to be metaphorical about the show are now kind of literal this season as we explore those themes in a very direct way.” [Caleb] being a father is a massive part of his trajectory this season and it’s what kind of gives him hope and purpose to march on.” How much of our own loops are irrevocable and unchangeable — the way that society filters us into something, the way our own DNA and predilections, hormones, moods and feelings predetermine a path?” You try to be the best you can with all the issues you have and the things that haunt you. When it comes to characters and their experiences being trusted as real, human or in the present — something the show has toyed with since its beginnings — Schapker teased that viewers will have reliable narrators this season, but there’s a catch.

Find out how you can watch Season 4 of the hit sci-fi series Westworld, where it's streaming, when new episodes come out, and more.

The season left off on a bleak note, as Dolores died getting Caleb the information that kickstarts the end of everything, and it’s important to note that even though Dolores died in the shocking Season 3 finale, Wood is returning to the series as a brand-new character in Season 4. That’s one of the many themes pondered in Westworld and in the 2014 critically acclaimed science-fiction film, Ex-Machina. Domnhall Gleeson stars as a programmer for an elite tech company who takes a trip to the CEO’s complex for the weekend, and he discovers something amazing yet terrifying. It’s a similar set-up to Groundhog Day, and as Nadia dies and comes back to life 100s of times, she begins to wonder where real life begins and what it all means. Evan Rachel Wood stars as another woman experiencing an awakening that leads her to take back control of her life in the 2020 film, Kajillionaire. Like Dolores in Westworld (in that someone else calls all the shots), Wood plays Dolio Dyne, the daughter of two, overbearing con-artist parents who cannot let go of their daughter and let her lead her own life. First things first, though the world of cowboys and madams may be gone, there is still going to be an alternate reality within a new city containing hosts and the people behind the scenes controlling it. Fast-forward to Season 3, and Dolores has broken out of Westworld and entered the real world, which takes things to a whole new level. This proves to be lethal, and by the end of season 1 she realizes she’s living in a fake simulation and begins waging a war against humankind in hopes of seizing control of the world by causing the end of civilization. As the Man in Black enters an old world, Christina (Wood) enters a new one in a peaceful city where nothing bad ever happens. As Dolores plots to destroy mankind by getting her hands on crucial information that can overturn the entire system society now runs on, she meets the new character Caleb Nichols played by Aaron Paul, a human who’s been overlooked for too long with dreams of regaining power. Jeffrey Wright plays Bernard Lowe, head of Westworld’s Head of the Programming Division and a crucial adversary to all of Dolores’s plotting. Ed Harris portrays the villainous Man in Black, a human who’s visited the theme park for years with a secret agenda, and Tessa Thompson plays Charlotte Hale, the Executive Director of the Delos Destinations Board, who gets pulled into all the pandemonium in Westworld once the carnage begins in Season 2. At the center of the series is a simple question though, what makes us human?

Here's what happened during an eventful season 3 of Westworld. As Bernard said, how can you learn from your mistakes if you can't remember them?

Once Maeve figures out how to get out of that system and into the real world, she attempts to steal her pearl but is stopped only to wake up in a real-world host body to meet her benefactor Serac. He needs a host to stop a host, and Maeve still has an ax to grind with Dolores. All it takes it is to offer Maeve her daughter back and she’s on board. Maeve serves as Serac’s agent in the chase for Dolores; she goes to Asia to meet with Sato and thus is one of the people to uncover that Dolores copied herself in the other hosts along with William and Bernard. She’s injured and left for dead, but recovered and put back into Warworld while her body is repaired. The old world is dead, and as Maeve said, “This is the new world, and in the new world, you can be whoever the fuck you want.” The fate of the world itself is unknown at the end of Westworld season 3, let alone the fate of a few gut-shot billionaires. The real threat to Dolores’ plan is Maeve, rescued from the island by Serac and given a new body with the express purpose of stopping Dolores before she can undo his work. After William leaves, Bernard is then given a package and an address by Lawrence, another host recruited by Dolores to help her take down Serac. The address is the home of Arnold’s widow, where the two talk over the death of their son Charlie and bond. Bernard enters the Sublime for answers; an unknown time later, Bernard returns to his body from the Sublime, covered in a thick layer of dust and presumably being the key for the fourth season. Dolores is consumed with one thing: finding Serac and discovering the secret of Rehoboam. To that end, not only did she get herself off Westworld, she took a collection of pearls—the computer brain that resides in the head of every host—with her and copied herself to ensure she could have allies to help her meet her mission. In the process, she discovers that she was the mole in the company Serac was using to try to force a buy-out and get access to all that delicious mental mapping information. That leads to a cat-and-mouse game with Dolores trying to avoid both Serac and Bernard, with Bernard and Ashley almost succeeding in stopping her by preventing her from kidnapping Liam from a charity event. In fact, it seems as though everyone important in the world of Westworld is now a host. Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) has been sent to stop Dolores. Dolores is her usual agent of chaos self, looking to foment a revolution against the all-seeing computer.

