Everything You Need To Remember Before Westworld Season 4

Spoilers ahead for Westworld Season 3. By the time Westworld returns for Season 4, it will have been more than two years since viewers last saw the hosts and robots of HBO’s dystopian universe. Picking up several years after the Westworld Season 3 finale, the latest installment, premiering on June 26, finds the characters far from where fans last saw them — both literally and figuratively. With that in mind, here’s a quick refresher on how all the major character storylines ended in Season 3.

Caleb & Maeve Destroyed Rehoboam

Handpicked by Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) after it was revealed he’d stopped several of his fellow soldiers from assaulting her in the past, Caleb (Aaron Paul) shut down the Rehoboam supercomputer controlling humankind. Working in tandem with Maeve (Thandiwe Newton), who eliminated the villainous Serac (Vincent Cassel), Caleb briefly became the head of Incite. He chose to force Rehoboam into deleting itself, apparently restoring humanity’s free will. In the final pre-credits scene, Caleb and Maeve were left looking on as Los Angeles burned. “This is the new world,” Maeve told him, setting up Season 4. “And, in this world, you can be whoever the f*ck you want.”

Dolores Met Her Demise

Though it seemed for most of Season 3 that Dolores intended only to destroy humanity, the finale revealed her true goal was to give humans and hosts free will to choose how to live their lives. Because Serac had uploaded Dolores to Rehoboam, the supercomputer’s destruction also wiped all of her memories in the process. Though Wood is returning for Season 4 as a new character named Christine, Dolores really did die, something that Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) seemingly confirmed when he later observed that he no longer sensed the connection they once shared.

The Man In Black Is Now A Robot

In a post-credits scene, William, aka The Man in Black (Ed Harris), traveled to the Delos research lab, where he encountered Charlotte (Tessa Thompson), who was building an army of new hosts. After William raised his gun, she noted that he was “going to save the world,” just in time for a fully costumed artificial version of the Man in Black to emerge and murder him instead. “[The Man in Black] winds up becoming this thing [a host] that he’s controlled for so long,” series co-creator Jonathan Nolan confirmed at a 2020 Paley Center panel. “And on a visceral level, I just can’t wait to watch Ed kill everyone.”

Bernard Traveled To The Sublime

Later in the post-credits sequence, Bernard, who was holding the Forge key all along, is covered in post-apocalyptic dust, coming back online after an unknown amount of time spent in the digital “Sublime” world. In Season 4, Bernard is “still trying to solve it all and he is still very much a part of the struggle,” Wright told Deadline in February, promising that his character will be “right there at the center of” the action, moving forward. With Bernard holding all this power, there is little doubt that he will be the new season’s secret weapon.