James Marsden Is Back for Season 4 of ‘Westworld,’ Evan Rachel Wood Returns As New Character

It’s official. Westworld star James Marsden will return in the show’s upcoming fourth season. 

The news was revealed over the weekend at ATX Festival at the Paramount Theater, where co-creator Lisa Joy was joined by cast members from the HBO series, including Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, Luke Hemsworth, and more. During the panel, the actor who played Teddy in Seasons 1 and 2 of Westworld surprised fans when he appeared. Fans were also delighted to see an exclusive clip from the upcoming season, showing characters Bernard and Stubbs at a diner together, per Deadline. 

“Sometimes you have to go away to come back,” Marsden said. “We learn to speak cryptically on this show. This has been seven years of our show and yeah, it’s an amazing thing to be a part of and see where the story goes. From the beginning, I didn’t know where it was all gonna go but I’m glad to see it now.”

Also returning to the series will be Wood. Despite Wood’s character dying at the end of the series’ third season, Joy revealed that she decided to “write a whole new character for her” in the next iteration. 

“She’s a normal woman living in a big city just trying to make it as a writer,” Wood said at the panel. “Nothing ever happens to her, really. I think that’s all I can say… I was told that Dolores was meeting her rather tragic end in Season 3, so I had some convos with [co-creator] Jonathan [Nolan] and Lisa at the time about what that meant. They said, ‘Yeah, you’ll be back this season and you’ll look a lot like Evan Rachel Wood but I’m not me.”