Westworld is now going into its fourth season, but which cast members will be back and who's joining the show fresh? Find out all you need to know here.

Where have I seen Ariana DeBose before? Where have I seen Aurora Perrineau before? Where have I seen Angela Sarafyan before? Where have I seen Luke Hemsworth before? Where have I seen Aaron Paul before? Where have I seen Tessa Thompson before?

The season 4 premiere of Westworld is set to air on HBO Sunday, June 26 at 9/8c. Here is how to watch without a regular cable subscription.

The season premiere can be watched on HBO with a regular cable subscription. SlingTV advertises itself to a better alternative to regular cable with up to 47 live channels for $30 a month along with $14.99 add-on charge for HBO access. However, those who have cut the cord can still stream Westworld season 4 on HBO Max and SlingTV with an HBO add-on.

Spoiler alert! This article contains spoilers for Seasons 1-3 of Westworld. The HBO sensation Westworld is finally returning for Season 4 after a two-year ...

Maeve tracks down Dolores, who has escaped into the real world with her consciousness in a host version of executive Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson). Dolores has also made herself a new body, and Maeve fights Original Dolores before learning she plans to save humanity, not destroy it. Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon), the Ghost Nation leader, arrives to explain he and Maeve are meant for the same path, but the other Ghost Nation members turn on her. Maeve enlists Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman), one of the game writers, and outlaw Hector (Rodrigo Santoro) to help find her daughter. She also decides to find her daughter before escaping the park. Maeve spends her new life as the madame for Westworld's saloon, the Mariposa. When the "reverie" update is introduced, she begins remembering the trauma of losing her daughter. However, after an encounter with the Man in Black (Ed Harris), Maeve's unusually emotional response to losing her daughter in the game prompts Westworld creator Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) to wipe Maeve's memory and change her character.

Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, and Ed Harris reveal how making Westworld Season 4 has affected their own perspectives on the future.

“In our isolation and quarantine, we’ve had to rely on technology and social media to really get us through, and there is a sort of parasitic effect that can have on the mind, you know? Obviously one thing this show is doing is showing that our data and our personal lives are a commodity. The third season of the series focused on one-time “host” Dolores ( Evan Rachel Wood) attempting to bring down a malevolent artificial intelligence that’s using peoples’ personal data to determine the course of their entire lives, and Season 4 takes place in the aftermath of that struggle, in a world which thinks itself free of technology’s control…

Dolores, portrayed by Evan Rachel Wood. HBO. So you're prepping to start another season of Westworld? You'll need a slick ...

In the season 3 finale, Bernard used it, announcing that he was looking for an answer to what comes after the end of the world. In the season 3 finale, Maeve switched sides at a crucial moment and helped Dolores and Caleb. She said she realized why Dolores "chose" Caleb to help her -- not because of his capacity for violence, but because of his capacity to choose. The last time we saw new Charlotte, it was in the finale's post-credit scene, when she was joined by a host version of William and looked to be building more hosts. Season 3 was a doozy for William. He had hallucinations of the daughter he murdered, was tricked by the new version of Charlotte and endured some unconventional futuristic therapy. Solomon revealed in episode 7 that the treatment given to Caleb only works on one in 10 people. Season 3 confirmed that Dolores made copies of herself (the "self" that exists in her peal, or control unit) and stuck them into the bodies of Charlotte, Musashi, Martin and Lawrence. Pseudo-Charlotte helped Dolores by impersonating Hale, but she was eventually found out, and it cost her. Maeve reluctantly teamed up with a new character named Engerraund Serac in season 3 after Serac told her that the key to the Sublime -- where Maeve's daughter exists -- is in Dolores' mind. Eventually, we found out that Caleb is considered to be an "outlier" by a machine called Solomon and its successor, Rehoboam. Because of this status, he underwent reconditioning therapy, a "treatment" that altered his memories. The third season introduced us to Caleb Nichols (Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul), a war veteran who's haunted by a memory of losing his friend, Francis, in combat. Not everyone was so lucky (more on that in the "pods" section). The first episode of Westworld season 4 premieres Sunday, so it's time to take a look back at where things on HBO's complex and fascinating sci-fi series left off. Season 3 took place largely outside of the eponymous theme park, revealed more of human society in 2050 and ended on a cliffhanger.

Viewing HBO's new season of "Westworld" after America burns, why not hand the world over to Delos' hosts?

