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The latest episode of Westworld season 4 has been described by fans as the HBO show's best since season 1. Full of shock reveals, 'Generation Loss' pulls the rug out from under its audience and confirms that they've been watching two timelines play out simultaneously – something that has deep repercussions for the human race and Aaron Paul's Caleb Nichols, in particular.
As viewers rush to social media to sing episode 4's praises, showrunner Lisa Joy has broken down some of its biggest twists, and elaborated on big bad Charlotte Hale's "nefarious plan." Be warned, things are about to get spoiler-heavy.
To recap, in their attempt to evade the murderous Man in Black, Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) and Caleb (Aaron Paul) stumbled across some sort of control room below the mobster park they'd hidden themselves in. Via monitors, the pair watch as a group of humans appear to do things against their will. The subjects' final tasks? Kill themselves. Believing his young daughter Frankie was one of the human captives, Caleb broke into one of the chambers, only to find that Frankie was actually a host, and full of flies that then entered Caleb's body and started trying to control him.
In episode 4, Hale (Tessa Thompson) explains to an incapacitated Caleb that she is using the sound-controlled flies – or parasites – to enslave the human attendees of the 1930s-set Temperance attraction. "She starts by testing it out in the park, but it’s also the ultimate place to start a plague from, because people from all over the world would go to Westworld, and then they bring that disease home with them," Joy elaborated in a new interview with The Wrap. "Nothing beats empathy quite like literalism when you're literally put in the shoes of the other person. And that’s what’s happened here."
That's just the tip of the iceberg, too. Hale also tells Caleb, after he witnesses Maeve blow herself up in an effort to stop the Man in Black, that he isn't actually a human anymore, he's a host, and that he died trying to stop her roll-out of the infection a whopping 23 years ago. Ever since, he's been forced to relive the run-up to his final moments but is actually in a futuristic New York City – much like the one occupied by Evan Rachel Wood's mysterious Christina.
"We've unfortunately seen, these epidemics can sometimes spread like wildfire and when you look at something as innocuous seeming as a fly or a mosquito and much of the world today, you realize how quickly we could disrupt human nature with the wrong virus.
"The fact that it takes, you know, a generation or so to kick into full effect to kind of critical mass is actually still incredibly fast if you think about a biological or political takeover," Joy continued, before teasing what's to come: "Hale has won and the humans in fact have been subjugated by this new A.I. power structure, I think we have to see how the fight for free will – this time waged by humans against robots – plays out. It's pretty fun. You see all of our actors doing what they do best, kicking ass and exploring their lives and the realities around them."
In learning that his human self has been "dead" for more than two decades, Caleb is met with the devastating realisation that his young daughter Frankie has grown up without him in episode 4. Turns out, Frankie became C, the desert-traversing ally of Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth). In their timeline, the trio are searching for Caleb's body. Instead, they stumble across Maeve's, and the prophetic Bernard explains to Frankie (Aurora Perrineau) that the deactivated host could prove to be the weapon that'll help them win the war against Hale.
Fortunately, we won't have to wait too much longer to find out whether that's the case. Westworld season 4 airs on HBO and HBO Max every Sunday, with each episode following a day later in the UK on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV. While we wait for the next, fill out your watch list with our picks of the best new TV shows coming our way, this year and beyond.
