[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Season 4 of Westworld.]

From show creators Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan, the fourth season of the HBO series Westworld has jumped seven years forward in time and presents a disorienting new world that continues to lead its audience down a path of questioning anything and everything that presents itself as reality. Everything feels unsettling, as you wonder who’s a host and who’s a human. While some who were human are now hosts, some hosts have become different beings from what they once were, and some have evolved in their abilities, all talking steps toward whatever terrifying goal they’ve set their sights on now.

During this interview with Collider, co-stars Jeffrey Wright (who plays Bernard Lowe, a host that has evolved in mysterious ways) and Luke Hemsworth (who plays Ashley Stubbs, the former security chief for the park that’s now just trying to figure out Bernard’s plan) talked about the Bernard/Stubbs dynamic, how the relationship between their characters evolved once the creators decided to take Stubbs in a different direction, that things with the show are always changing, how much they’re actually told about the season arc prior to filming, how Stubbs feels about this new Bernard, and what Wright enjoyed about this new shift in his character.

Collider: I love this odd couple/buddy duo of Bernard and Stubbs. Their dynamic is everything I never knew I wanted, but I totally love it. What have you guys most enjoyed about the dynamic between your characters? Has it become something of a touchstone for you to return to, no matter what’s going on around them?

JEFFREY WRIGHT: Yeah, it’s a touchstone. It’s good. It’s anchoring. The low center of gravity keeps us grounded.

LUKE HEMSWORTH: It’s like a little in joke, I feel like. It feels like we know a secret that no one else does. We’re having more fun than we should be. It’s easy. It makes it a joy. It makes me look forward to going to work, which is not always the case. As interesting as this job can be, we’ve been very lucky on this show to work with just amazing collaborators, amazing artists, and amazing people behind the scenes. Getting to spend day in and day out with [Jeffrey] has been a joy and a lesson.

WRIGHT: What more could you ask for?

HEMSWORTH: I watch him, and I’m in awe. I really am. My respect and my love for him, as a human, comes through mean everything that we do. I think that’s what makes it special.

Jeffrey, with the little bits that you knew when you signed on to the show, could you have imagined that this is where Bernard would go and that this is where things would lead for him? Could you have imagined any of this happening?

WRIGHT: No. I knew that the possibilities were pretty wide open, from reading the first script, with the way that it was structured. And then, with the focus on the technology, it opened up all of these various windows of possibility. Jonah [Nolan] and Lisa [Joy] are so far ahead of us, in terms of understanding the intricacies of the show and the trajectory of the show because they’re writing it, so no. In fact, the relationship of Bernard and Stubbs really evolved after the second season, in a cool way that was purely fluid and organic. As I understand it, one of the drivers behind it was that there may have been a different intention at the beginning, but Jonah and Lisa wanted Luke to stay on the show. They wanted him around, as we all did. That just speaks to the nature of who he is and how we all work together. But I think the intent, at the beginning, was very different and it evolved into this. I said, “Get rid of him. Get rid of this guy.” And they said, “Nope.”

HEMSWORTH: I said, “Please, don’t pair me up with him.”

WRIGHT: It’s been pretty cool. That’s how everyone was feeling and how everyone had voted.

How much did each of you actually know about this season, going in? Did you have a partial framework, or did you have an idea of what the full arc would be?

WRIGHT: I still don’t know. Things are always ever-changing with our show, and they still change, as the episodes are edited. Chronology is often shifted around. Something that you thought might have been in one episode is in another episode. That’s been true with this season too, so I still have some catching up to do, in terms of what I’ll learn when I watch each episode.

HEMSWORTH: I think we stopped trying to figure out what our trajectory would be, after the first season. Everyone had their theories and their answers, and everything turned out to be wrong. We were all fed bits of information, very, very slowly, over the years. We’ve learned to trust that it’s all gonna be okay. The people that we work with, Jonah and Lisa, are just very, very, very intelligent, very articulate, and very talented people, as all the writers of the show are. They get sick of me asking questions. I don’t know what anyone else asks, but I’ve been told that I’m only allowed to ask one question a day. It’s a good place to be. It’s liberating. We don’t know what’s coming, so it’s a joyous surprise to get the scripts, each couple of weeks, and go through them and join the dots. Invariably, some things come together, every couple of episodes, and it’s always cool.

Luke, do you feel like you have answers to the questions that you’ve had? Are you satisfied in knowing what you know now, or do you still have a lot of questions about the show?

HEMSWORTH: I’m never satisfied. I like to have all the information. There’s been a lot of inventiveness in my journey, just purely to fill in some blanks, on my part. That’s been with Lisa and Jonah, as well. We’ve had to discover stuff along the way that wasn’t planned. There was every intention that my character wasn’t gonna be around for very long at all, but I’m very happy to still be there and still discover parts of this guy and watch him unfold. There are so many parallels between our lives and this show. It speaks to everyone’s want, to make this fresh and exciting as possible each season. Consequently, I feel like we’re examining it through a bigger and bigger lens, and seeing this world and these characters reinvented. Where do you go from here? I don’t know.

Jeffrey, were there any times, over the seasons, that you were filled in on one of the big reveals, and then you just didn’t tell anybody about it?

WRIGHT: Sometimes they tell me where craft services is, and they don’t tell anyone else. I basically go for sandwiches and everybody’s waiting, trying to figure out where the sandwiches are, and I’m like, “I’ve been told not to tell.” I’ll bring a sandwich back for someone, but they’ll have to share one sandwich among many. Aside from that, there was the reveal in Season 1, about my secret identity. So, it was that one and craft services.

What's it like to play a Bernard who’s more ahead of the game this season? Does it help that he’s prophetic, even if you still don’t know what’s going on?

WRIGHT: Bernard has been always a couple of steps behind, certainly with Dolores. That was the nature of his existence, that he didn’t know that there was a massive blind spot, in front of him that he was completely oblivious to. There’s been a process for him to step into the light and he’s getting there now. It’s a nice shift. It gives him a bit of agency. He’s had a tricky time. He’s had a rough time. He’s been under the thumb of the system, in some ways, and of Ford, and of the park. If only his being free is an act of vengeance against all of that, then that’s fair enough. It’s been nice to see him break the shackles of that and of those limitations. We’ll see what the consequences are for that, but it’s a nice shift in gears.

And how does Stubbs feel about this all-knowing version of Bernard?

HEMSWORTH: Stubbs has been in the dark with Bernard, for a long time. The nature of Stubbs’ journey is that he has his task, and he’s good at that one task. It wasn’t in his nature to question the reality of his nature. Spending all these years alone in a hotel room is maybe forcing him to go down that route. He’s finally starting to open up his consciousness to a greater part of reality, and also find that following Bernard around may not be the be all and end all.

WRIGHT: Hang in there.

HEMSWORTH: I’m still on your team, but I feel like there’s an inkling there. There’s a seed in Stubbs’ mind, a splinter.

Westworld airs on Sunday nights on HBO and is available to stream at HBO Max.