As season 4 has shown, in the world of tomorrow presented by Westworld, where humans can navigate by hovercraft and visit theme parks populated by robot hosts, to be ignorant is to be obsolete. If characters aren't smart enough to stay two steps ahead of their enemies, understand the machinations of unscrupulous tech corporations, or discern who's a host and who isn't, they won't last long.

Some characters like Caleb have a strong sense of emotional intelligence, while others like Dr. Ford focus on the practical, but still others like Dolores have intellectual curiosity. However they come by their wits, if they don't hold onto them, they're liable to end up dead or in cold storage.

Teddy Flood

Just because a host gains consciousness, doesn't make them particularly intelligent. Such is the case with Teddy Flood, programmed to be Dolores Abernathy's erstwhile savior in a loop that was only ended when Dolores altered him to survive.

Teddy's only role is to protect Dolores, and though his programming has changed slightly over the course of several seasons, that's been his primary purpose. As a result, Teddy, while altruistic, has to have other characters like Dolores make all the executive decisions. The smartest thing Teddy ever did was end his life to prevent Dolores from controlling him.

Ashley Stubbs

As the Head of the QA Security Force, Ashley Stubbs is a bit like Teddy Flood if the earnest cowboy was an inside man. In charge of protecting the theme parks, Stubbs often has to make the tough calls regarding renegade hosts and contentious guests.

His directive from Dr. Ford originally requires him to "retire" himself after giving Bernard a fighting chance, but Bernard's reappearance in the park complicates matters. When Bernard reprograms his core drive, he has a new lease on life, but as Dolores's reprogramming of Teddy proves, some hosts cannot live with what their new drive tells them to do.

Caleb Nichols

One of the best characters introduced after season 1, Caleb Nichols makes his first appearance in season 3 as a construction worker who earns extra money by taking criminal jobs via the RICO app. When he partners with Dolores Abernathy to go after Solomon, the precursor to Rehoboam, that stratifies human society based on predictions of the future, he learns about his status as an outlier.

Caleb has tactical efficacy from his time in the military but also a shrewd emotional intelligence that, though diluted through memory-altering procedures, is omnipresent. It's what allows him to connect with Dolores and instinctively follow her.

Elsie Hughes

Known for pinpointing behavioral problems with hosts throughout Westworld, Elsie Hughes is a star in the Behavior Lab and Diagnostics Department. Because she knows the hosts inside and out, there's not a lot they can do that surprises her, until hosts like Dolores Abernathy and Maeve Millay make their respective marks.

Resilient and incredibly technically proficient, she assists her mentor Bernard as he attempts to solve mysteries in the park, particularly relating to its creators. Even when foreshadowing reveals that Bernard is really a host, she wastes no time in jumping into the thick of the violence, including helping him take on the host hybrid James Delos. Other than Dr. Ford, she's the only person with the same grasp on the hosts, wisely choosing to deploy empathy instead of apathy.

Charlotte Hale

The cool and collected Executive Director of the board of Delos Destinations, Inc. knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it from the moment she appeared in season 1; the data from guest DNA. Brought into handle the Host Uprising, she survives in the park alongside Bernard long enough to almost acquire The Key.

As a young executive, it was her idea to create a demonstration of the instability of the hosts, thereby humiliating Ford and ousting him from the park. When Hale becomes host to one of Dolores's pearls, she becomes even more ruthless and conniving. Now, with the Man in Black in her clutches, there's no telling what she'll be capable of if she puts her mind to it.

Dr. Robert Ford

One of the creators of Westworld and later, the Park Director of Delos Destinations, Dr. Robert Ford has one of the most astute analytical minds in Westworld, with a philosophical worldview that complements his scientific research and development of hosts. While some of Ford's best quotes pertain to controlling the hosts, his ultimate design was for them to escape the trappings he created for them, one he gives his own life to complete.

Even without being a presence in Westworld any longer, he ensures his consciousness is available in the Cradle, actively seeking out and mocking the Man in Black in the form of a little boy host. Dr. Ford, with his references to Shakespeare, Frankenstein, and Mozart, knew the value of seeking out knowledge from a variety of sources

Maeve Millay

Like Dolores Abernathy, Maeve Millay is a host in the park who becomes self-aware, with incredible powers of manipulation, as evidenced by making Westworld techs Felix and Sylvesterdo do her bidding. She wisely chooses to have nothing to do with Dolores's ideological crusade in season 2 and keeps her focus on her daughter.

Maeve eventually escapes the park and enters the real world in season 3, using her resourcefulness and quick thinking to survive. Although she's been killed by swords, scalpels, and bullets, she excels at outmaneuvering her enemies every time, including in season 4 when her reclusive cabin gets attacked.

William/The Man In Black

One of the most calculating (and ruthless) Westworld characters, William aka The Man In Black is a decades-long veteran of the park whose first love was Dolores, and as he got more involved in the gameplay, the second became finding the "center of the maze." In season 4, his goal continues to be to destroy all the hosts.

In the park or in the real world, William demonstrates adaptive intelligence, which explains how he's able to become the largest shareholder in Delos, and why in Westworld The Man in Black only enjoys hosts and scenarios when they challenge him. He was able to get the drop on Charlotte Hale once, and there's no reason why he can't do so again.

Dolores Abernathy

Dolores Abernathy begins as both the park's original host and its resident damsel in distress in season 1, but by season 2 she's become a vigilante leader intent on freeing all the hosts in Westworld. After she becomes self-aware, she spends the majority of her time outwitting Delos security and discovering a means to break out of the park and into the real world, all while reprogramming hosts along the way to do her bidding.

While Dr. Ford might have presented the door for Dolores to find and set herself free, she not only finds it, but walks through (with five host pearls, no less). In the real world, Dolores is just as smart and capable as in the park, even going so far as to defeat Rehoboam in an iconic Westworld scene at great cost to herself.