Christina (Evan Rachel Wood) seems trapped. She gets up, zips up her bed, raises the blinds on her New York City apartment, then walks the High Line on her way to work, where she pitches plots for games at Olympiad Entertainment. Shes not great at her job; nobody wants romance and happy endings, people want melodrama, transgressions, and lots of downer endings. Not a natural choice for someone who seems to see the beauty in the world around her. She leaves work, goes back home, and repeats the whole process again the next day, with only sporadic interruptions by a deranged man calling her phone hundreds of times a day, begging her to change her stories, begging that his life has been destroyed by her game. Engaging him only escalates the behavior; its all a big mystery waiting to be unraveled.

While Caleb tries to forget his past and Christina tries to forge a future, Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) is hiding from the ambitious, dangerous man in charge of Delos, William (Ed Harris), who has emerged from hiding and resumed his mad quest to hunt down and exterminate the escaped Hosts, starting with Maeve, and supporters of hosts like Caleb. He also kills off a Mexican cartel and takes over a data storage facility built into the Hoover Dam in the cold opening, so William might have been laying low, but hes still thinking big and solving his problems with violence. His emergence spells trouble for both Maeve and Caleb. As it turns out, paranoia can be pretty useful when youre enemies with a vengeful billionaire with a taste for ten-gallon hats, revolvers, and killer robots like the repurposed Col. Brigham (Frederic Lehne) and Hector (Rodrigo Santoro).

Wont Maeve be thrilled if she sees him again after so long?

It seems as though time jumps are the biggest new trend on television, or at least the genre television I tend to watch. It makes sense, though; if you dont want to wade through the fallout of an epic season finale, just move forward until its settled down and you can work on telling whatever story youre really looking to tell. In this case, Maeve, William, and Caleb seem to be getting ready to finish what started last season and Christina (or perhaps Dolores?) may be on the cusp of finding a familiar partner to ride shotgun with her on the journey of life. Im not sure whats getting set up, but Lisa Joy and Will Soodiks script is solid work, with Christina being an interesting wrinkle on the traditional role of Dolores as a farmers daughter artist who dreams bright and big, and Caleb settling back into familiar roles as a co-conspirator battling against the wealth and power of a billionaire. Maeves tongue is sharper than ever after 8 long years of living in the wilderness. The seeds planted for Christina also seem like theyll be interested, especially considering just who stepped in to prevent her from being battered by her stalker.

Eight years gave humanity an opportnity to rebuild that apparently wasnt taken, aside from a more open job market. Roles were inevitably settled back into, and the performers on Westworld have no issues settling back into their roles. Aaron Pauls Caleb is happier, more settled, despite his lot in life not really changing all that much. Christina is a new character, but Evan Rachel Wood imbues her with the weight of Dolores old soul with ease. Thandiwe Newton still steals every scene shes in with a cutting glance; wry amusement drips off every word she utters in her scene with Caleb. Ed Harris may or may not be playing a host version of William, but hes still the no-nonsense, intimidating threat hes always been, whether hes staring at Caleb across a crowded plaza or shaking down a Mexican organized crime syndicate.

Director Richard J. Lewis does a very good job handling the table-setting sections of the story. We dont really know who Christina is, or why she looks like Dolores, but the scenes of her traveling through New New York are tense, especially once her stalker is actively after her, drawing mazes in dirt on her fire escape and watching her from afar. Calebs scenes are more grounded, but the character still seethes with internal struggle that reflects wonderfully in Aaron Pauls body language; hes trying to be normal, but hes not sure what that is after dedicating so much of his life to war. William is William; Ed Harris is the most dangerous pensioner to ever shrug on a suit jacket, and he knows it.

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Westworld Season 4 Episode 1 Review: The Auguries - Den of Geek