After four seasons and more than half a decade on the air, HBO has decided to cancel its mind-bending science fiction drama Westworld. The show began as a carefully written drama about a Western-themed android park that slowly went off the rails as its robotic denizens (known as “hosts”) gained sentience, and eventually grew into something nigh unrecognizable by the end of its run…but there was still always that convoluted special something that made it uniquely Westworld.
The series had its ups and downs over the years. But how did it go from being one of HBO’s golden children to getting axed with only one more season left to reach its long-planned ending?
Now that we can see the whole picture, let’s look back on Westworld and its winding history. There’s a lot to love about the series…but also some signs that this cancellation shouldn’t have caught anyone off guard.
Westworld season 1 is still exceptional television
When Westworld first premiered in 2016, it was heralded as HBO’s next big science fiction/fantasy show after the success of Game of Thrones. At the time, Thrones had just finished its sixth season and had proven that there was an enormous appetite for big budget genre television aimed at adults. But with only two seasons left to go, HBO would need a worthy successor.
Westworld wasn’t even remotely the same type of show as Thrones, but HBO was clearly hoping it would capture some of the same audience. Westworld’s first season premiered during the wait between Game of Thrones seasons 6 and 7, in the same vaunted Sunday night time slot.
The show had some serious creative talent behind it, including stellar actors like Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton and Jeffrey Wright. There were also seasoned producers like Jonathan Nolan (The Prestige, Person of Interest) and Lisa Joy (Pushing Daisies, Burn Notice), and even Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi.
The whole production was executed with such razor-sharp precision that every plot twist landed, no matter how complicated. Even eight years later and after a run filled with speed bumps, Westworld’s debut season holds up as a truly exceptional stretch of television.
Westworld exploded out of the gate, but there wasn’t much track ahead
However, after the show’s first season ended, things started to get complicated. To understand why, we have to talk a little bit about the origins of Westworld.
The show was based on a 1973 movie of the same name written by acclaimed author/screenwriter Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, ER), which was revolutionary at the time for its special effects. Season 1 of HBO’s Westworld focused on the hosts gaining sentience and murdering their human oppressors, which is pretty much the plot of Crichton’s Westworld film. The television show expanded on the ideas presented in the original movie, turning it into an exponentially richer story.
But by the end of season 1, the show had exhausted the premise set up by the source material. Starting with season 2, the hosts would actually be fighting for their freedom and grappling with what it might be like if they ever reached the outside world inhabited by humans. Like the hosts themselves, Westworld would need to reinvent itself, to become something other than a brainy remake of an old movie.
I’d say that Westworld largely achieved that ambitious goal. Season 2 returned in 2018 (once more helping tide Game of Thrones viewers over between seasons 7 and 8), and it did well enough for HBO to renew it yet again.
However, this is also when the show started coming under regular fire from critics. Yes, the hosts were battling for their freedom, but some of them also wanted to go to a digital robot heaven, others were hellbent on murdering any humans in sight, and yet others had enigmatic goals that weren’t made clear. In short, in season 2 the show started to get bogged down in its own mythology.
There were still high points, such as Maeve’s journey to Shogun World, a park modeled after feudal Japan. The hosts were written to follow the same loops as their western counterparts, which let Maeve reflect on the nature of her existence. “Kiksuya,” an episode which focused on the Native American host Akecheta, still stands as arguably the best episode in the entire series.
Ratings for Westworld dipped during its second season by around 24%. It’s hard to say if that was because of season 2’s more convoluted plotlines or because Westworld made fans wait two years between seasons, starting a trend that has become the norm among big budget genre shows. Westworld season 2 wasn’t a dud, but it also wasn’t a bonafide hit like its predecessor. All that said, there was still plenty of room for the series to bounce back and find its footing again, if it had even lost it.
Unfortunately, season 2’s issues were small compared to what was coming.
Westworld season 3: Attack of the hard-to-pronounce supercomputer algorithm
Season 2 ended with Westworld and all the other parks basically being destroyed, the majority of the hosts either dying or fleeing into the Sublime (the digital great beyond), and a handful escaping out into the human world. Season 3 was always going to be the make-or-break moment for the series; the point when fans discovered whether it could survive and thrive beyond its initial premise.
The result was…interesting. Rather than dial deeper into its vast web of already existing characters and ideas, Westworld season 3 introduced a slew of new characters and the concept that humanity was just as enslaved in their own world as the hosts were back in Westworld, this time by an advanced supercomputer named Rehoboam that dictated each person’s lot in life based on a predictive algorithm.
