Will Evan Rachel Wood return to Westworld for Season 4?

Co-creator Jonathan Nolan comments on the actress’ future on the show

Will Evan Rachel Wood return to Westworld for Season 4? 1

Westworld Season 3 came to a close last Sunday night, and it ended with the shocking death of Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood). Dolores has been the central character of the HBO sci-fi series since it launched in 2016, and now that she’s dead, fans are eager to know whether or not Wood will be back for Season 4 of the show.

In a recent interview with Variety, co-creator Jonathan Nolan was asked straight up if Wood is leaving the show, and he answered, “I f—ing hope not.”

Nolan confirmed that “Dolores is gone” but hinted that viewers may have not seen the last of Wood in the series.

“We’re not yet discussing publicly the direction the show is taking, but the fun thing about this show is, you know, from the beginning [co-creator] Lisa [Joy] and I wanted to make a show that constantly reinvented itself, that could be a different show every season,” Nolan explained. “I think it’s important with a show in which death can be impermanent — these are robots, after all — to mark the occasion with Dolores. That version of that character is gone. We love Evan Rachel Wood and we haven’t [sighs] started talking publicly about exactly what the show looks like going forward. But it looks very different.”

Wood was also tight-lipped on whether or not she’ll return to the show next season. But during her recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the actress seemingly implied that she’ll be appearing in Season 4 to tie up some loose ends.

“I think a lot of things are still unknown given how the finale ended,” Wood said on the NBC late-night show. “I think obviously it’s been proven, you know, it’s quite hard to get rid of characters, but I do think certain things are final.”

In the Season 3 finale, Dolores ― after getting tortured by Engerraund Serac’s (Vincent Cassel) ― ended up destroying Serac’s artificial intelligence, Rehoboam. Dolores sacrificed her life in the process, as confirmed in a scene of her trying to convince Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) to join her cause and carry on her memory.

Dolores has been hiding in plain sight, in the S3 Key Art. from r/westworld

While Dolores’ death came as a surprise to many, some vigilant fans noticed in the weeks leading up to the Season 3 finale that the first teaser poster for the season appeared to be a foreshadowing of Dolores’ demise. As pointed out in the Reddit post shown above, the robot skeleton featured in the poster seemed to be Dolores. The robot skeleton can be seen with two scraps of fabric: one on its right wrist and another one on its left thigh. These scraps of fabric appeared to come from Dolores’ farmer’s daughter dress that she wore in Westworld.

Westworld Season 4 has no release date yet.

Sources: ComicBook.com, Variety