The premiere begins with the host version of the Man in Black (Ed Helms) attempting to buy some property from a drug cartel near the Delos parks, though he meets some resistance and the cartel boss refuses to sell. The boss goes into his closet and discovers an infestation of flies, then he goes and kills all of his associates in seemingly cold blood. The flies seem to be some kind of mind-control parasite, but how they work exactly has yet to be seen. Following this violent scene, there’s a cut to Evan Rachel Wood with brown hair in almost the same exact position we watched her awake from again and again in season 1 as Dolores Abernathy. Now she’s a video game writer named Christina, though clearly, not everything is as it seems: her roommate asks her to pick a pair of shoes for a double date that night and they’re identical except for shade, mirroring the black hat/white hat choices from season 1. Dolores tended to be white hat and Wyatt, her vengeance personified, was a black hat, but Christina picks the white shoes, meaning this hopefully is a kinder incarnation of the character. She’s not excited about her blind date and complains that “setups are so awkward,” which is pretty wild given that her entire life before had been written for her. 

The episode titles in “Westworld” have always provided insight into the episodes themselves, so what exactly is an “augury”? Augury is another word for “omen,” foretelling or prophesying some future event. It turns out that Christina is writing omens unaware, as her video game narratives are mirroring someone’s life. That someone begins stalking her, calling her, and begging her to stop writing his life. She’s shaken but tries to keep at her job, and that brings its own frustrations; her boss wants her to write stories full of tragedy and violence but she wants happy endings. This season isn’t afraid to get really meta and reference back to the ideas from season 1, but in the first episode that meta-analysis stays pretty surface level. Christina is writing narratives the way Dolores’ narrative was once written, placing her in a very different position to create change. “Westworld” has always been concerned with free will for both hosts and humans, and questioning whether Christina is influencing some random man’s free will is certainly an interesting idea. 

Next, we see Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) in a remote cabin while Jimi Hendrix’s “Castles Made of Sand,” about the inevitable passage of time, plays in the background. We see timeline hops through her memories and she reaches out to Caleb (Aaron Paul), seemingly not having spoken to him since the events at the end of season 3. Caleb has a daughter now and she’s outside, practicing shooting cans. Maeve heads back into civilization, visiting the local general store, and we discover that it’s been 7 years since the end of season 3 and she’s been living quietly in the woods since. The shopkeep tells her that some “friends” were looking for her, and she buys a hatchet just in case. Black military-clad types descend upon her cabin but she manages to escape and kill them all with a sniper rifle from a hill in the distance before heading off into the woods.