Editor's Note: The following article contains some spoilers for Season 4, Episode 1 of Westworld.After a two-year-long hiatus, one of the most puzzling shows of the past decade is back for a new run. HBO has just released the first episode of Season 4 of Westworld. Alongside the ambitious plot, the intriguing set-up, and the always unpredictable twists the series has become known for, this new season also features many faces that fans have come to know and love (or hate) over the past few years. However, not everyone is back as we remember them. Instead of the rebel host Dolores, Evan Rachel Wood returns to the show as an game developer named Christina embedded in the human world, and William (Ed Harris) seems to have reverted to his Man in Black persona. Why exactly this is happening is still anyone’s guess, but the ending of Season 3 might offer some clues in that regard. But to truly come up with theories about what is going on, we must travel farther into the show’s history to understand one of the key elements of Westworld as an enterprise: the Forge.

Season 3 of Westworld aired all the way back in 2020. So, unless you have a host-like memory or had a recent rewatch, no one’s blaming you for not remembering all the details. Still, it’s important to recall how things turned out for at least three of our main characters. Dolores was plugged into Rehoboam by Serac (Vincent Cassel), who was looking for the encryption key to the Delos data that would allow him to make his god-like AI even more omniscient. Frustrated that he couldn’t find the key, he erased Dolores' memories one by one, effectively killing that version of Dolores.

The info Serac was looking for is actually hidden inside Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), who finished off the season taking a trip to the Sublime (more on that below). Meanwhile, the riots caused by the Rehoboam data leak allowed William to escape the mental institution Charlotte (Tessa Thompson) had locked him in and make his way back to her in Dubai. It finally seemed like he was about to get his revenge, but then a host William emerged out of the blue and overpowered him. Despite all of this happening in three different locations, all these stories are connected to one another through one virtual place.

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Image via HBO

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The Forge wasn’t always pure data. Back in Season 2, it was an actual, physical lab in Sector 16 of the Westworld park. In it were several servers that contained data on everyone that ever visited the park. Through the hats provided by the company upon the customers’ arrival in Westworld, Delos collected data on everyone’s choices and actions during their stay. The goal was allegedly to use this information to better understand the company’s clients and offer them a more personalized experience. However, the true purpose of the Forge was much more sinister.

Collecting data on customers was how young William (Jimmi Simpson) eventually convinced James Delos (Peter Mullan) that Westworld could be a profitable acquisition. Their plan was to copy the consciousness of selected guests to hosts’ bodies, virtually making them immortal. As an idea, it’s not that different from Ford (Anthony Hopkins) creating a host based on his friend and colleague Arnold. However, Bernard is a mish-mash of memories from people who knew Arnold, and actually transferring a human being’s consciousness to an artificial body is much more complicated than simply creating an imitation. The most notable example of how prone to failure the whole process is is James Delos himself, who asked to have his consciousness put into a host to escape death only to have multiple versions of himself incinerated due to the prototypes’ lack of mental stability. It turns out there were things about hosts and humans that Delos didn’t know. As Ford later explains, though the human mind can survive for a long time in a virtual space, it quickly degrades after being transferred to a host.

And that was not the only thing Ford knew that Delos didn’t. Behind the company’s back, the Westworld founder used the Forge’s servers to store his Valley Beyond, also known as the Sublime: a virtual kind of afterlife for hosts that wish to live free from their physical bodies in a world with no humans. In the end of Season 2, many hosts chose to take their chances in the Valley Beyond, crossing the Door as a virus quickly turned the park into a bloody nightmare. Bodies were left behind by the consciousness of Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon) and many others that managed to reach the Sublime. Among them was Maeve’s (Thandiwe Newton) daughter. The promise of being reunited with her child is what led Maeve to work with Serac against Dolores in Season 3.

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Image via HBO

Bernard and Dolores also had their own private plans for the Forge. Unbeknownst to Delos and even to himself, Bernard used the servers to increase Dolores' knowledge about humans. At the end of Season 2, Dolores and Bernard manage to access the information stored at the Forge with Peter Abernathy’s (Louis Herthum) pearl, finding out the truth about James Delos. It’s the Forge – through its avatar, James’ son, Logan (Ben Barnes) – that introduces us to the notion that humans might not have free will, after all, a recurring theme throughout Season 3. Avatar-Logan also tells Bernard that he allowed Dolores access to the Forge before, something Bernard doesn’t remember doing.

As part of her plan to liberate hosts, Dolores sabotaged the Forge, causing it to flood. This also led to the collapse of the Door to the Valley Beyond, a realm that Dolores believes to be nothing but another false promise. Afraid of what Dolores has become, Bernard shoots her and leaves the Forge, taking Peter’s pearl with him. He isn’t able to stop the physical storage from flooding, but, through the pearl, the Forge's information is uploaded to one of Delos’ satellites. This is the data that Serac was trying to access and what might be behind Charlotte’s version of William and even Dolores’ new persona.

Now, it’s still early to state with 100% certainty how the Forge is connected to everything. Even if fans do have their assumptions, Westworld has proved them wrong many times before. Is the William in Episode 1 the real deal or merely a copy? Is he the same copy we saw in the Season 3 finale? What about Christina? Is she human or host? Is she a copy of Dolores or was Dolores based on her? What did Bernard see in the Valley Beyond? Only Ford knows! Still, it’s a pretty safe bet that the Delos’ data bank will be extremely important this season, especially after Bernard comes back for good.

Westworld airs on Sundays, on HBO. Episodes are available to stream on HBO Max.