But her time with Caleb made her realize that all of humankind wasn't causing the problem. One misses the way earlier iterations of the "Westworld" operating system kept us guessing. She broke out of Westworld to take over and rid the world of human barbarity. Like him, Newton's whip-smart energy ensures Maeve will always be watchable; there's an imitable way that she cocks her hip in the face of fear that quickens the pulse. Whatever fighting spirit burned in Delores has been replaced in Christina by a low-grade apathy; she's unhappy at her job and reluctant to dip a toe in the dating vortex. Charlotte Hale ( Tessa Thompson) and the fiendishness she busies herself with are the cure for that. A few years after the society-crumbling chaos in the third season finale, we find Caleb ( Aaron Paul) and Maeve comfortable in their separate lives. With each new season the character development wanes further, and metaphors lose more of their creative veiling. In the terrible light of all that, watching Wood's Delores upgrade into a vengeful Terminatrix and Maeve's escapades with her unlocked God-level controls, katana and a madam's wit is thrilling. Like humanity itself, as the reach and scope of "Westworld" increased, its storytelling ambitions thinned. Distance can be murder on relationships, as you may find when you reenter "Westworld" after two years of being away from it. The fourth season proves this, with its writers drawing both material and figurative inspiration from the last two years' largest destabilizing forces, starting with how easily the human mind can be infected with self-destructive ideas.

Westworld is back for a fourth season. Season 4's premiere airs today on HBO after a two year hiatus. The world has changed a great deal since the show's ...

I’ll have my review of Season 4’s premiere up later this evening, so be sure to follow me here on this blog as well as on It was cool to see the world outside the park, but in many ways it felt like an entirely new show because of it. Schools and businesses shut down due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, and everything went to hell even more spectacularly than in the fiction of Westworld.

"Westworld" returns, featuring several familiar faces in unfamiliar roles, while extending aspects of a third season that creatively sailed off the rails.

As for how the producers will bring it all crashing together, whatever goodwill and trust they generated in the past has mostly evaporated, creating less faith that they're playing six-dimensional chess and more suspicion that they're spending a whole lot of HBO's money on an elaborate jigsaw puzzle. and Jeffrey Wright are also back on board, but through four episodes it's hard to make much of their storylines, which only feeds the sense that "Westworld" is constructed as roughly three programs in one. Their path intersects with the villainous and ruthless William (Ed Harris) as he pursues his own shadowy scheme, a character originally elevated by first-season mystery who is perhaps most symbolic of the show's decline, having become progressively less interesting ever since.

Is there a way to stream Westworld season 4 free? Here's what to know about watching Westworld for free on HBO Max without a subscription.

The Westworld cast features Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Wright, James Marsden, Anthony Hopkins and Luke Hemsworth, among others. Check out the full episode list below for Westworld season 4. While HBO Max doesn’t have a free trial, customers can still try out the service for free via Hulu’s HBO Max free trial to watch Westworld online for free. Keep on reading ahead for our tips for streaming Westworld for free on HBO Max. The ad-supported plan offers a $99.99 per year subscription (which saves users about $20 from the monthly price) and the ad-free plan offers a $149.99 per year subscription (which saves users about $30 from the monthly price.) HBO Max’s ad-free plan is also available on Hulu for $14.99 per month. The wait is over, and fans can finally find out how to watch Westworld online in time for its long-awaited return.

Westworld” will begin airing its 4th season on HBO and HBO Max on Sunday, June 26, 2022 at 9 p.m. There are several ways to watch with a live stream.

There will be no additional payment required to watch the series. As of December 2020, HBO Max is no longer offering a free trial to subscribers. (There is also a $99.99 annual option featuring commercials.) All seasons of “Westworld” will be available for HBO Max users as long as they have a subscription to the service. HBO Max costs $14.99 per month, or $9.99 to watch with commercials, via a subscription that can be canceled at any time. How to watch ‘Westworld’ on HBO Max

Westworld is a show about storytelling. Throughout its first three seasons, creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have made clear they are fascinated by the ...

William, Christina, Caleb, and Maeve may all be scattered but it seems we’re all in the same timeline (give or take Christina? Okay…maybe there may be some red-yarn-wall conspiracy artwork in our futures to help us figure all of it out). How Nathan Crowley (season one) and Howard Cummings (seasons two and three) lost their respective Emmys for their work on the show is beyond me. Westworld has probably spoiled us in thinking each and every one of its narratives is a Rubiks cube of a puzzle, often encouraging us to discern (or get lost) in various competing timelines. But once that prologue was done with, I was back in the kind of Westworld world I most enjoy: namely, following Evan Rachel Wood as she tried to decipher what it is her character (this time: Christina—unclear where Dolores is nowadays) wants from her life as she ponders the pleasures and perils of writing and living in certain stories. (Trust the show to keep its meta-ness going; not only are we in the realm of storytelling but in the realm of broadcasting. Sure, I wouldn’t have pegged Westworld to flash-forward seven years since “the riots” that closed out its most recent season finale—or even imagine that it would open with a bilingual set-piece where William (yes, Ed Harris, back again as the man formerly known as the Man in Black) brings a cartel to its knees with the help of…I want to say fly-hosts?

HBO's "Westworld" returned on Sunday night after more than two years off the air -- read our recap, grade the sci-fi drama's return!

