Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Westworld’ on HBO, Where Hosts And Humans Are Still Duking It Out For Social Dominance

Westworld, HBO’s ambitious sci-fi dystopia from creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, returns for a fourth season with its probing questions about the essence of human existence balanced against the societal fallout from a mass data breach and a robot uprising as larger forces plan for a big takeover. Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Aaron Paul, Tessa Thompson, Ed Harris, and Jeffrey Wright all return, and West Side Story star Ariana DeBose joins the cast.

WESTWORLD SEASON 4: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man considers the cityscape of a futuristic Las Vegas, Nevada from the window of his spacious modern home. He dresses, checks the mag in his 9mm, and reports to the Hoover Dam, where his criminal operation’s vast data centers reside.

The Gist: “No one with that much money is without sin.” The man and his cartel colleagues are discussing a new client who turns out to be William, “The Man in Black” (Ed Harris), who arrives in a Delos-made luxury quad-copter and promptly demands that they sell him their entire data mine. Something was stolen from him eight years before. It remains encrypted in this facility. And William wants to keep it that way. And if the cartel won’t sell, he’s prepared a more severe method to convince them.

Christina (Evan Rachel Wood) awakens in a city not unlike New York, where promenades of greenspace mesh with the dark glass and steel of the built environment. Most people sport sleek, articulated clothing. Christina, thoughtful and reserved, is a writer at the video game company Olympiad Entertainment, where her boss prods her to write more violence and sex into her games, even if she’s most interested in the NPC’s, non-player characters that interact with the main attraction. Encouraging her to get out and meet people, Christina’s roommate Maya (Ariana DeBose) gestures to the city. “Take a look at this world. Nobody wants easy. Or natural. Art is a lie that tells the truth. And real life can be disappointing.”

For Maeve (Thandiwe Newton), real life is now a secluded existence in a rural cabin, but she always knew someone would come. And when they do, she subdues the leader and jacks into his host cortex, which reveals that the kill team was sent by the Man In Black. She burns the cabin, and seeks out Caleb (Aaron Paul), the soldier-turned-HVAC repairman who loves his wife and daughter but hasn’t fully reckoned with the violence of his past. When an assailant makes an attempt on Caleb’s daughter’s life, Maeve appears to run him through with her sword, and then tells her old ally that the Man in Black is back. It figures. “As soon as you stop running, everyone else starts catching up.”

Back in the city, Christina is accosted by a man who’s been phone-stalking her. “Why are you doing this to us?” he shouts, but she has no memory of doing anything to him. Later, she takes notes for a new story. She wants it to have a happy ending, where the main character finds everything she’s searching for, and everything makes sense. And just then, an individual from her past steps out of the shadows.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In the well-received Apple TV+ series Severance, an all-powerful corporation messes with the memories of its employees, separating work life from personal life and hiding some pretty big secrets. And in 2020 Alex Garland brought Devs to Hulu, with its larger questions about human determinism wrapped up in a slick visual package.

Our Take: Westworld was already set in the future. But now that it’s advanced multiple years into its own future, the bits and pieces of its storytelling have histories of their own. Evan Rachel Wood’s Christina was once known as Delores Abernathy, a host in the Westworld theme park that broke away from her restrictive narrative, became sentient, and led a robot revolt. Is Christina a different – older or newer – consciousness inside the Delores body? Thandiwe Newton’s Maeve is a liberated host still fighting in a war of robots versus humans. And she has even more work to do now that hosts have secretly infiltrated the highest echelons of human society. It’s no longer about whether she can exist, or how she does. Maeve’s way past all of that, and looking ahead to what larger evils are brewing. And while Ed Harris’s Man in Black was always a psycho, the version of him that appears in season four of Westworld has weaponized his madness with a complete lack of scruples. This series is still in pursuit of answers about the nature of life’s spark. But it’s going to fight a few different battles before confronting that bigger picture.

Elsewhere in the Westworld universe, there’s a lot of enjoyment to be derived from watching characters climb out of luxury quad-copter vehicles, seeing those things airborne, or observing the autonomous hired sedan Christina takes to investigate an out-of-town lead on her stalker. The show can offer some nightmarish visions of the future – evil sentient robots, out-of-control social algorithms, and pharmacological “tabs” to manage any ailment, real or imagined. But a lot of its vision just tweaks and refines what’s already happening. Are we also heading toward a war with the machines? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s likely we’ll also take flying cars to get there.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Christina is on her fire escape, looking out at the city at night. “I want to write a new story,” she says into her recording device. “About a girl. A girl who’s searching. A girl who doesn’t know what she’s searching for. She just knows there’s an emptiness in her life.” What memories does Christina have of Delores?

Sleeper Star: Aaron Paul brings a cagey weariness to Caleb that plays well against the character’s personality, where post-traumatic stress competes for space with his wish for domestic bliss and a hair-trigger readiness to go back on the offensive.

Most Pilot-y Line: “The past is the past. Nothing is going to hurt you except your own mind.” Caleb’s wife desperately wants to believe this, but the fact is that, on Westworld, the past is never gone forever, and harm is decidedly not contained within the human mind.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Led by strong work from Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, and Aaron Paul, the sleek visual aesthetic Westworld works with allows it to coast on its own cool weirdness whenever the plotting starts to chase its own tail.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges