What is going on with Dolores in Westworld Season 4? Evan Rachel Wood’s character explained

Westworld returned to TV screens yesterday via the first episode of Season 4. In spite of the fact that her character Dolores was seemingly killed at the end of the last series, Evan Rachel Wood returns, though this time she’s playing a woman called Christina. Is this an entirely new character? Or is Christina simply a new iteration of Dolores? BEWARE OF WESTWORLD SPOILERS AHEAD.

Evan Rachel’s Wood’s character Dolores died at the end of Season 3. “Dolores is absolutely dead,” the show’s creator Lisa Joy told Deadline. “Her sacrifice was meaningful in that it helped get the world to this place, but it was a sacrifice in that there is no more Dolores.”

But this is Westworld, where pretty much anything is possible, so we’re taking that quote with a pinch of salt. Particularly as Evan Rachel Wood is back in Season 4.

Wood plays a character called Christina, who looks different, sounds different, and acts different to Dolores. But maybe all isn’t as it seems with Christina…

Who is Evan Rachel’s Wood’s character Christina in Westworld Season 4?

On the surface, Christina is a normal woman living in a normal apartment with a normal roommate (played by recent Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose). She’s single, and a bit of a recluse, though Christina does get talked into a date in Episode 1.

Christina works for a games company called Olympiad Entertainment where she writes for NPCs (Non-Playable Characters). But the stories she pitches are too saccharine for her boss, who wants sex, violence and danger rather than romance and sentiment.

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Christina’s problem don’t end there, as she’s receiving calls from a stranger who claims that her games are ruining his life. He eventually approaches Christina on the street, and pulls a knife, saying he needs the story to change, and the ending to be different.

A mysterious man then comes to her rescue, and her Episode 1 story ends with Christina pitching a game to herself. “I wanna write a new story, about a girl. A girl who’s searching. The girl doesn’t know what she’s searching for, she just knows there’s an emptiness in her life. Maybe it’s inside her. And when she finds the thing she’s searching for, everything makes sense. I want a story with a happy ending.”

Is Christina a new character?

Lisa Joy claims that Christina is a new character. Speaking to Elle, Joy said “It’s an absolutely different character. And to see a new character in the same show has been amazing. It’s also been great being able to relate so viscerally to her character. This is a contemporary, relatable setting. I mean, for me, it was really interesting watching somebody play a writer.”

Of Evan Rachel Wood’s performance, Joy said “We wanted to explore a totally different dimension to a character that Evan could play. And it was just so exciting to get to write this and see the sea change in Evan’s performance.”

But Westworld does like to pull the rug out from under the audience, and the mysterious man who saves Christina at the end of the episode is played by James Marsden. Whose Teddy Flood was involved with Dolores in earlier seasons. This reveal suggests that Christina might somehow be connected to Dolores.

Could Christina be Delores?

Lisa Joy is keeping her cards close to her chest regards this connection, and actor Evan Rachel Wood is doing much the same, though she can’t help but draw parallels.

Speaking to Elle about Christina, she said, “It was a completely different approach this season, because she’s very human and vulnerable and messy and imperfect and insecure and kind of nerdy. She’s got her routines. She seems like she’s a bit of a hermit, certainly nowhere near as self-possessed or as powerful as we’ve seen Dolores in the previous seasons.

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“Christina lives in her dreams inside of her head and she writes stories. But like Dolores, she notices something is off with the world, and she’s looking for an answer to a question that she doesn’t know yet. And so I think that’s really the only sort of bridge that she could have to Dolores.”

Wood then again adds that Christina is a completely new character. But her casting and that quote about searching for something “inside her” casts doubt on the claim. The appearance of Marsden, and the way in which Westworld plays with identity, also means that there’s a good chance we haven’t seen the last of Dolores. And don’t get us started on the painting…

Westworld is currently screening on HBO in the States and Sky in the UK.