As she turns in for the night, Teddy (James Marsden) looks up at her from the street below. This is shaping up to be one of the biggest mysteries of her arc. After a night out with Maya, Christina encounters the stalker in person, and he attacks her before disappearing. She heads to a nearby town for supplies and learns that people are looking for her. Built over and around a massive lake, this place and its contents are immensely valuable to William. He claims that its contents were stolen from him and that he wants all of it back. The Biblically-named supercomputer and its co-creator, Engerraund Serac (Vincent Cassel), are no longer in the picture.

While we never see Charlotte in the season 4 premiere, William is clearly hard at work on her behalf. He's also sending Hosts out to find Caleb (Aaron Paul) and ...

“The Auguries” is a promising start to the season. How will things be different now that she’s out in the real world, when she discovers she’s really a Host? And how did she come to be where she is? We don’t know if this is some other Teddy or if it’s the original character repurposed, but the reveal that he’s the one watching over Christina while she ruminates over wishing she could have a happy ending for herself was a really nice touch. The character who gets the most focus in the premiere is a new one…kind of. The next day, the man once again calls Christina right before jumping off the roof of a nearby building to his death, which he insists is how she wrote his story ending. Despite his lingering feelings of unease, there is a pervading sense that the workings of the world have changed somewhat in these past seven years, even if people are still stuck in loops, so to speak. She reveals that she made a Host version of William to serve as the general of that army; Host William quickly kills off his human counterpart. There’s some really interesting commentary in Caleb’s plotline about how even though the AI system that was deciding people’s fates is gone, life hasn’t changed all that much for a lot of people. The time jump is kind of mind-blowing, but the show does a great job of handling it. Maeve is still experimenting with her powers here, which is nice to see even though all it does this episode is draw the attention of William’s flunkies. Westworld is one of those shows that reinvents itself with each season, and from the start of season 4 it’s clear that this will once again be the case. All this is to say that if you’ve enjoyed Westworld so far, you’ll almost certainly enjoy the premiere of season 4.

It's several years into the new world and everyone has made news lives for themselves — but nothing good lasts long in Westworld. A recap of 'The Auguries', ...

At the end of the episode, Christina opens a new pitch about a girl searching to fill the emptiness in her life, tying the women we’re following (Maeve, Frankie, and Christine) together. We’re programmed, forgive the pun, to believe that stories about women just aren’t interesting or important.) Now, does this hint at where the story is going, given we don’t even know if this version of Dolores is a hero or a villain? It is about a young boy named Elmer who runs away to rescue a captive dragon and uses ordinary household items like lollipops and hair ribbons to trick and cajole the creatures of Wild Island, keeping the baby dragon chained up. Finally, a man named Peter stops her on the street, accuses her of controlling people in the world, and asks to be set free. As the title suggests, it is also narrated from the future by the protagonist’s child. Given that we don’t know what William and “Christina” are up to in their respective storylines, it’s nice that Maeve and Caleb have a crisp and clear call to action. (This hits unexpectedly hard as a woman in the world and as a former screenwriting student who wanted to write female protagonists! The season opens with a shot of what appears to be the Seattle skyline. She beheads one of them with a hatchet (!) and determines that William sent them. Maeve then goes directly to Caleb, who we learn throughout the episode is back working construction in Los Angeles. He has a wife named Uwade (Nozipho Mclean) and a daughter named Frankie (Celeste Clark). Caleb’s wife and coworker allude to the end of a war, seemingly the one started by Dolores when she leaked Rehoboam’s data seven years ago. Seven years have passed since the Westworld season-three finale, both in the show and in the real world. That’s all we see from William in the episode, living out his seemingly dead human counterpart’s Western outlaw dreams in the real world, so let’s focus on the other storylines one by one.

Teddy is back. In the last few moments of the season 4 premiere of Westworld, the beloved character turned tragic killer, who died in Season 2, ...

Although the premiere did dash predictions that Teddy was the mystery man Christina was seen going on a date with in an early season 4 teaser; that was just some jerk Christina’s cheery roommate, played by Ariana DeBose, set her up with as a ploy to make Christina more social. Considering Dolores uploaded Teddy’s pearl (a.k.a. robot brain) to the Valley Beyond, Teddy’s return was a major possibility at any point in the series. After a while, Teddy couldn’t take it anymore, killing himself to escape the violence. The episode—a sleek, entertaining slow-burn set seven years after the events of season 3—ends on that thrilling note, without answering any real questions about Teddy’s return. (It’s a string cover of “Video Games” by Lana Del Rey, a choice so-on-the-nose that it’s funny before it turns poignant). Christina is only certain of one thing: “I want a story with a happy ending.”

LISA JOY: It is the Hoover Dam, starring itself. JONATHAN NOLAN: They were lovely to work with. It was kinda like, "Do you think they would let us?" "Yeah, sure ...