It was an intriguing, but much of season 3 felt like Westworld just didn’t quite know what do with itself. There are some gems, such as Dolores Abernathy’s turn to total murder-bot and her friendship with new human character Caleb (Aaron Paul). Dolores eventually sacrifices herself to free humanity from Rehoboam, which was a great redeeming moment after she’d spent all season killing people.
This was the show’s cyberpunk season, and the aesthetic was very cool. But the convoluted plot problems that plagued season 2 were jacked up even farther here. Dolores has made copies of herself; at one point we discover that a slew of other characters are actually Doloreses in disguise (some of whom don’t know they’re copies). The entire Rehoboam plotline came pretty much out of nowhere and feels extremely disconnected from anything else in the show; it was never foreshadowed before season 3 and, tellingly, the show largely jettisoned it for season 4. William spends most of the season in an insane asylum, something actor Ed Harris didn’t particularly enjoy. The list of gripes with Westworld season 3 is long.
The ratings started to reflect the growing sense of exhaustion among fans. Viewership for the season 3 premiere was down a jaw-dropping 57% from season 2, and while viewers did gradually begin to get more invested in season 3’s cyberpunk revolution storyline, they never watched in numbers that could match the heights of previous seasons.
Part of the reasons the numbers look so bad is because Westworld season 3 aired right around the time that networks were getting serious about building their own streaming platforms; that 57% drop shrunk to 43% once HBO Now and HBO Go viewers were factored in. But no matter how you slice it, the audience shrank.
Westworld season 3 also had eight episodes, down from the previous order of 10. Since then, 8-episode seasons have become the norm for many prestige genre shows. In many ways, Westworld was always ahead of its time, even when we wish it weren’t.
Westworld season 3 managed to win back some audience members by its finale; the 75-minute epic “Decoherence” managed to draw 1.8 million viewers across streaming and linear TV, down only 18.2% from the finale of season 2. But by then, the damage had been done.
Westworld’s season 4 rebound was too little too late
That brings us just about up to speed. Westworld returned for its fourth season over the summer of 2022, and to many viewers’ pleasant surprise, it was a strong return to form for the series. In particular, the mid-season twist and its roaring ’20s-themed park were highlights on par with anything in the show’s long history. On the creative side, Westworld appeared to be back.
But by then, HBO’s faith in the series had waned. Season 4 received shockingly little marketing support; HBO announced the premiere date scarcely two months beforehand. By comparison, HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon aired after Westworld season 4 but had its release date announced weeks earlier.
Meanwhile, many viewers had already checked out on the series. Westworld’s season 4 ratings were, by HBO standards, abysmal; the fourth season often averaged under 400,000 viewers per episode, with its finale clocking in at 391,000, an 81% drop from the finale of season 1 in 2016. These numbers make HBO’s decision to cancel the series seem a lot more reasonable. Westworld is an expensive show to produce; season 4 cost a reported $160 million, which is obviously a lot to spend on a show that so few people are watching, comparatively speaking.
It’s a shame, but was possibly the only thing to do. Despite some strong moments, season 4 fell back on the show’s old, convoluted tricks in its final two episodes, totally overlooking the compelling character beats it had set up only episodes earlier. It’s hard to tell why those decisions were made — keep in mind that season 4 was filmed during the pandemic — but they indicate that, even if Westworld had gotten the fifth and final season its creators wanted, it likely would have still had the problems as it always did.
Season 4’s exceptionally dark finale served as something of a reset, however, so much so that it almost felt like an ending to the show. After the huge twist that the hosts had taken over the world, penning humans into major cities and creating their own versions of Westworld-style parks for young hosts to visit, the finale was utterly apocalyptic. By the end, just about every single character we cared about other than Christina (aka, a new Dolores) had been wiped out.
Even without a finale season, the Westworld season 4 finale still feels like an ending. It’s not like canceling Raised By Wolves after its second season or any number of other shocker cancellations throughout television history. One question that has come up since the show’s cancellation is whether it’s even worth watching at all anymore. Does it feel incomplete? Strangely, it doesn’t. By pulling the plug on Westworld after season 4, HBO has left the show in a place where it feels like a full tale; albeit a rather bleak one.
Perhaps one day we’ll get to find out more about that ending vision that Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy had in mind for Westworld. Until then, we can always get back on our loops and revisit the science fiction epic that helped paved the way for so many other great shows that followed.
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.
Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels