Warning. This review contains spoilers about the fourth season of the TV show “Westworld”!
On August 14 the fourth season of the show “Westworld” ended.
The third season of this show expanded the story far beyond the park and Delos. Issues such as control and manipulation are addressed in a way that makes the boundaries between humans and robots increasingly blurred. In both groups, only a few are aware of what’s really going on around them and acting in ways that don’t conform to the demands of the system brings serious danger.
“Westworld” fourth season cast consists of:
- Evan Rachel Wood (photo ©Gage Skidmore) as Christina
- Thandiwe Newton (photo ©Ministry Of Stories) as Maeve Millay
- Aaron Paul as Caleb Nichols
- Ed Harris as William
- Jeffrey Wright as Bernard Lowes
- Luke Hemsworthy as Ashley Stubbs
- Angela Sarafyan as Clementine Pennyfeather
- Tessa Thompson as Dolores Abernathy/Charlotte Hale
- James Marsden as Teddy Flood
After the destruction of Rehoboam, Maeve went into hiding but someone managed to track her down and tries to kill her. Maeve discovers the ambush in time and wins the fight. Examining the memories of one of the hosts sent to kill her, she discovers that the instigator is William or at least someone who looks like him. She leaves her home and goes in search of Caleb, who now has a family and only wants a normal life. They too are the subject of an assassination attempt and that means the war is not really over.
The story of Maeve and Caleb is only the one that most reprises the plot from the third season with two protagonists who remained the same. Other subplots begin with other protagonists returning from the third season but you need to remember who changed their faces. There’s also the case of Christina, who works as a writer in a video game company and has Dolores’s face despite being, at least in appearance, a different character.
The subplot centered around Maeve and Caleb is the one that’s used to slowly reveal what happened in the years between the end of the third season and the beginning of the fourth. This season, it seems that the characters are acting in pairs and in the other subplots there are Dolores / Charlotte Hale along with the resident with William’s face, Christina along with Teddy, and Bernard Lowe along with Ashley Stubbs.
The discovery of a part of Dolores / Charlotte Hale’s sinister plan leads to a city where the situation is in some ways the mirror image of one of Delos parks. Words like hosts and guests have lost their original meaning in a situation where the differences between humans and robots become increasingly difficult to find.
Even Dolores, who is the most anti-human of all hosts, has behaviors that mirror humans even when turned against humans. Like many revolutionaries who fight to free someone, ends up acting like if not worse than the tyrants she defeated.
This plot was developed by alternating subplots set in different years, as it has been since the beginning of the show. Already in the third season, this intertwining was made less convoluted and this allows the audience to focus on the issues addressed. Season after season, the show has also become less philosophical but themes such as control and manipulation have always been significant in the history of humanity and become even more important with the development of technologies that allow working on people in a more sophisticated way.
The audience needs focus for another type of complication, the one derived from the existence of the Sublime. It’s best to try to understand what happens in the physical world and what happens in the virtual world in the first episodes of the season when the pace is slower and you can analyze the details while watching. In the last few episodes, the pace gets very fast with a lot of action, often violent, and twists.
The previous seasons left open various narrative threads to be developed later. From this perspective, the Season 4 finale feels more like a midseason finale, as it seems to postpone everything to what is supposed to be the last season. For this reason, it’s in my opinion, less satisfying even if the stakes are very high, as the alternatives are survival and extinction. Apparently, the final showdown will take place in a version of the original park.