We've seen in the last season that we were controlling ourselves, and now you add the hosts to the mix here. Even the facts are now in question, and that's a very worrisome trend, that idea that there may be levels of mechanisms of control here, even inadvertent ones. NOLAN: One of the fun things about our show is the way we're asking the audience to find their own way through it in that game-like way. Now that finally our timeline is so much more contemporary, it's really great to explore everything about that culture, and in that way also create a character that's very relatable to me and a way to reflect upon the act of being a writer itself. The intention here is for the audience to feel the reality of New York. I shot on my first series [Person of Interest] in New York for five years. Dolores — dearly departed Dolores — used to want to be the author of her own story, and now we find this new character, Christina, who very much is an author of the stories. NOLAN: We just love this idea of the subtle things in our environment that shift and change, and the tectonic changes and control that might indicate. The flies are like the last real thing in that park, and taking that and flipping it on its head so that something that was a symbol of chaos inside this very curated world becomes a symbol of control inside a chaotic world. "It's a veiled reference to something that we have seen already stolen from him at the end of season 2," he teases. In the original park, the flies were the only classic symbol of the things you can't control. Flies have obviously been a visual motif that you guys have been playing with since the very first season, but now it seems like flies are becoming a much more active role in the narrative moving forward. We had so many questions — including what's going on with Evan Rachel Wood's Christina and the return of James Marsden at the end of the episode — so we went to the source for answers: Nolan and Joy.

Mysteries abound as usual, but none more so than those surrounding the new character played by Evan Rachel Wood.

Season three was so full of twists and turns that the multitude of revelations rarely had the time to have much impact; I appreciate beginning season four with firmer ground to stand on before Westworld ramps up into its usual madness and mayhem. Is he just some random disturbed person who’s a fan of Christina’s game design (almost certainly not), or does Christina actually have some kind of control over people (almost certainly yes)? And what in the hell is the Tower? And the parallel between Christina’s game story and the premise of Dolores’ back story is so obvious it may be a red herring. The question, of course, is what is this data? Splash proof making it the ideal shower speaker or for trip to the beach and pool. It’s much easier to recap the adventures of the other three first.

'Westworld' Season 4 Episode 1 on HBO ends with James Marsden returning to watch over Evan Rachel Wood's Christina while a Lana Del Rey song plays.

Dolores had reprogrammed her beloved to be a vicious attack dog for her violent cause and the Teddy trapped beneath her tweaks was horrified by what they had become. As you’ll recall, Dolores Abernathy was not only killed, but her consciousness was totally deleted at the end of Westworld Season 3. While Christina would rather script cozy stories about young women with loving fathers and happy endings, her boss wants her to veer into the darker side of life. Both Evan Rachel Wood and James Marsden return to the Westworld cast in spite of their characters’ deaths. Westworld Season 4 Episode 1 gives former star James Marsden a swoon-worthy entrance accompanied by an instrumental Lana Del Rey cover. Westworld is a show full of twists, turns, and resurrections.

HBO has made no attempt to hide the fact that Dolores actress Evan Rachel Wood remains a part of the show this year, with her popping up prominently in every ...

She is this kind of nerdy, sort of average woman just trying to make it as a writer in a big city. For the first time since season 2, Westworld introduces Dolores’s old boyfriend, Teddy Flood, the gentleman host played by James Marsden. Perhaps some unknown entity is making use of Dolores’s old host body by placing a new A.I. inside of it for reasons unknown. Wood’s character is indeed quite vulnerable again, as fragile as the “unawakened” Dolores from season 4. Perhaps Christina is, in fact, another personality within Dolores’s programming that arrived as a sort of failsafe after Rehoboam wiped her dry. This woman is named Christina and she’s essentially an anonymous little worker bee in the future version of our own world. “Every season I feel like I pick out a walk for each character’s mannerisms and other little things that people wouldn’t really notice. After all, if a host is just a collection of data, what happens when you permanently take that data away? If the entity we knew as Dolores is gone, however, then how could Wood’s performance continue on? The form that once housed the being we knew as Dolores is now playing host (pardon the pun) to another personality altogether. It’s hard to kill a host that is able to remotely upload its consciousness to seemingly any hard drive. You may not recall, for instance, that Dolores met her untimely end in the final episode of Westworld season 3.

It's a whole new Westworld, and, man, does it seem peaceful since Maeve and Caleb took out the predictive-AI, big-think computer Rehoboam last season. Dolores ...

