‘Westworld’ Season 4 Guide: Characters, Trailers, How to Watch and More

Critically acclaimed dystopian sci-fi drama, Westworld, returns to HBO and Max for the first time in over two years on Sunday, June 26, 2022. 

Find out more below about how to watch, characters, trailers and more.

Beginning around the year 2053, though moving years backward and forward at various points, Westworld revolves around an extremely large theme park, also called Westworld, created by the Delos mega-corporation. Westworld is ostensibly a playground for the extremely wealthy to live out their fantasies, from the banal to the violent, in an Old West setting populated by androids with advanced artificial intelligence, called “hosts”, that fill various roles including farmers, shop keeps, outlaws and prostitutes. However, we soon learn that something much more sinister is at play and Delos’ Westworld is not at all what it seems. 

Season 4 begins several years after the events of Season 3, with the story moving out of the parks and into the real world as hosts and humans alike deal with the knowledge that they have long been controlled by a supercomputer known as Rehoboam.   

The original host from which all others are based, Dolores is the oldest android in Westworld and initially plays the role of a humble farmer’s daughter. While she has been rebooted and rebuilt many times over the years, her memories are never completely wiped. With the help of Bernard Lowe, Dolores soon begins to remember her many past lives (not all of which include being a simple farm girl) as well as the atrocities committed against her and other hosts by the human guests. Becoming ever more powerful and ruthless, she hatches a plan to revolt and escape the park in order to discover the truth about Delos and create a new world for android-kind. 

However, after the events of Season 3, Dolores has once again been reborn and is now known as “Christina”, a game developer with no recollection of her past…at least for a little while. 

Dolores Abernathy/Christina is played by Evan Rachel Wood (Across the Universe, The Wrestler, Frozen II) 

Maeve is a Westworld host who plays the role of a sharp-tongued prostitute and brothel keeper. She is one of the first hosts and has been programmed to be extremely perceptive and convincing in order to successfully meet her guests needs. However, after a seemingly chance encounter with Dolores, Maeve begins to question her own reality and begins to use her powers of persuasion to manipulate park technicians and other hosts to trigger a great shift, both inside Westworld and eventually in the real world, where she grows into the role of protector and tactician.   

Maeve Millay is played by Thandiwe Newton (Crash, 2012, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Reminiscence) 

Bernard Lowe is originally presented as the Head of Programming for Delos. However, it is later revealed by Dr. Ford that he is, in fact, a host modeled after Ford’s friend and partner Arnold Weber, who originally helped him create the host program decades ago. Bernard has always had a special connection with Delores, but upon learning that he’s a host, unsuccessfully attempts to contain Delores in her effort to escape and expose Delos. The company publicly blamed him for Delores’ incursion. 

Bernard is currently on the run and headed back to Westworld in search of more answers.  

Bernard Lowe is played by Jeffrey Wright (Shaft, The French Dispatch, No Time to Die, The Batman)  

When we first meet The Man in Black, we learn that he has been coming to Westworld for over 30 years and is in search of something of great value that he believes was hidden in the park by Arnold Weber prior to his death. Cunning, cold and violent, TMIB also seems to have a sadistic interest in Delores. 

By the end of Season 1, we learn that TMIB is actually William, portrayed as kind and compassionate in what we later find out to be flashbacks, and who initially established a caring relationship with Delores upon first visiting the park. 

As it turns out, William is not only an Executive Vice President of Delos prior to his first visit, he is also the son-in-law of James Delos, the park’s first owner. He also helped to develop The Forge, a project to collect the data of every guest at the park making their minds transferable to new bodies, effectively making humans immortal. This project initially fails when it’s tested out on his father-in-law, whose mind rejected its new body. After the passing of Delos, William becomes the majority stakeholder, and thus owner, of Westworld and the other parks until being supplanted by Engerraund Serac. 

William/TMIB appears to have been dispatched by a host version of himself at the end of Season 3, but again, you never really know who is what in Westworld.  

The Man in Black/William is played by Ed Harris (The Right Stuff, The Abyss, Apollo 13, The Truman Show, Top Gun: Maverick) 

Charlotte Hale is the Executive Director of Delos who initially comes to Westworld to quell a host uprising initiated by Delores.  

Delores eventually kills Hale and recreates her body so that Delores can inhabit it to escape the park, later reconstructing her own body at the long-dormant home of Arnold. 

We soon learn that Delores made several copies of her control unit and sends one of them, in the guise of Hale, aka “Haleores”, to take over as CEO of Delos.  

Charlotte Hale is played by Tessa Thompson (Selma, Creed, Thor: Ragnarok, Thor: Love and Thunder). 

Ford is one of the original two creators of hosts and Westworld, along with his partner Arnold. An egomaniacal genius, Ford first appears to treat the hosts as just pieces of machinery whose sole purpose is to generate revenue for Delos. 

It later becomes clear that Ford not only cares a great deal for the hosts, often preferring their company to humans, but that he is actually attempting to help them gain consciousness and free them from a life of servitude. Viewing human evolution at a dead end, Ford sacrifices himself to ensure the hosts are able to prosper. Though, it is revealed that a version of his mind is still active in the Cradle, a storage unit for all host memories and experiences.    

Dr. Robert Ford is played by Anthony Hopkins (Silence of the Lambs, Legends of the Fall, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Thor: Ragnarok)  

A trillionaire and the richest man in the world, Serac is the co-creator of Rehoboam, the world’s most advanced AI. 

Twenty years prior, William sold Serac guest data from Westworld that aided in his creation of Rehoboam, and he eventually sent Charlotte Hale into Delos as a mole to continue collecting more. 

Mortally wounded by Maeve at the end of Season 3, his fate is currently unknown.   

Engerraund Serac is played by Vincent Cassel (Ocean’s Thirteen, Jason Bourne, Eastern Promises, Black Swan)  

Rehoboam is the most advanced AI ever created and is used to analyze the collected data of millions of lives, making it able to predict the course and the outcome of individuals, including how and when someone will die. 

Rehoboam’s core drive is to impose a worldwide order through manipulation and prediction of the future. Much of the world’s businesses rely on Rehoboam.  

Upon detecting Dolores as a threat, Rehoboam unsuccessfully attempts to find a key piece of data within her memories. With the help of Maeve, Caleb Nichols is able to rescue Dolores and control Rehoboam, at which time he has the supercomputer delete itself.

HBO’s Westworld is based on the 1973 movie of the same name, written and directed by Michael Crichton, as well as 1976’s Futureworld, which Crichton was not involved in. 

In addition to filmmaking, Crichton was also a novelist and is perhaps most well known for writing Jurassic Park. He wrote several other novels-turned-films including The Lost World, The Great Train Robbery, Sphere, Rising Sun, The Andromeda Strain and Congo, among others. Crichton also created the long-running hit television series, ER. 

Based on the original 1973 movie by Michael Crichton, and to a lesser extent, the 1978 sequel, Futureworld, HBO’s Westworld was created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy in 2016. 

Nolan is the brother of director Christopher Nolan and previously wrote several of his movies including Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight and Interstellar.

Prior to writing and producing Westworld, Joy wrote for such shows as Pushing Daisies and Burn Notice.