Westworld season 4 gets off to a promising start in “The Auguries”

After two years, Westworld is back on the air for its fourth season. The season 4 premiere episode, “The Auguries,” brings us back into the futuristic world of HBO’s science fiction drama while making it very clear that this is a Westworld like none we’ve seen before.

As always, there will be SPOILERS beyond this point. So if you haven’t watched this week’s episode of Westworld, go do that first. With a show this unpredictable, you don’t want the journey spoiled.

Westworld Episode 401 review

Westworld is one of those shows that reinvents itself with each season, and from the start of season 4 it’s clear that this will once again be the case. However, for as many strides as the premiere takes, it also feels much more cyclically tied to the show’s first season than previous seasons did. We don’t know for sure whether we’ll be getting a season 5 of Westworld, but right from the get-go season 4 feels like it’s setting up an endgame for the series by honoring what came before.

All this is to say that if you’ve enjoyed Westworld so far, you’ll almost certainly enjoy the premiere of season 4. If you fell off of the show or lost interest because of its dense miasma of plotlines, “The Auguries” may not change that opinion.

“The Auguries” is also a much more focused episode than we’re used to from Westworld. It primarily homes in on two plotlines. The first starts with William, aka The Man in Black (Ed Harris), who is buying up properties in the southwest for some unknown purpose. One of those facilities houses enormous, state-of-the-art data banks, and there’s something in there that William wants. However, the cartel owners of the data banks aren’t interested in selling them.

William persuades them, Westworld style. A swarm of flies mysteriously appears in the lead cartel officer’s room. The next day he wakes up on the floor, then goes and murders his comrades before telling William it’s done and taking his own life. The flies are an interesting element; the opening credits sequence now includes what appears to be some kind of Host-fly being created, so we can presume this is some kind of new technology developed by William and/or Charlotte (Tessa Thompson).

I suppose this is as good a time as any for a reminder: the William we see in this sequence is a Host. The final scene of season 3 revolved around the real William discovering that Charlotte (who is actually a copy of Dolores) was building an army of Hosts in secret. She reveals that she made a Host version of William to serve as the general of that army; Host William quickly kills off his human counterpart.

Seven years gone

While we never see Charlotte in the season 4 premiere, William is clearly hard at work on her behalf. He’s also sending Hosts out to find Caleb (Aaron Paul) and Maeve (Thandiwe Newton), both of whom have been struggling to adapt to their new lives in the seven years (!) since Westworld season 3. The time jump is kind of mind-blowing, but the show does a great job of handling it.

Maeve is living out her life in a secluded cabin until William’s thugs show up. She kills them, because she’s Maeve, and then plugs into the mind of their leader to figure out that it was William who sent them. Thandiwe Newton immediately elevates any scene she’s in. Maeve is still experimenting with her powers here, which is nice to see even though all it does this episode is draw the attention of William’s flunkies.

Then there’s Caleb, who is now married and has a seven-year-old daughter. There’s some really interesting commentary in Caleb’s plotline about how even though the AI system that was deciding people’s fates is gone, life hasn’t changed all that much for a lot of people. Caleb’s still working on the holidays and still dealing with PTSD from his ordeal with Rehoboam. Though his family life seems great, there’s a feeling that he’s haunted by the past.

As is usually the case with Westworld, the subtle worldbuilding is really excellent. Caleb’s construction job is the kind of thing that would have been done by robots before. Despite his lingering feelings of unease, there is a pervading sense that the workings of the world have changed somewhat in these past seven years, even if people are still stuck in loops, so to speak.

Despite Caleb’s wife insisting that he’s being paranoid, it turns out that his fears that the past will catch up to him are well-founded when William’s soldiers come for him. Maeve shows up just in time to save him and his daughter, and they decide to team up to find a senator that she’s discovered William is going after next. Caleb leaving behind his family is difficult; here’s hoping he sees them again.