Her sacrifice was meaningful in that it helped get the world to this place, but it was a sacrifice in that there is no more Dolores. I’m not sure I would call it a version, but you know, there’s this new character, Christina. We’re just along for the ride with her as she experiences the city, dating, being a writer. Lisa Joy: Unfortunately, he’s what you’ve been watching — the thing that William least wanted to be, which is a host. It’s always been a period piece in Westworld. I wanted a really great actor to play this girl, Christina, and I’m hoping people don’t notice because I changed her hair color, but we just cast Evan again. It’s really nice to be able to not speak wholly in metaphor, to be able to do something contemporary and human, to write roommates, banter and bad dates. Caleb is totally up for it, and tells his loved one, who is losing her patience with his shenanigans, “I’m the one who has brought this upon us, and I’m the one who has to end it.” And to me, war is brutish and terrible and devastating for all parties. He then meets MIB on the bridge of the dam, and agrees to sell the structure to him. The hosts that remain have clearly been up to different things. Caleb has a daughter, but he’s teaching her how to shoot a pistol (akin to a BB gun). “Thanks to you, her hobbies are sugar and violence,” Caleb’s spouse says about their daughter. Meanwhile, Christina is receiving disturbing phone calls from a guy who claims her storylines have forced him to lose his job and his wife. Later on, Del Puerto’s character, who refused to sell the dam, is swarmed by flies in his room and knocked out. But, remember, Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) killed what seemed like a human version of him in the season 3 finale, and sent a host of the guy out into the world.

Though they may share the same physical attributes and actor, Christina is an entirely different character from Dolores. Here's what's really happening in ...

“Dolores never died.” “Humans find themselves sometimes stuck in a rut, or seemingly unable to change their circumstances or even behaviors that they don’t like about themselves,” Joy says. I do miss aspects of her, even divorced from Season 1.” Christina is “a completely new character,” Wood tells Inverse. “Playing [Christina] required a much more human approach this season. Most importantly, the “narrative loops” that defined the lives of the Hosts in the Westworld theme park. Dolores Abernathy appears to have gone AWOL in the war between humanity and machine.

Evan Rachel Wood and producer Lisa Joy explain the new character Christina in 'Westworld' season 4.

ERW: Absolutely. I think she spends the first half of the season confused and uneasy. But, ironically, sometimes you just feel like a vehicle for that, and it gets to be confusing, like, “Well, who is this entity here?” And I think that’s something that Evan’s new character struggles with. And it was just so exciting to get to write this and see the sea change in Evan’s performance. Lisa Joy: I mean, Dolores had evolved and changed so much already and kind of come to the end of her journey, but I think [finding] a lot of resolution and peace between these oscillations, between victim and perpetrator, and then finding this middle ground. But like Dolores, she notices something is off with the world, and she’s looking for an answer to a question that she doesn’t know yet. And what will happen with her surprise savior, who stepped in at the end of this week’s episode?

Spoiler Alert. John Johnson/HBO. [Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Westworld Season 4 premiere.] Everyone who thought this season was ...

With a gorgeous instrumental cover of “Video Games” by Lana Del Rey in the background — thank you, Ramin Djawadi! — Christina insists she wants a story with a happy ending. Peter tells her he “didn’t think she was real.” Westworld is hitting viewers over the head with the non-reality of Christina’s reality, and it’ll be interesting to see what’s really going on there. As she walks through town, a group of men marvel about “not believing this place.” At her work, the storyline she creates bears resemblance to her former life in the park with her father. But a lot happens before he shows up, and there’s already a pretty good amount of evidence that this timeline isn’t “real.” As our first glimpse, we meet Christina. She’s an introverted storyline developer for NPCs at a video game company, where she wants to give all her creations happy endings… He goes back to his business partners the next day and kills them all, and then himself after William tells him he can “rest.” So, in the end, William did get that “slab of concrete”… for free. As some fans have already noted, Christina’s roommate asks her to choose between a pair of white and a pair of black shoes — a bit like white hat or black hat, no? She tells him William’s back at it, and Caleb decides he has to leave his wife and child for their own safety. Apparently, something was stolen from him eight years earlier by a “she” — Maeve? Hale-Dolores? At this point, it’s all part of the mystery — and he wants to buy the place to gain access to it. Before saving Caleb, she’d been living in a cabin in the middle of the snowy woods, re-living her memories of her daughter, of Hector, and of what sure looks like Caleb dying (and in doing so, blowing her cabin’s power supply). (Is Caleb a host now? “You and your friends in the cartel give me this lump of concrete today, or you give it to me for free tomorrow,” William threatens his tour guide. In the same reality, Caleb has gone back to working in the construction business. It appears this relatively prosperous timeline is post-post-apocalypse, and the apocalyptic event teased in Season 3 is what happened “eight years ago.” Caleb’s wife — yes, Caleb is now married and has a daughter — makes mention of him having PTSD from fighting and tells him not to teach their child how to shoot a toy gun because they’re all safe now.

If there's any major takeaway from the Season 4 premiere, it's that the insects are back in a big way—a recurring motif in the series and Michael ...

