Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 4, Episode 4 of Westworld.Going into Season 4 of Westworld, now at the halfway point, it seemed as though the show was setting up for a climactic confrontation between humanity and the hosts. We had seen Hale, played by a terrifying Tessa Thompson in rare villainous form, beginning to lay the foundation for a plan to take over people’s very minds. Working against her was the charming duo of Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) and Caleb (Aaron Paul) who were pulling out all the stops in a desperate attempt to stop her. In the last episode, the show even took on a bit of a more humorous tone as they infiltrated the new park and used Maeve’s knowledge of the narratives that were repeating themselves to find their footing. Of course, Westworld being Westworld, there was still a persistent and horrifying sense that something was off. The various timelines and stories all seemed disconnected as if the show was hiding something. In the fourth episode, “Generation Loss,” we saw the story lay its cards on the table to devastating effect.
As it turns out, the plan that Hale set in motion was not just in the works. It had already succeeded. Despite all the efforts to stop her, she won. Her operation now has the entire world in her grasp and Caleb, in his attempts to stop her in the past, had perished. The infiltration mission that he had been on with Maeve? Merely a memory being replayed in the consciousness of his now host body that is being tested for fidelity by Hale. Maeve, more invulnerable than the once human Caleb, was buried under the sand. This came after a fight with the Man in Black (Ed Harris) in the shadow of the enormous terraformer first seen in Season 1. She had sacrificed herself thinking that this would help to guarantee Caleb could escape. Alas, it was to no avail. She was then dug up by Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and Caleb's daughter C (Aurora Perrineau) more than two decades later. They hope to use her as a weapon in a vastly different fight and world than we had anticipated up until now.
It was a wonderfully surprising moment not just because of how it so thoroughly pulled the rug out from under us, as the show has done many times, but for what it opens up for the future. Even as all the timelines have collapsed in on themselves, the future is now an expansive one with intriguing possibilities ahead. Just as it did with the time jump at the beginning of the season, which turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg, it has now thrown itself forward into what is a fresh new future of storytelling possibility. Whereas many of the twists back in Season 3 were lacking in any greater imagination or forward momentum, this revelation proves to be the show's most promising yet. Not only does it reveal how Hale has seemingly turned the entire world into a version of the parks where people are the hosts, but it also is elevated by a solid performance by Paul when his character realizes his fate. The way he captures the panic and fear that begins to consume him ensures that this gut punch of a twist is grounded in his emotions. As he runs out into the world that then freezes around him, the bottom completely drops out of the narrative we’d come to expect in the best way possible. We and the host that has Caleb's consciousness are now in a more thrilling freefall, with the potential to land in any unknown place that the show wants to drop us into.
While there is certain to be more conflict ahead, the episode’s final scenes move beyond just being about the battle between the hosts and the humans that we had anticipated into something more deeply engrossing. The questions now facing the story are far different ones than anything that have been raised before. While it was initially engaging to see Caleb grappling with the gargantuan task of how to stop Hale, the impact of his death on the world is a profound one. Even just initially we see that Hale has dramatically reshaped the world, leaving the survivors struggling just to survive. Getting to see how Caleb’s daughter has been impacted by not knowing exactly what happened to him adds depth and texture to it all. For the show to reintroduce us to a character whose life has been forever altered by the massive upheaval of the last 20 years could catch some off guard. However, the show makes this reveal into something both melancholic and meaningful that only has room to grow. While the first half of the season was moving along just fine, it still was building to a more conventional confrontation of the same characters going at it. You could see how this was going to end up.
For the story to then reinvent itself once more, jumping ahead to show a new generation had to take up the fight, adds interesting wrinkles that pull us in more thoroughly than it has in a long while. It is not just that the show is as unexpected as ever, it is that it is proving to be more unique in how it pulls it all off. In prior seasons, the twists and turns often felt like they were becoming more narrow in focus. It was like it got caught up in its own loops, spinning itself in circles without ever looking ahead. This most recent episode did the opposite, unraveling the narrative threads it was laying out in ways that create new possibilities. Even as it required the unexpected loss of a major character, the impact of his death is just what the show needed. It ensures we are constantly kept on our toes as it pushes us into uncharted waters, offering up an abundance of potential new directions for it to go down. There are still unanswered questions, though the answers we’ve been given have shown an entertaining willingness to upend everything we’ve come to know. This bold sensibility is something the show has been desperately missing as it creates a multitude of opportunities to draw us into its story even more. It is a book being written where the pages can be completely rearranged at any moment, creating the most exciting journey it has been on since it first began.