'Westworld' Season 4 Premiere Recap: Christina, Caleb's PTSD, and Parasitic Flies

Warning: This story contains spoilers for the Season 4 premiere of Westworld. Read at your own risk!

HBO has brought Westworld back online, but boy, do things look different now.

The fourth season of the Emmy-winning drama series picked up years after the majority of the events of the third season finale took place, and all of the core characters were scattered.

After an artificial version of the Man in Black (Ed Harris) killed William (also Harris) post-credits in that third season finale, he has taken on a new mission and is looking to control parts of the world. He starts with the Hoover Dam, which had previously been controlled by a cartel, and when the cartel doesn't want to sell the territory to him, he says it's fine because the next day they will give it to him for free.

Although Harris tells Metacritic that "the human MIB, I think, has a much better sense of humor and irony than the host version, and I think he's smarter and wiser in a more worldly sense, obviously, than the host," the host succeeds easily here because he has a new trick up his sleeve: He releases a swarm of flies in one of the cartel men's home, and they infiltrate his body and then his mind, making him bend to the Man in Black's will, which includes attacking and killing his colleagues in the cartel, handing over the territory, and then killing himself.

The idea of using flies to change characters' brain chemistry was "borrowed it from science and then made our own," co-creator, showrunner, and director Lisa Joy tells Metacritic. 

"The biology of it is based on actual parasites, but also, metaphorically, I think it's really important to note that there are parasites that attack the body, and there are viruses that attack the body — like we were looking at coronavirus — but there are also intellectual and psychological pandemics that can result due to mind viruses," she explains. "And we're seeing it right now in our reality with social media and with the promulgation of like fake news or not fake news, where you can't even tell what's real anymore. This is a form of a psychological pandemic, and it's certainly more of a threat than traditional ideas of what an AI threat would be, but it is based in AI."

The Man in Black releasing the flies to take down the cartel is going to just be the start of this new, large, looming threat for the season. As evidenced by the trailer, there are also hosts being made that can release these flies directly from their faces.

In the time since the events of Season 3, both Caleb (Aaron Paul) and Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) have been living their versions of off the grid, but he has a family by his side — one that he loves but can't completely help him forget what he has been through.

"Very early on he is asking himself, 'What were we all fighting for? What was this truly all about? Does it have a purpose? What does it all mean?' And he's suffering from it all. He's suffering from some PTSD because of it all," Paul says. "He wants to do whatever it takes to protect [his] family, but he's just constantly in the mindset of, 'What is looming just around the corner?'"

That mindset isn't paranoia, as it is proven quickly in the Season 4 premiere that there really is someone coming from around the corner to get him. It is someone sent by the Man in Black, who first tries to track down Maeve, but also goes after Caleb, too. When Maeve gets wind of the Man in Black being onto her, she heads straight to Caleb, and her timing (and sword work) proves impeccable, stopping the Man in Black's henchman before he harms Caleb or his young daughter. The two then team back up to go after a senator they hear he is also after.

"She doesn't waste any time, and I always found that a thrilling moment. She just sees the Man in Black, and she's just like, 'OK, let's burn the cabin," says writer and executive Alison Schapker of Maeve. "She's such a warrior like that. But I also think knowing hosts the way she does, having seen humanity in the way that she does, we were consciously trying to explore, 'Well then, what is there left? What would Maeve fight for, given how compromised everything is everywhere she looks?'"

Meanwhile, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) — well, Dolores supposedly didn't make it out of the third season alive. Instead, now there's a woman named Christina wearing her face, who Wood says is a new person. ("I asked at the beginning the season, 'Is there any Dolores in her?' And they're like, 'No, completely starting over,'" she explains.) However, Christina still has some mystery to her that will likely mean she is more connected to the former host than it appears from the start.

For one thing, there is the physical resemblance. For another, she is being stalked by a man named Peter (Aaron Stanford) who is desperate for her to change the ending of one of the games she has written and accuses her of being in control of real-life narratives (and having a connection to a mysterious Tower). And she is being watched (but in a less creepy way) by a man who looks just like Teddy (James Marsden), too.

"It was a really fun exploration for me in writing this character because it's almost like her storyline is a move away from genre. I was no longer writing her character in a sci-fi Western; I was writing something far more naturalistic," Joy says. "She's not someone who goes about engaging in physical battle with people and she has her share of insecurities, and I think we all do. 

"I think so much of what it is to be a person, and maybe especially a woman, in this world is trying to see your own power. Because I think that it's really easy in the paradigm that we live in to see things that are strengths as weaknesses or as non-valuable skills. And for Christina to grow, I think she has to understand who she is and that maybe she's a little different — maybe she wants to write things that are a little different, or maybe she's a little awkward on dates — but that's part of who her character is, and there's value in that and strength in owning that," she continues.

Christina has already been in a physical battle when Peter found her walking home alone and held a knife to her throat and then slashed her arm. While Dolores would have been able to take him out quickly, Christina struggled with him. The man who may or may not be Teddy ended up coming to her rescue.

"When she encounters the stalker, the harm — the injury — is physical, but it's also psychological because he's attacking her, yet basically accusing her of manipulating him. Which I think is a really common form of emotional manipulation that guys use, and one of the ways in which women lose their power is to fall victim into believing those kinds of manipulations. And so, this character is searching to really understand the world: if she's a thing wrong with it, or if it's broken," Joy says.

"It was interesting approaching her from a human's perspective and not from a host perspective. Because normally when we see my character in peril, we know that she can take control of the situation and get herself out of anything, and it's a very different story for Christina; she is not aware of any power that she has. So, she's much more limited," Wood adds.

Wood notes that if she "ever had an instinct to sneak" Dolores-style mannerisms or reactions into her performance as Christina, she had to actively work against them because she was told they were "completely starting over" with Christina as a new character. Still, she acknowledges that when Christina and maybe-Teddy finally come face to face, there might be things that are familiar to them about the other person. The question will then just become, why?

"What world are they in and who are they? Do they have any relation to the characters that we have seen before? And how is this going to play out now? All of that was incredibly fun to play with this season," she says.

But that, as well as where Season 4 reconnects with Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth), Charlotte (Tessa Thompson), Clementine (Angela Sarafyan), and Serac (Vincent Cassel) — we never actually saw him die! — all remain to be seen in future episodes.

Westworld Season 4 airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO and