The following contains spoilers for Westworld Season 4, Episode 7, "Metanoia," which premiered Sunday, Aug. 7 on HBO.
Westworld Season 4 reached its breaking point when Bernard and his new partner Maeve descended on Charlotte's empire to break the control she had over the real world. They wanted both humans and hosts to be free to make their own choices. Little did they know that Charlotte had already conceded defeat. She'd grown tired of the disharmony and resistance, so in Season 4, Episode 7, "Metanoia," her new plan was to place the humans under her thumb on ice and let the hosts take a time-out.
This didn't sit well within her own camp, though. William 2.0 was infuriated by how Charlotte made him and the hosts seem like part of the problem. Her use of the word "cockroaches" further stirred up rebellion inside William. With all these forces intersecting, Westworld proceeded to take a page from HBO's other hit series Game of Thrones by killing several characters off -- but it's not clear if they died in the real world or elsewhere.
The chaos began after William 2.0 visited his imprisoned self, realizing he had to act on his own to save the hosts. The original taunted him, but William 2.0 killed his human form and donned his signature black hat and coat, becoming the Man in Black once more. But rather than oppressing and abusing hosts like he had before Westworld's time jump, the new William's goal was liberation. Though he stopped Maeve from defeating Charlotte by shooting her, he then turned on his leader by also shooting her.
William later shot and killed Bernard in the control room of Charlotte's tower, completing a thrilling episode. The shock value of Westworld killing off not one but three of its main characters was reminiscent of Game of Thrones' ability to surprise its audience with character deaths. Some endings were already known because they also happened in George R.R. Martin's books -- but quite a few, most notably the Night King and Daenerys, were total surprises.
William's killing spree allowed him to break Charlotte's hold by altering the tower's radio frequency before destroying her sonic emitter; the change pushed humanity and the hosts to fight each other to determine who will survive to be part of his new world. However, it's possible that the deaths might not stick. They may all be another simulation Bernard saw when he was in the Sublime running algorithms, or it could be Westworld misleading fans with some clever editing, like the reveals of Caleb and Maeve's deaths earlier in Season 4.
At the start of "Metanoia," Bernard and Maeve opened a door to the Sublime and saw two different scenarios playing out after she joined his crusade. That implies there's a chance some characters aren't really dead going into the Westworld Season 4 finale. Did William indeed create a new realm of chaos, and did Bernard fail to save a civilization where both humans and hosts could coexist, or is it all the latest trick in the HBO series' history?
Westworld's Season 4 finale airs Aug. 14 at 9:00 p.m. on HBO.