With a surprisingly cogent episode, Westworld premieres season 4

 

Westworld is a program about telling stories. The show's creators, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, have been open about their fascination with the way stories shape our world throughout its first three seasons: In the show's cosmology, ideas like free will and agency are closely related to the narratives we tell ourselves and the characters we let ourselves become. Because the HBO series has always been a little bit more ambitious about the complex storyline it expects its audience to follow, such straightforward principles have become muddied over the course of its three-season run. (Seriously, if you ask me to walk you through season three, I'll struggle even if I liked some of it.)

To put it another way, it was pleasant to watch the first episode of season four and feel so comfortable. Certainly, I never would have predicted that Westworld would jump ahead seven years from "the riots" that ended the most recent season finale, or even that it would begin with a bilingual set-piece in which William (yes, Ed Harris is back as the Man in Black) brings a cartel to its knees with the aid of...fly-hosts?

But after that prologue was over, I was back in the Westworld universe that I most enjoy, watching Evan Rachel Wood try to figure out what her character (this time: Christina—unclear it's where Dolores is now) wants from life as she muses over the rewards and dangers of creating and existing in particular stories. Oh, and she thinks someone is watching her. We're not just in the world of storytelling; we're also in the world of broadcasting, so you can count on the show to continue being meta. After all, every performed story needs an audience.)