The Man in Black continues to kill everyone while Christina finally learns who she really is.
Tropes:
- Abandoned Warehouse: Charlotte and the Man in Black have a shootout inside and around the empty dam complex.
- Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: While the world breaks apart around them, Caleb has an intimate moment with his daughter while patching her up.
- Apocalypse How: Because of William's Hate Plague, everybody in the entire world, both hosts and humans, are killing each other off. Only the outliers on the outskirts of cities are somewhat safe. By the end, Dolores narrates that sentient life will go extinct eventually, and what remains is the Sublime where she will find a way for both species to coexist.
- Back for the Dead: Rebus and Craddock show up after last appearing Season 2, where they got shot but weren't uploaded to the Sublime. However, Rebus is axed by a rampaging human while Craddock gets shot by William.
- Becoming the Mask: As Host William lampshades, he's spent so long pretending to be the man he replaced that there is functionally no difference anymore.
- Bittersweet Ending: The season ends on a very tragic note where almost all of the main characters are dead or will be dead. Maeve never gets to reunite with her daughter in the Sublime. Caleb convinces Frankie to leave him because he's slowly breaking down as a host, making Frankie's mission to reunite with her father All for Nothing. And while Hale defeats the Man in Black and saves the Sublime, much of the whole world is dead. Despite that there are surviving outliers out there in the world, Dolores narrates that sentient life will die out soon. The saving grace left is Dolores' mission to find a way for humanity and hosts to coexist so that they can evolve into a new species.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: Hale has her pearl placed inside an early model mechanical Host body, giving her a physical edge over William.
- Chekhov's Gun: A literal example. Hale, following the directions Bernard left for her, finds the pistol he placed in the hydroelectric dam tunnel, allowing her to finish off the Man in Black for good.
- Corpse Land: One of the final scenes of this season is Dolores walking among the corpses of both hosts and humans in her virtual simulation of New York as she narrates the failings of both species which led to the end of sentient life in the real world and her resolve to give sentient life another chance to set themselves free on their own.
- Counting Bullets: Frankie pretends to have run out of bullets in order to lull Clementine into a false sense of security.
- Deader than Dead: Hale kills William then crushes his pearl for good measure, leaving nothing of him behind. She then does the same to herself.
- Dead Man Writing: Bernard's final message begins with the acknowledgment that he and Maeve will be dead by the time Hale receives it.
- Distinction Without a Difference: After Hale says that he's not William, Host William asks if she can't tell the difference in their behavior then does it really matter?
- Driven to Suicide: After fulfilling Bernard's request to put Dolores' pearl into the Sublime, Hale kills herself by crushing her own pearl.
- Eye Scream: Clementine kills Stubbs by shoving his head into a sharp piece of metal, piercing through his eye socket.
- Final Girl: With Bernard, Maeve, and human William dead in the previous episode, this episode continues killing off every major character such as Stubbs, Clementine, the Man in Black Host, and Hale. Then, Caleb reveals to Frankie that he can't come with her given that his mind is slowly breaking down just like his previous copies. "Teddy" and Maya are just constructs created by Christina and they eventually disappear once Christina gets uploaded into the Sublime and reawakens as Dolores. In the end, Dolores is the only main character left alive since she's in the Sublime safe and sound. Then again, Bernard, Maeve, Stubbs and Clementine could reappear if their pearls weren't destroyed, and Dolores uploaded Teddy to the Sublime when it was created, so the chances of him reappearing seem good.
- Flipping the Bird: As Clementine is guessing how many bullets Frankie has left, she very pointedly uses her middle finger to indicate "one".
- Heal It with Booze: Caleb makes Frankie drink booze before starting surgery on her wounded leg.
- Heel Realization: Hale seems to finally accept that her actions have led to the extinction of both humans and Hosts, and thus decides to follow through on Bernard's plan to preserve a piece of the world in the Sublime.
- Here We Go Again!: At the end of the season, Dolores recreates the Westworld park from her memory in the Sublime for one final loop where, this time, everybody can set themselves free.
- Heroic Willpower: Caleb manages to press on as long as he has to in order to escort his daughter to the docks. Clementine even notes he's carried on a good deal longer than normal.
- I Lied: Said verbatim by Frankie when she shoots Clementine, after previously allowing her to assume that her pistol was empty.
- I Will Find You: Towards the end, Dolores promises "Teddy" that she will find the real version of him in the Sublime.
- Killed Off for Real:
- Hale crushes the Man in Black's pearl, putting an end to his violent reign.
- Hale kills herself by crushing her own pearl after putting Dolores's pearl in the Sublime.
