When we last checked in on Westworld at the end of its third season in 2020, things weren’t looking particularly good… for anyone (us included). Evan Rachel Wood’s robot revolutionary Dolores had sacrificed herself to destroy a machine that had been quietly controlling humanity for years, Tessa Thompson’s evil copy of Dolores had begun assembling a Terminator army, Ed Harris’ Man In Black had convinced himself to start actually doing shit right before getting executed by his own robot doppelgänger, and also the writing in general just kind of went off an extremely steep cliff, spoiling a lot of the goodwill that had been established earlier in the run when it seemed like Westworld would be cleverly subverting tropes rather than diving into them headfirst.
But maaan, it’s still a cool show, and it’s hard to avoid falling into its traps once again when you remember just how cool it could be. This trailer for the show’s fourth season probably won’t blow your mind, and Westworld isn’t going to be doing itself any favors if it keeps letting audiences think that a mind-blow is going to happen at any moment, but it’s nice to see all of our old cowboy theme park friends again—even if a lot of our friends are bad guys now.
The trailer features Aaron Paul, Thandiwe Newton, Harris, Jeffrey Wright (who will probably be driving a lot of the mind-blow stuff this season, given the strange end of his storyline in season three), Thompson, Luke Hemsworth, and—try to act surprised—Evan Rachel Wood. Is Dolores back? Yeah, probably. She’s a robot, and season three made it pretty clear that she has Batman-esque plans on top of plans on top of plans, so we never really bought that she was dead in the first place.
And, finally, some good news for Westworld fans (we deserve it, really): season four will premiere on June 26. Seeing as how it’s been two years, that’s relatively soon!