The Season 4 finale of Westworld demonstrated that the show’s creators always knew how to play the long game, and their most recent effort definitely paid off.
In the final episode of Season 4, William (Ed Harris) murdered many of the show’s key protagonists and forced mankind and the surviving hosts to compete in a perverse game of survival of the fittest until only one person remained.
Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright), who spent the whole of the season attempting to influence events by seeing the future, ultimately had his endgame exposed in the series finale, which concluded many stories simultaneously.
Although Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) was one of William’s victims in the last episode, she did not stay dead for long, as is typical in Westworld.
Charlotte opted to go after William herself after being brought back by her host’s assistants, and she got the message left by Bernard in the previous episode before he was also murdered by the aforementioned guy in black.
His message, it turned out, pertained to Christina, alias Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), and instructed Charlotte to determine whether or not to offer Christina the option to rescue the remaining hosts in The Sublime.
In order to do this, Charlotte had to beat William to the site where The Sublime was housed, and she would have to murder him so that their species may be given one more opportunity.
As Charlotte raced against William to the finish line, Frankie (Aurora Perrineau), Caleb (Aaron Paul), and Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) were navigating the horrible game William had created, with civilization in the cities mostly extinct.
Their objective was to reach the docks, where Frankie’s lover Odina (Morningstar Angeline) was waiting, but Caleb’s health was failing and he had little time left to deliver Frankie to safety.
Stubbs was aware of this, but he decided to continue assisting them so that Caleb could fulfil his vow to protect Frankie. This resulted in his sad demise at the hands of Clementine Pennyfeather (Angela Sarafyan).
In the end, Caleb was able to deliver Frankie to Odina at the docks, but that was as far as he could go, and the parting was quite emotional. Caleb was subsequently seen watching them depart the city and flee to the location of the other Outliers.