It’s the end of Westworld: The fourth season of the show that aired earlier this year will be the final, and HBO has announced that the series has been canceled ahead of the expected fifth and final season.
message from hollywood reporter (opens in new tab) and Other outlets (opens in new tab)HBO released a statement praising the team behind the series, starting with the husband-and-wife duo of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, who created the show.
“Over the past four seasons, Lisa and Jonah have led audiences on a mind-bending adventure, raising the bar every step of the way,” the statement read. “We are very grateful to them, along with their talented cast, producers and crew, and all of our partners at Kilter Films, Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television. It’s really exciting to be part of their journey.”
Nolan and Joey have previously publicly expressed their desire to have the opportunity to end the loose ends and draw a definitive end to the series. The fourth season ended rather vaguely — not uncommon for Westworld.
“Making Westworld has been one of the highlights of our careers,” Nolan and Joy said in their own statement. “We are so grateful to our extraordinary cast and crew for creating these indelible characters and brilliant worlds. We are privileged to tell these stories about humanity and a future beyond consciousness in the brief time before our AI overlords forbid us to do so .”
westworld story
Much of Westworld was inspired by the 1973 film of the same name and was originally set in a futuristic theme park populated by AI-controlled robots. The park is designed to look like the American Old West, offering human visitors the opportunity to experience role-playing and fantasy.
As you might expect, the park soon started having problems. The show’s four seasons take viewers through ideas of free will, consciousness, artificial intelligence, ethics and technological progress. The show’s scope expanded to other theme parks and eventually to real-world environments.
It has also attracted quite a bit of star power: Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Tessa Thompson, Aaron Paul, Jeffrey Wright, Ed Harris, Anthony Hopkins, James Marsden and Jimmy Simpson are all actors who have appeared on screen. The series has 54 Emmy nominations and 9 wins throughout its run.
But in the end, it doesn’t seem like it can sustain enough viewers for HBO to keep it going. The strong first season’s ratings have declined season by season, and some critics have complained that the show’s various details — including timing, memory, and jumps in reality — are too difficult to keep up with.
Ultimately, HBO didn’t say why Westworld was shut down, whether it was because of budget cuts, viewership numbers, or something else — but it’s clear that the series didn’t end up as strong as it started out.