- Stubbs is killed by Clementine, who is then killed by Frankie.
- Lonely at the Top: As she begins to remember her previous identity, Christina realizes that she created Maya, Emmett, and Teddy out of her loneliness.
- Neck Snap: Subverted. Clementine attempts one on Caleb but gets killed by Frankie with a Boom, Headshot! in the nick of time.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Stubbs trying to talk down an insane human allows Clementine to get the drop on him, leading to his death.
- No-Sell: The Man in Black tries to stab Hale when they meet at the Sublime, but the blade is easily stopped by her metallic body.
- Omnicidal Maniac: William not only engineers the total destruction of the human world, but he also tries to destroy the Sublime because he can't conceive of them being any less destructive than humans.
- Pet the Dog: Hale releases Clementine to do whatever she pleases, despite needing help to stop William.
- Pretender Diss: After the Man in Black declares that his Becoming the Mask is complete and that he isn't a copy anymore but William himself, Charlotte (who created him) simply and soundly states that he's not before trying to kill him not even giving him the satisfaction of explaining why.
- The Reveal:
- Christina is another Dolores variant called "The Storyteller", serving as the central AI for Hale's narrative system. Her world is a simulation of the real one, and everyone except Hale who directly interacted with her (Maya, Emmett, and Teddy) were constructs created by Christina's subconscious so she'd have people to talk to.
- The message Bernard recorded in the previous episode was meant for Hale, telling her that the world will end but offering her a path to save at least a small part of it by placing Dolores in the Sublime. The gun he left at the dam in the previous episode was also for her, to kill William at a critical moment.
- The meaning behind Bernard's words of saving a "small part of the world": he instructs Charlotte to upload Christina/Dolores/The Storyteller into the Sublime, where she can recreate humanity in the hopes that they and the hosts can finally coexist as sentient life in the real world ends.
- Secretly Dying: Caleb hides the fact that his mind and body are starting to break down, only telling Frankie after he's managed to escort her to the boat.
- Series Finale: On the first week of November 2022, HBO canceled the show, making this episode the ending for the series despite Nolan and Joy's intention to continue the story with one final season given that there are still some storylines that are unfinished such as Maeve's reunion with her daughter, Dolores' role of putting sentient life to a test and The Stinger of the Season 2 finale.
- Stealth Pun: When the plot returns to the Man in Black after he'd been driving for a while, "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash (who was also well known as The Man in Black) can be heard playing from the jeep's console.
- Trail of Blood: Clementine finds Frankie by following the blood trail from her wounded leg.
- Travelling at the Speed of Plot: William spends some time killing humans, steals a truck, and starts driving to the dam. In that same period, Hale is revived, transferred to a robotic body, and flies to the dam. En route, she has William ambushed by Craddock and another host, disabling his truck. William makes the rest of the journey on horseback, and still manages to beat her there by a few minutes.
- Uncertain Doom: Given Dolores' statement that sentient life is going to end, Frankie and the rest of the outliers' fates remain unknown. Though as seen in the previous episode "Fidelity", Bernard copied Frankie's data at least, and possibly the other humans.
- Unexplained Recovery: Hale somehow survived being shot by William in the previous episode. It can be inferred he missed her pearl (or she had extracranial shielding installed), since all the Drone Hosts have to do is patch up her physical form, and her bullet hole is slightly left of center. How Bernard could predict William would miss is another question.
- The Unreveal:
- The Season 2 stinger shows a flashforward to a host version of William undergoing a Fidelity test conducted by a host version of Emily. Since William is dead and Hale kills the Man in Black host (who was not meant to be an exact copy of William anyway, and thus wouldn't need a Fidelity test) for good, it's unclear when this scene could possibly take place. Especially as it was implied to be taking place in the former location of the Parks, given that "Emily" said the Parks' system was gone.
- While it's confirmed that Christina is a variant of Dolores, the show never answers where this version of Dolores comes from; whether she's one of the four copies that Dolores brought to the real world in the Season 2 finale or if she's the original Dolores, having somehow recovered fragments of her memory over time after Serac was said (and shown) to have completely erased her in the Season 3 finale, which would make this an Unexplained Recovery.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: As of the end of Season 4, some of Dolores' copies remain unaccounted for, such as the one in Musashi's head which Clementine and Hanaryo took in Season 3, and the rebuilt Lawrence who was last seen in the Season 3 finale giving Bernard the interface for the Sublime. Since Dolores notes that there will be no sentient life left, it can be inferred that any of them not already dead will die eventually.
- The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Rebus boasts to a fellow Host that he's an expert in killing humans. Moments later, he gets an axe to the head.
