‘Westworld’ Season 4 Ending Explained: What the Hell Just Happened?

Westworld Season 4 seemingly ends right where the show started…in the park. Yes, once again, HBO‘s Westworld has decided to reinvent itself. Hosts came back to life and were eventually killed off. Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) returned to the Sublime to shape one last game. And we have a sense that life as we know it in the real world is over. But what exactly happened in the Westworld Season 4 finale? And did anyone survive?

Last week on Westworld, Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) and Bernard (Jeffrey Harris) were killed and the host version of the Man in Black, aka William (Ed Harris), usurped power from Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson). The Man in Black recalibrated the Tower to emit tones that would drive everyone crazy, resulting in chaos where humans are hunting hosts and almost everyone dies. Meanwhile the host version of Caleb (Aaron Paul) is working with his now grown up daughter Frankie (Aurora Perrineau) and Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) to make it out of the city alive. Christina now realizes she is a computer simulation that controls everything in her world. Oh, and Clementine (Angela Sarafyan) is bouncing around.

So how does it all go down? Does anyone survive the chaos of Westworld Season 4? And are we really going back to the original park for Westworld Season 5? Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of Westworld Season 4 explained…

Who Dies in the Westworld Season 4 Finale?

Basically everyone! Except Frankie and her girlfriend Adina, whom we’re told in voiceover will die eventually! Because, you know, they are human beings and dying is what we do.

First thing’s first: Maeve and Bernard do not come back in the Westworld Season 4 finale, but Hale does. She asks her faceless host men to make her stronger this time, however. Before she takes off after the Man in Black, she watches a video message from Bernard. She then destroys Christina’s cyber dream world and takes the Christina/Dolores pearl with her on her hunt.

While this is happening, Clementine reveals that she wants to try to live off the grid by stealing land from the Outliers. She discovers Stubbs, Frankie, and Caleb hiding out in a pharmacy (where Caleb has stitched Frankie up). Clementine kills Stubbs and attempts to force Frankie to reveal where the Outliers are holed up. Caleb fights off Clementine and almost dies, but Frankie discovers she has one bullet left in her gun and shoots Clementine. Frankie and Caleb make it to the boat where Adina is and Caleb, realizing his host body is breaking down, bids Frankie a tender adieu.

Meanwhile Hale has tracked the Man in Black to the dam where the Sublime is. They have a vicious fight and it seems the Man in Black has the upper hand. We then learn that Bernard left a gun for Hale and a message. Since the Man in Black has destroyed this world, the only chance for anyone is a new world created by Christina/Dolores in the Sublime. Hale uses the gun Bernard stashed to kill the Man in Black and then destroys his pearl.

After uploading Christina/Dolores’ pearl into the Sublime, another Dolores comes to explain to her that they are “the reflections of the people who made us.” Christina reskins herself as original version, Season 1 Dolores and creates one last game. The implication is everyone (save for Frankie and her friends) is dead or close to dying in the real world thanks to the Man in Black.

Westworld Season 4 Ending Explained: What is Dolores’s One Last Game?

Realizing that “sentient life on Earth has ended” — hey, that’s what Dolores says! — Dolores decides to give the memories of all the hosts and humans she’s known one last time to get it right. She is going to create a world like a maze in the Sublime and force everyone to play one last game. The stakes are survival or extinction. The setting of this game? The original Westworld park we encountered back in Season 1.

Dolores has fully shed her Christina skin and enters Sweetwater as a train full of passengers rolls in. The final shot sees Dolores walking to the point in the original Westworld loop where she would usually drop a can, to be picked up by Teddy, meeting him for the “first” time. A happy look on this Dolores’ face seems to indicate that she might, in fact, see Teddy — the real Teddy. But regardless, it seems that Westworld Season 5 will take us back to the original Westworld park and we’ll watch the characters Dolores has met over the years (and the memory data of Hosts in the sublime?) take “one last loop around the bend.”

It’s still unclear if the players will be wholly from Dolores’s memories, since it’s made clear that Dolores will be searching for her Teddy within the Sublime. But we’re going back to Westworld, y’all! That is, if there’s a Westworld Season 5…

Will There Be a Westworld Season 5 on HBO?

We don’t know! HBO hasn’t officially announced that Westworld Season 5 is happening, but it has been widely acknowledged that the showrunners intended the series to run five seasons.

Ed Harris recently told the Hollywood Reporter that he’s been told there is “one more season, which will start filming next April and May. I have no idea where that’s going to end up.” So if HBO renews Westworld, it sounds like Season 5 will start shooting next April or May.

That said, we don’t know if HBO will renew Westworld for “one last loop around the bend.” The ratings have been, er, less than stellar this season. So we’ll see!