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Warning: This interview contains spoilers from HBO western world episode 401 “The Augurs”.
It’s brand new western world, and, man, does it seem peaceful since Maeve and Caleb challenged the computer Rehobeam with predictive AI and big-think last season. Dolores even helped and sacrificed her life.
So let’s all update you on what happened tonight:
—Ed Harris’ Man in Black aka William walks around like he has a mind of his own and a lot of strength. But remember, Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) killed what appeared to be a human version of him in the Season 3 finale and sent an army of the guy out into the world. MIB wants to buy a water dam from a drug cartel. He makes them an offer they can’t refuse, but initially refuse: Sell it today, “or give it to me for free tomorrow,” MIB booms to Arturo Del Puerto’s cartel leaders. “What I want is already in there. It was stolen from one of my facilities eight years ago and I know you were paid well to keep it,” MIB tells him, “I can’t encrypt it. I don’t want it to be moved or disturbed, so I’ll take all the stuff.”
Later, Del Puerto’s character, who refused to sell the dam, is inundated with flies in his room and knocked unconscious. The next day he wakes up and tells his boss (Alex Fernandez) and his cronies about MIB’s offer. They laugh. Del Puerto’s character pulls out a knife and kills her. He then meets MIB on the dam’s bridge and agrees to sell the structure to him. “Is my job done?” he asks. “Yeah, you can rest now,” MIB replies before the guy cuts his own throat.
—There’s Dolores… but it’s not Dolores. Rather, Christine played by Evan Rachel Wood. She’s a lovesick, hardworking single girl in town who works a posh office job writing 3D game stories for people. She lives with a roommate, played by Oscar winner Ariana DeBose, who is always encouraging Christina to go out and date. However, the stories Christina writes seem to be affecting the wider public, and not in a good way. She wants to write more romance storylines, such as a teenage girl living in the country with her father (sounds a lot like Dolores’ western story; “Scratch that,” says Christina). However, her boss does not want her sweet stories, but more sex, violence and tragedy. Meanwhile, Christina receives disturbing calls from a man who claims her storylines have forced him to lose his job and his wife. He blames the tower, which may be the building she works in. We later learn that this guy’s name is Peter. He attacks Christina after a date and cuts her with a knife before being overpowered by a mysterious guy on the street. At the end of the episode we learn that it is James Marsden who protected Christina. In previous seasons, Marsden played the cowboy Teddy Flood, a host who always had a crush on Dolores at the Delos Westworld theme park. The next day after meeting Christina, Peter calls her and says, “Is that my business, or did you write that too?” before jumping off a building to his death in front of her.
—maeve (Thandiwe Newton) lives in the woods and hides in a cabin after winning the revolution at the end of season three. But she learns that hosts are coming to get her. She takes them out and cuts off one of their heads. She joins in and learns that MIB/William is behind it. It’s time for her to return to the world.
—Caleb (AaronPaul). Despite helping Maeve win the war, he’s back to work in construction, but not alongside a robot like last season, but as a real human. The robots, we learn, are all junk now. “Has your life changed since you destroyed those machines?” Caleb’s co-worker asks him. Caleb has a daughter, but he teaches her how to shoot a pistol (similar to a BB gun). “Thanks to you, her hobbies are sugar and violence,” says Caleb’s wife of their daughter. Later that night, an assailant approaches Caleb’s daughter. However, the intruder is immediately gutted by Maeve’s samurai sword. “I know who sent those men after us: William. He’s back,” Maeve tells Caleb. She also knows that MIB has met with a California Senator and she wants to track him down. Caleb is absolutely ready for it, saying to his lover, who is losing patience with his shenanigans, “I’m the one who brought this upon us and I’m the one who has to end it.”
Here’s our conversation with western world Co-Creator, EP and Writer Lisa Joy to explain it all:
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MEETING: How many years is it after the revolution? Is it immediately after?