Christina just wants a happy ending

The character who gets the most focus in the premiere is a new one…kind of. Season 3 culminated with the death of Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), one of the original Hosts and the main character of Westworld. Considering how many characters are androids on this show, there’s always room to bring people back. Wood returns in season 4, but as a seemingly new character named Christina, a struggling video game writer.

Christina’s plotline mirrors Westworld season 1 in some very cool ways, including how Wood’s character wakes up multiple times throughout the episode, and how she’s asked to “pick a side” between white and black shoes by her roommate (played by West Side Story’s Ariana Debose). Christina is disillusioned with her life, wishing she could write happier stories instead of the bloody, tragic ones she’s being pressured to churn out by her boss.

But something fishy is going on, of course. Christina gets calls from a man she doesn’t know, who claims that she’s ruining his life with her stories. It culminates in him attacking her outside of her apartment, insisting she needs to write him a happier ending. A mysterious figure shows up and saves her, though she doesn’t get a good look at him.

The next day, the man once again calls Christina right before jumping off the roof of a nearby building to his death, which he insists is how she wrote his story ending. It’s not clear what the connection between the entertainment company Christina works for and these seemingly “real” stories are, but it’s one of the juiciest mysteries set up in “The Auguries.”

How Christina is connected to the Hosts is another huge mystery, since she’s played by the same actress as Dolores was for most of the show’s run. In the episode’s final moments, it’s revealed that the mysterious man watching over her is none other than Teddy (James Marsden), who we haven’t seen since he killed himself in season 2 to escape all the bloodshed in the Westworld park. We don’t know if this is some other Teddy or if it’s the original character repurposed, but the reveal that he’s the one watching over Christina while she ruminates over wishing she could have a happy ending for herself was a really nice touch. Lord knows those two deserve one.

Westworld Bullet Points

• There are a lot of elements that are so flawless it’s almost easy to gloss over them because of how intricate the story is on this show. The music by Ramin Djawadi, the visuals, the acting and script are all as sharp as ever. The jury is always out about where the story will go, but the show itself is as immaculately polished as ever.
• Speaking of the design, Christina’s apartment is cool. The subtle near-future touches are fantastically realized, from the way her bed folds up into her wall to the earpiece she uses to dictate her stories. The world is very immersive.
• Thandiwe Newton is as charming as ever as Maeve. The prospect of her and Aaron Paul’s Caleb going on a mission together in next week’s episode is really exciting.
• As I mentioned, this episode is very focused on character building for our four main players: William, Christina, Caleb, and Maeve. We don’t see Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) or Charlotte at all. No doubt they’ll crop up next time.
• The whole plotline with Christina mirrors Dolores’ from season 1. Like season 1, Wood’s character is potentially caught in a loop that isn’t “real” without realizing it. How will things be different now that she’s out in the real world, when she discovers she’s really a Host? And how did she come to be where she is?
• Who left that maze painted on Christina’s balcony? There is a sense that she could be a Host who isn’t aware she’s a Host. Maybe Teddy is trying to help her remember by leaving that maze drawing there?
• The show hints at a lot of things that have happened in the intervening seven years. There’s reference to the “riots,” which we saw happen in season 3 when the truth came out about Rehoboam’s life-controlling algorithms. The season 4 premiere takes place on a day called the “Anniversary,” which is a holiday celebrating the fall of Rehoboam and the supposed freedom gained by humanity.
• Maeve taking out William’s soldiers was badass. She’s always been my favorite character and I’m glad that she’s getting so much focus out of the gate this season.
• What does William want from those data banks? He said that someone stole something from him eight years ago and stored it there, seemingly alluding to Dolores. Answers we’re looking forward to!

Verdict

Westworld is back and as thoughtfully crafted as eve. While Westworld has never been a show to shy away from violence and action sequences, the season 4 premiere leaned much more heavily on developing the characters we’ll be following this season and how the seven-year time jump has affected their lives. The worldbuilding, music, writing, and effects were all excellent, and there are some intriguing mysteries on the board. “The Auguries” is a promising start to the season.

Episode Grade: B+

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