Westworld starts season 4 with a surprisingly coherent episode

Westworld is a show about storytelling. Throughout its first three seasons,

creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have made clear they are fascinated by

the way narratives rule our world: Concepts like free will and agency are, in the

show’s cosmology, intimately tied to the stories we tell ourselves and the

characters we allow ourselves to be. If such simple tenets have become muddled

over its three-season run, it is because the HBO show has always been a tad

more ambitious about the convoluted storytelling it expects its audience to follow.

Which is to say, it was refreshing to watch this first episode of season four and be in almost familiar territory.

I wouldn’t have pegged Westworld to flash-forward seven years since “the riots”