For a fourth season, Westworld is returning. After a two-year break, the HBO premiere of Season 4 is now airing.
Since the third season of the show aired, the globe has undergone significant transformation. Just before everything came to a sudden end in March 2020, the Season 3 opener aired. Due to the global COVID-19 outbreak, businesses and schools closed, and things descended into chaos even more dramatically than in Westworld’s fictional universe.
To put it another way, a lot has changed since we last watched this show, so you should probably review the first three seasons before continuing. You may view HBO’s own Seasons 1-3 recap by clicking the link below:
You should absolutely watch a more thorough recap of Season 3 by Man of Recaps, one of my favorite recap YouTubers, before tonight’s premiere:
His recaps of Seasons 1 and 2 are available here as well.
Our characters completely departed the park and ventured out into the outside world in Season 3, which marked a significant difference from the prior two seasons.
The adversary Bernard Lowe (played by Jeffrey Wright) was supposed to be Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), but the actual conflict was a confrontation between Dolores and the covert corporate tycoon Serac (Vincent Cassel). Of course, Dolores truly had two different identities—one in her own rebuilt body and the other in a robotized replica of Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson).
Rehoboam, a quantum supercomputer with predictive AI, rules over a near-future version of our own world in which society is essentially automated, with tasks assigned to people and order imposed on all human matters.
Season 3 was both interesting and confusing to me. Although it was interesting to glimpse the outside world, in many ways it felt like a completely different play as a result. In a show that is increasingly dominated by machines, Caleb’s (Aaron Paul) arrival brought us a fresh human perspective. Serac was also a terrific antagonist.
But I continue to wonder if Westworld made the right decision to continue after Season 1. Perhaps it would have been preferable to create an anthology series with fresh casts and plots each season. Season 4 might persuade me otherwise, though. Be sure to follow me on this blog, Twitter, and Facebook if you want to read my review of the Season 4 premiere when it goes live later this evening.