Unsurprisingly, the Season 4 debut of Westworld leaves us with more questions than it does answers.
Since the conclusion of Season 3, when our heroes deposed the potent AI Rehoboam and set off an anti-AI revolt against the Incite corporation—which had, up until that point, ruled over human affairs through the use of its potent supercomputer—a lot has changed.
Strangely, we don’t continue from where we left off. Instead, a full seven years pass between the conclusion of Season 3 and the start of Season 4—though possibly not for all characters. We may once more be dealing with several timelines, according to some research. Soon, more on that.
the Black Man
The American southwest is where our narrative starts. Here, the Hoover Dam has been acquired by a Mexican cartel (our corporate dystopian future really is hell on earth it seems). The dam powers a very unique server cluster in addition to producing electricity and maintaining water reservoirs.
Robot William, also known as The Man in Black (Ed Harris), arrives and offers to buy the entire complex from the cartel while giving the tour. The servers likely hold the Valley Beyond and the Delos immortality data that Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) had previously given to Bernard, which was something that was “taken” from William eight years before (Jeffrey Wright).
Despite complaints from fans, “Genshin Impact” continues to refuse to increase anniversary rewards.
William offers the cartel a choice because they don’t want to sell: sell today or have it seized tomorrow by force. To their detriment, the brutal, strong cartel bosses laugh this off as a petty threat.
The anonymous cartel member (Arturo Del Puerto) awakes the following morning to discover his house overrun by flies. The fact that he enters the room where his coworkers are seated and brutally murders them seconds later suggests that these are robotic flies.
Is my mission over when I turn over the property to the Man in Black?” he queries.
William says, “Yes.” “You can now relax.” While William is gone, the man slits his own throat.
Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) has been living alone in a little cottage in the woods for the past seven years, keeping the outside world at bay. When a trio of assassins knocks on her door, she is forced out of this voluntary retirement.
Fortunately, she unintentionally receives a warning from a local shopkeeper that some “friends” will be visiting her. She outwits her attackers and ends up killing a number of them by detonating her pickup vehicle. She strikes another person in the forehead. Before Maeve scalps the group’s leader, he takes a hatchet blow to the chest.
Because he’s a robot and she wants to access his memories to learn who sent the guys to assassinate her, it stands to reason that she lops the man’s head off. She turns the tape back and recognizes the person: No one knows that the Man In Black, who Tessa Thompson plays as Charlotte Hale, is no longer human. Hale is, of course, only partially Hale. She shares some Dolores DNA. It’s perplexing.
Maeve destroys her cabin with fire before leaving to locate an old acquaintance.
Frankie (Celeste Clark) and his wife Uwade are the parents of Caleb (Aaron Paul) and their child (Nozipho Mclean). Given that Frankie is now seven and that it has been roughly seven years, the two evidently wasted no time getting together and having a child.
Caleb teaches Frankie target practice with a BB gun along with other self-preservation techniques, such as lighting up the perimeter so that you can see anyone approaching but they can’t see you. This is because Caleb is haunted by the perils of his past. All of these lessons are forgotten until she unintentionally throws her teddy bear out of her window one evening.
A spooky man outside startles her and inquires as to whether her father is present. As soon as Caleb steps outside, the man pulls out a revolver. The definite sound of a katana slicing through flesh is heard, and Caleb rushes to tackle Frankie and protect her. Maeve arrived precisely when she needed to.
She says, “Hello, sweetheart.” It’s actually you, he responds. “I never imagined I’d run into you again.”
Uwade, who had before questioned Caleb’s anxiety, now that her husband has every right to be on watch. When he informs her he’s leaving with Maeve to stop the bad guys, she is not happy. Even Maeve does not want him to go, yet he still does. She can understand his wish to keep his daughter safe.
Christina is at the center of the Season 4 premiere’s most intriguing and alluring subplot. The only person in the program that has no recollections of their prior selves is Dolores. Now she goes by Christina. She creates the plot lines for an Olympiad Entertainment “game.” It’s intriguing to see her in this role, however I’m not sure if this is a video game or a game for a theme park like Westworld.
She shares a home with Maya (Ariana DeBose), and they frequently get calls from a weird man named Peter (Aaron Stanford).
Maya arranges Christina’s disastrous date with an investment banker because she wants her to find a boyfriend. She writes minor characters and NPCs instead of the main characters, and he dismisses her profession as pointless, telling her that most players only utilize NPCs as “cannon fodder.” She then explains that she writes for herself because the real world can be so depressing.
He puts his hand on her shoulder and suggests, “Maybe you just haven’t found the proper man yet.” She gets up from the sleezeball and excuses herself to use the restroom when the stranger calls her again. She is informed by him that she must assist him. He claims that the game is wrecking his life. He tells her, “You’re real and the Tower is real,” and then she hangs up.
Here are a few intriguing points. This season’s episode had a homeless man with cardboard drawings of a tower who appeared to be murmuring something about a tower of some sort, but Christina/Dolores doesn’t seem to mind when she learns about it.
When Peter does manage to locate her, he attacks her outside of her apartment, telling her that she must assist him and that the plot requires a new resolution. At one point, he has a knife in her throat, but suddenly, someone pulls him away. She watches them fight, but when she turns around, neither of the men is there.
Later, we find out that Teddy (James Marsden), who has been dead and gone since Season 2, was the one who saved her. Teddy’s mind was uploaded to the Valley Beyond along with many other Hosts, and we later find out that Teddy was the one who saved her. Increasingly curious
Peter’s tale’s conclusion is also revealed. He calls Dolores and commands her to raise her head. He is perched a few stories up on a skyscraper. He leaps to the ground below as she watches in horror.
One last odd hint: While Christina was out strolling, a group of males hurried past her. This location is f**king wild, I can’t believe this is your first time, one of them tells his fellow soldiers.
Christina’s complete lack of memory, Teddy’s return, Peter’s odd allegations, and the remark about “this place” all lead me to believe that Dolores is once more in a park of some sort. Although it lacks the historical aspects that distinguish Shogunworld, Westworld, Warworld, and other parks, it is surprisingly banal. What might that be?
Moreover, when might it be? Since Dolores never ages, neither the past nor the seven years that will pass until the end of Rehoboam are mentioned in this subplot. However, something doesn’t feel right. It’s possible that she’s genuinely in the real world and we’re seeing red herrings.
Overall, I felt this Westworld episode was quite good. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: everything following Season 1 has been a little messier and less interesting than the neatly woven, excellent first season. Nevertheless, it’s still an intriguing, well-acted look into a futuristic civilization that is constantly thought-provoking.
This time, it seems like William and Charlotte will be going up against Maeve and Caleb. It will be interesting to watch how Christina/Dolores integrate into the mix. Delos, now ruled by the very robots it built, is acquiring territory in the southwest as part of a new robot takeover effort. It’s unclear exactly what their strategy is, but I’m interested to learn more.
Although Bernard and Charlotte were absent from this episode, we will see them in next episodes along with Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) and Clementine (Angela Sarafyan).
How did you find the Season 4 debut? Please let me know via Facebook or Twitter. Also, be sure to subscribe to this blog’s email updates for weekly summaries and reviews of Westworld and many other series.