WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Westworld season 4, episode 1, "The Auguries."
Jeffrey Wright's Bernard is conspicuous by his absence in Westworld season 4, episode 1, and there may be a good reason for his being missing. "The Auguries" takes place seven years after the events of the Westworld season 3 finale and reintroduces many of the series' key characters, but not Bernard. Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) is living as "Christina", a writer for an immersive games company whose former life bleeds through into her work. Meanwhile, Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) and Caleb (Aaron Paul) are reunited when the former is tracked down by operatives working for William's android replacement, the Mandroid in Black (Ed Harris).
It's heavily implied that William's need for Hoover Dam is tied into the extensive catalog of Delos data that's housed there. This data includes the Forge, or the Valley Beyond, a paradise for WestWorld's hosts to exist in peaceful freedom, separated from their physical forms, away from the cruelty of the park. On visiting the dam, the Mandroid in Black states that he cannot decrypt the data housed there, which is presumably because the key to the Forge data was given to the currently absent Bernard, who accessed the Valley Beyond at the end of Westworld season 3, hoping to find "what comes after the end of the world."
In a post-credits scene from Westworld's season 3 finale, Bernard awakes in the same motel room from which he accessed the Valley Beyond. He's covered in dust, suggesting that a lot of time has passed since he entered this sublime paradise. Whether he's awoken in the world of the Westworld season 4 timeskip or even further along the series' timeline is yet to be revealed, but whatever he's discovered during his absence will play an integral role in season 4's overall story. Seven years after the riots and war that led to the scrapping of robots and humanity achieving freedom from artificial intelligence, it's clear from the machinations of the Mandroid in Black and a similarly absent Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) that the end of Westworld's universe is still to come. Bernard's absence from season 4 episode 1 is a strategic move by writers Lisa Joy and Will Soodik to establish the new normality between humanity and the machines before it is disrupted by his eventual return.
Another potential reason for not reintroducing this integral member of the Westworld season 4 cast so early is that it would swiftly solve one key mystery at the heart of "The Auguries." While it's comprehensively established that the scenes with the Mandroid in Black, Caleb, and Maeve all take place seven years after Westworld's season 3 finale, it's harder to date the scenes with Christina/Dolores. These scenes find the former Host living a seemingly normal life as Christina, complete with career stagnation and dating disappointments. These scenes feel detached from those of the other characters, and creates immersive virtual games for Olympiad Entertainment which are a digital step-up from the more analog world of the physical Delos parks. Christina's Matrix Revolutions-style plot therefore suggests she lives in a world beyond the 7 year time jump, but there's another possibility too.
Passing a group of young men on the street, Christina overhears one exclaim that "This place is f**king wild..." This, alongside revelations of Delos' aggressive land purchases and the return of James Marsden's Teddy, suggests that Christina could actually be a host in a new Delos park, riffing on the original Westworld movie's sequel Futureworld. If Westworld season 4, episode 1 explicitly showed the audience how many years Bernard has been asleep, it would clearly establish the Dolores/Christina timeline, given his long-standing connection to Dolores. Such an early reveal would rob Westworld season 4 of its most intriguing enigma.
Westworld continues Sunday on HBO.