(It should come as no surprise that Dominion is by far the worst film in the series.) But while insects were a bizarre inclusion for a dinosaur movie, they actually don’t feel as out of place on Westworld, especially within the broader context of Crichton’s work. After all, we’ve already seen what they did to the cartel guy, and unless Caleb also has been replaced by a host, these flies are going after humans under the command of Charlotte and host William. What did the flies have to do with it? (If there’s one thing the Westworld fandom loves, it’s speculating on every single detail of the series.) But the interest in flies soon gave way to more pressing reveals, like how Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) was secretly a host modeled after the park’s deceased cofounder, or that young William (Jimmi Simpson) would go on to become the Man in Black (Ed Harris) because Season 1 was taking place across multiple timelines. In the season’s opening sequence, we meet an unnamed cartel member who has been approached by William—or, more accurately, [deep breath] the host who replaced the real William at the end of the third season when Charlotte (Tessa Thompson), who is actually a sophisticated copy of Dolores, had the robotic doppelgänger attack him. It’s a little moment that hints at a major shift in Dolores’s programming, and by the end of the first season, many hosts turn on their human oppressors with violent ends.

Westworld's premiere feels like an entirely new show. Here's a recap of the episode, where we figure out what's going on with Christina, The Man in Black, ...

With the season premiere's great reuniting of Maeve and Caleb, we have the most comprehensible storyline of Season 4. Olympiad Entertainment can't be paying that well.) We last saw the kindhearted cowboy—and Dolores Abernathy's love interest, you know, before she tooled around with his programming—in Season 2, Episode Nine, "Vanishing Point." At the end of that episode, Teddy shoots himself, unable to deal with the changes to his code/Dolores's rise to batshit villainy/the general highs and lows of being a brobot. For now, we'll have to give Westworld the benefit of the doubt, and let the story unravel a bit to see why we needed to jump forward in time by nearly a decade. Genuinely, Christina is the most brilliant, Westworldian troll in the history of the series. Instead, Westworld fast-forwarded through it all, showing where the likes of Maeve, Caleb, and Robot Man in Black ended up after it all. So, for all of you wanting to understand what the hell is going on with Christina, or simply wish to give a big ol' "Howdy!" to welcome back Teddy, here's our recap of the Season Four premiere.

Evan Rachel Wood is back for Westworld season 4...even though Dolores died stopping Rehoboam in season 3. Who is Christina, and what is her company up to?

The opening credits show one of these flies being assembled, and it looked very similar to the way hosts and horses were created in the opening credits of the first two seasons. “The Auguries” mirrored the first season in other ways, including how Wood’s character woke up several times throughout the episode to start her day, with a growing sense of unease that she’s starting to move away from her predetermined “loop.” There were a lot of callbacks. While that could be one layer to the mystery, we also have to consider Olympiad Entertainment, the video game company where she works as a writer. And if there’s anyone who would have an extremely personal motivation for building a new host that looks like Evan Rachel Wood/Dolores and programming her to have a desire for happiness, it would be the Dolores copy living in Charlotte. It would also make sense for her to build a protector for Christina who looks like Teddy, considering her own long-standing feelings and relationship with Marsden’s character. Because at this current point in the show, there’s only one character we know for sure was building hosts, and that’s Charlotte, aka the Dolores copy that survived season 3. The premiere episode, “The Auguries,” debuted this past Sunday, and while it caught us up with characters like Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) and Caleb (Aaron Paul) seven years after the events of season 3, it also introduced us to some familiar faces in new guises.

In the Westworld Season 4 premiere, Evan Rachel Wood's Christina is saved by a familiar face. But how did he return?

Teddy’s brutality when he is protecting Christina from the conspiracy theorist suggests that he has retained the darker side of himself that Wyatt unlocked. In a heartbreaking moment, Dolores decides to alter her lover’s programming and transform him into her personal assassin. This creates a rift between him and Dolores in the second season. In Season 2, Dolores begins to embrace the darker side of her personality; she merges with the identity of the remorseless killer known as Wyatt. Dolores seizes control of Westworld and starts a reign of terror, ruthlessly destroying other factions. The final shot stinger of “The Auguries” is the reveal of Christina’s enigmatic savior; it's none other than her old friend, Teddy Flood (James Marsden). Teddy was initially shrouded in the background when he saved Dolores from her would-be killer. He is blissfully unaware that he is only a pawn in the plot by Delos, and has no memory of his past, serving his role in the park as a haplessly romantic, heroic hero of the West. However, he’s always doomed to die at the hands of the park’s most villainous guests.

Aaron Paul, Ed Harris, and showrunner Alison Schapker look ahead to the new season of Westworld ahead of the premiere later tonight.

“The show is always questioning what’s real, and what’s important, and in some ways, I think, for children to be our cornerstones is very relatable, whether it’s a human or a host,” said Schapker. “There’s something almost ineffably real about that relationship. [Caleb] being a father is a massive part of his trajectory this season and it’s what kind of gives him hope and purpose to march on.” In the third season finale, Ed Harris’ Man in Black/William was seemingly killed by his own android double. And it’s an entirely different world than the one viewers saw in 2020. He also indicated that his character, Caleb, has undergone some major life changes in the intervening years. Tonight, the two-year hiatus of Westworld will come to an end with the season 4 premiere on HBO. Appropriately enough, there will also be a built-in gap of time between seasons 3 and 4 within the show itself.