Lisa Joy: It’s been over seven years since we last saw our characters. There is no more struggle. Everything is over. We skipped the big fight and now we see the aftermath of the fight.
DEADLINE: The setup for Season 4 looks like host versus host. You have Charlotte and you know she is not human, and then you have William who is not; He runs the quarters. Maeve hides in a cabin and is attacked by security guards who are hosts and she is able to hack into her brain. So it looks like there is this gulf between the hosts.
Lisa Joy: Right. It kind of looks like it. It looks like Dolores bought people’s freedom from this massive AI after her death over seven years ago, and they kind of distrusted the general AI. You can see it with Caleb refusing to work with a robot and now he’s working with a human, but that doesn’t mean the AI is gone. The remaining hosts clearly have other things on their minds. In the case of Maeve, she got them eat, pray, love Alone in Alaska at the moment, but maybe some of our hosts have banded together for even more nefarious shenanigans. I think the question that’s going to be asked this season is after a period of unrest, if you’ve somehow earned that relaxation, that peace, can it stay, or are people and their kind heirs in the form of these hosts somehow destined to always get caught up in these loops of rebelliousness and struggle and division?
DEADLINE: So, since Rehoboam is gone and AI isn’t gone, there’s talk of that tower. Is this the company Evan Rachel Wood’s character works for?
Lisa Joy: I have no idea.
DEADLINE: Okay, but the Tower seems to be this new AI because characters keep saying, “The Tower makes me do these things.”
Lisa Joy: It just sounds like madmen’s rampage to me.
DEADLINE: Season 3 felt like a reboot of some sort. Is season 4 too?
Lisa Joy: I mean, I think we’ve always seen this story in these unique chapters and almost every season in different genres in a way. There’s everything from character trajectories to the worlds we explore to the times we explore. We tried to develop further. So I’m not sure if reboot is the right word for it, but you know we’re dealing with AI and an examination of the long history, because of course AI doesn’t have the same lifespan as humans. So it makes sense to me not to have to make things totally linear in terms of a direct pickup or something like that. And to me, war is brutal and terrible and devastating for all parties. Every war is the result of massive failure on all sides. Death and devastation aside, what interests me is not the war itself, because it is so fundamental and so sad, but the aftermath of war: how people live with the scars of war, how civilizations pick themselves up or redirect themselves, how culture changes. From time to time people face such forces of generational change. I think we just went through one ourselves and the question is, well, what’s the next step in human evolution?
MEETING: Is this the final season, or does your team see two more seasons left, or is it a wait and see thing?
Lisa Joy: no You never want to defy the TV gods, but (western world co-creator) Jonah (Nolan) and I always had an ending in mind that we hope to achieve. We haven’t quite got there yet.
DEADLINE: And then Dolores. She was struck out of Rehoboam…
Lisa Joy: Yes. She is dead.
DEADLINE: It’s Westworld – people can be rebooted. There is always a backup. Do we know how she got from the end of season 3 to now, or are we still learning?
Lisa Joy: I mean she didn’t. Dolores is absolutely dead. Her sacrifice was significant as it helped bring the world to this place, but it was a sacrifice as there are no more Dolores. I’m not sure I would call it a version, but you know, there’s this new character, Christina. We just walk with her while she experiences the city, dates, is a writer. It’s really nice not only to be able to speak in metaphors, to be able to do something contemporary and human, to write roommates, banter and bad dates. I haven’t done that yet. It’s always been a piece out of time western world. I wanted a really great actor to play this girl, Christina, and I hope people don’t notice because I changed her hair color, but we just cast Evan again. I think the hair color will fool you. You probably won’t recognize them.
DEADLINE: William feels so alive. We think he’s dead, but it feels like he’s not dead. From his maneuvers, it doesn’t feel like he’s a programmed bot.
Lisa Joy: Unfortunately, he is what you have observed – the thing William least wanted to be, which is a host. Not only that, he’s also a host on a chain. He’s Hales… you know.
