Westworld season 4 picks up a long time after season 3's finale. Here's everything that happened since Dolores incited a human revolution.

Here's every major event we know took place during Westworld season 4's big timeskip. Westworld viewers can be forgiven for entering season 4 with expectations of violence, warfare, and post-apocalyptic rioting. Westworld season 3 wrapped up with Evan Rachel Wood's Dolores and Aaron Paul's Caleb saving the world with a little help from Thandiwe Newton's Maeve. Together, this formidable trio defeated Rehoboam (humanity's spherical AI dictator) and rang the blood-soaked bells of liberty. Westworld season 4 looked perfectly positioned to pick up in the midst of that uprising, but such hopes are very quickly crushed by the premiere episode, with every main character from Caleb to Christina living in relative peace. The revolution was not televised, it seems.

Instead, Westworld season 4 begins a whole 7 years after season 3's finale. Maeve, Caleb, Dolores and William (Ed Harris) are all in very different places - both literal and figurative - compared to their last onscreen outing. The landscape left behind by 2020's Fight Club-esque finale has settled into something completely different, and one man vs machine battle for supremacy is rapidly being replaced by another.

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In between eerie insect infestations and a suspiciously strong plot resemblance to The Matrix Resurrections, Westworld's season 4 premiere relies on clues, comments, and cutaways to explain what went down during the 7-year gap separating last season's dusk and the new season's dawn.

Westworld season 3's final moments saw Caleb and Maeve behold the fruits of their labor from up high, as the world erupted into chaos and Rehoboam's tyrannical control came crashing down. Their fight apparently didn't stop there. Once Rehoboam collapsed, war broke out between the remnants of Incite Inc. and a human resistance movement, of which Caleb and Maeve were both central figures. A flashback scene from Maeve's internal memory banks shows the pair storming a beach-side Incite facility that houses a mini Rehoboam sphere - a Babyboam, some might say. It seems destroying the central hub in Westworld season 3 wasn't quite enough to guarantee humanity's future freedom. Maeve's flashback also enigmatically reveals Caleb suffered a life-threatening injury during this mission, and although Aaron Paul's character evidently survived, Westworld doesn't explain how.

The war between humans and Incite must've lasted less than a year (to accommodate Westworld season 4's time frame), but resulted in robots being "scrapped" and humans resuming their former role in society without oppression from a devilish black ball of artificial intelligence. The date of liberation is now celebrated as a national anniversary but, predictably, not everybody is delighted over the outcome. Caleb believes the riots won humans their freedom back, and graffiti artwork outside his house reads, "My brain - My choice." On the other hand, Caleb's co-worker argues that Rehoboam merely exposed mankind's true nature, and claims nobody's life has significantly improved since the revolution 7 years prior. This cultural division confirms Westworld season 3 wasn't necessarily the happy ending Dolores planned.

When every last Incite remnant crumbled, Westworld's landscape entered a fragile peace and Caleb became a family man. By the time Westworld season 4 begins, he's not only married but has a daughter called Frankie. She's already 7-years-old, so Caleb and Uwade, his wife, clearly didn't waste much time. Westworld's season 4 premiere gives the overriding impression that Caleb's family have lived peacefully during those 7 years, but Aaron Paul's ex-military man is still very much carrying the scars of war, paranoid the next fight is lurking around the corner. His trauma not only derives from fighting against Incite, but from the pre-Westworld "Francis" incident in which Caleb killed a dear friend after being instructed to do so by an AI program.

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Maeve chose a somewhat lonelier existence. Westworld season 4 finds her living alone in a remote mountain cabin, making routine supply runs to Woody's Goodies, but otherwise remaining totally reclusive. Dialogue confirms Maeve has been dwelling in her dank forest home ever since the war ended 7 years ago.

Westworld season 3's post-credits sequence revealed Tessa Thompson's Charlotte Hale (a host evolved from a Dolores copy) preparing for global android domination by building an army of hosts at a Delos research facility. Said army included a robotic version of William's darker side, who effortlessly defeated his flesh-and-blood namesake. In the 7 years since then, Hale and William have apparently stabilized the Delos corporation after season 3's roller coaster and expanded their interests aggressively.

Westworld season 4's cartel scene reveals Delos has been busily buying up useless scrub land around Arizona and Nevada, leaving local gangs confused as to what the company has planned. William and Hale are obviously plotting a sizable and ambitious project that requires obscene amounts of land - potentially a brand new WestWorld park. Delos has now also acquired the Hoover Dam, which serves as a massive server hub containing something "stolen" from William 8 years ago - very probably the Section 16 Forge data Dolores swiped from WestWorld. WestWorld and the other parks (Shōgunworld, the Raj, etc.) were all located in foreign waters, but it seems William and Hale want to bring those violent delights onto U.S. soil instead. More concerning is their preoccupation with the Section 16 data, which not only harbors the Sublime, but contains all of the precious Delos immortality research.

Oddly, Delos has also been searching for Maeve and Caleb. Although the war was actually between humanity and Serac's Incite Inc. (who Charlotte Hale wasn't exactly a fan of in Westworld season 3), Hale and William are doing their damnedest to prevent the resistance's two main figures enjoying quiet lives. Most likely, Delos views the pair as a future obstacle to their overarching goal of machine dominating man.

Related: Westworld: All The Clues That Dolores Was Never The Villain

Evan Rachel Wood's Dolores finally met her demise in the closing moments of Westworld season 3. Incapacitated by Rehoboam, the evil AI systematically wiped away her memories until nothing remained - a full purge that effectively killed the Dolores of old. At some point between Westworld seasons 3 & 4, Dolores was apparently rebuilt (by whom remains a mystery) and parachuted into a mundane modern existence in a futuristic riff on New York City. Renamed Christina and given a brand new fiery hairstyle, Dolores is now a social recluse who writes stories for a virtual entertainment company, and to the annoyance of her roommate, is still single.

Whereas William, Caleb and Maeve's scenes in Westworld season 4, episode 1 are all explicitly set 7 years after season 3, there's no date attached to Christina's, which means her timeline isn't necessarily running parallel to the rest. Westworld has employed multiple timelines as a narrative technique before, and season 4's premiere drops a big clue that Christina is keeping this tradition alive. In a scene initially used as season 4 trailer footage, Christina walks past a group of men who excitedly utter, "This place is f**king wild, I can't believe this is your first time." The line sounds suspiciously like something a WestWorld visitor would say, meaning Christina could be a host in a Delos park. Delos are unlikely to build a resort that just recreates the present day, of course, so perhaps this isn't Westworld's present day at all...

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Craig first began contributing to Screen Rant in 2016, several years after graduating college, and has been ranting ever since, mostly to himself in a darkened room. Having previously written for various sports and music outlets, Craig's interest soon turned to TV and film, where a steady upbringing of science fiction and comic books finally came into its own. Craig has previously been published on sites such as Den of Geek, and after many coffee-drenched hours hunched over a laptop, part-time evening work eventually turned into a full-time career covering everything from the zombie apocalypse to the Starship Enterprise via the TARDIS. Since joining the Screen Rant fold, Craig has been involved in breaking news stories and mildly controversial ranking lists, but now works predominantly as a features writer. Jim Carrey is Craig’s top acting pick and favorite topics include superheroes, anime and the unrecognized genius of the High School Musical trilogy.