'Westworld' star Evan Rachel Wood spoke to Newsweek about the actor's new character Christina and how it was 'bittersweet' to say goodbye to Dolores.

Wood concurred, as she said: "Completely, yeah. "But this season, there's one other thing that is so Evan, and it's when [her] character laughs I hear [her]. It's like, 'There she is, there's my girl. "And normally even my movements [as Dolores] are just so controlled and precise.

A swarm of flies promises more horror in the return of the mind-boggling sci-fi show. Plus: previously unheard audio tapes tell the story of the Aids crisis ...

It takes a moment to get onboard with this unfamiliar concept – actors lip-synching previously unheard audio interviews with gay men through the Aids crisis – but it’s a fresh way of telling their stories. Sanae is also looking for her biological mum, after a family revelation rocked her life at the age of 30. Flashbacks to 1984 show what really happened on the night that tore the community apart, for a spycop-related cliffhanger that will undoubtedly cause a collective gasp across the nation.

The Man in Black is back! And Ariana DeBose joins as a glum twentysomething trawling dating apps. Has the show that once asked the biggest questions about ...

Season three was where many viewers gave up: it featured a new theme park but was mostly set in a benighted Los Angeles, with society on the brink of collapse and a wacky billionaire trying to do something funky with artificial intelligence. Recapping seasons one to three is tricky, since their intention was to have more plot nuances than there are grains of sand on a beach, but quickly: season one was set in a future theme park where humans were permitted to abuse lifelike robots who couldn’t make memories or feel pain, but then these “hosts” – particularly Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) – achieved sentience and rebelled. The season four opener is the least chaotic in the show’s history, with signs that Westworld has succumbed to the fate that befalls all but the best high-concept sci-fi stories when they are given too long a run: every massive idea and reality-switching twist has been another step into an ever-narrowing maze of the show’s own mythology.

How does the databank affect the story of Westworld Season 4? How are Dolores and Bernard involved? We break it down in our explainer for The Forge.

In the end of Season 2, many hosts chose to take their chances in the Valley Beyond, crossing the Door as a virus quickly turned the park into a bloody nightmare. Is the William in Episode 1 the real deal or merely a copy? Bernard and Dolores also had their own private plans for the Forge. Unbeknownst to Delos and even to himself, Bernard used the servers to increase Dolores' knowledge about humans. Is he the same copy we saw in the Season 3 finale? And that was not the only thing Ford knew that Delos didn’t. Behind the company’s back, the Westworld founder used the Forge’s servers to store his Valley Beyond, also known as the Sublime: a virtual kind of afterlife for hosts that wish to live free from their physical bodies in a world with no humans. Afraid of what Dolores has become, Bernard shoots her and leaves the Forge, taking Peter’s pearl with him. Their plan was to copy the consciousness of selected guests to hosts’ bodies, virtually making them immortal. However, the true purpose of the Forge was much more sinister. Season 3 of Westworld aired all the way back in 2020. Despite all of this happening in three different locations, all these stories are connected to one another through one virtual place. HBO has just released the first episode of Season 4 of Westworld. Alongside the ambitious plot, the intriguing set-up, and the always unpredictable twists the series has become known for, this new season also features many faces that fans have come to know and love (or hate) over the past few years. Frustrated that he couldn’t find the key, he erased Dolores' memories one by one, effectively killing that version of Dolores.

Westworld returns with an excellent Season 4 premiere that raises more questions about the nature of reality.

When Peter does find her, he assaults her outside her apartment telling her she needs to help him and that the story needs a new ending. All of these tidbits—Christina’s total lack of memory, Teddy’s reappearance, Peter’s strange accusations, the comment about “this place”—suggest to me that Dolores is once again in a park of some kind. As she watches in horror he hurdles to the ground below. This time around, it appears we’ll have Maeve and Caleb squaring off against William and Charlotte. Where Christina/Dolores fits into the mix remains to be seen. He holds a knife to her throat when suddenly someone drags him off of her. Maya wants Christina to find a boyfriend and sets her up on a date with an investment banker that goes spectacularly badly. Naturally, she lops the guy’s head off for a reason: He’s a robot and she needs to access his memories to find out who sent the men to kill her. But she’s not thrilled when he tells her he’s going away with Maeve to put a stop to the bad guys. Maeve has shown up just in the nick of time. She is dragged out of this voluntary retirement when a group of assassins shows up at her door. Haunted by the dangers of his past, Caleb teaches Frankie target practice with a BB gun along with other self-preservation tactics, like lighting up the perimeter so that you can see anyone approaching but they can’t see you. Robot William, aka The Man in Black (Ed Harris), shows up and takes the tour, offering to buy the entire facility from the cartel.