There won’t be a Westworld season 5 as HBO cancels the show
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It’s the end of the line for Westworld: The show’s fourth season, which aired earlier this year, will be its last, with HBO announcing that the series has been canceled ahead of an expected fifth and final season.
The news comes through The Hollywood Reporter (opens in new tab) and other points of sale (opens in new tab)with a statement from HBO praising the team behind the series, starting with husband-and-wife duo Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy who created the show.
“Over the past four seasons, Lisa and Jonah have taken viewers on a breathtaking odyssey, raising the bar every step of the way,” the statement read. “We are extremely grateful to them, along with their incredibly talented cast, producers and crew, and all of our partners at Kilter Films, Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television. It has been great to join them on this journey.”
Nolan and Joy had previously stated that they wanted the opportunity to tie up loose ends and bring the series to a definitive conclusion. Season four ended rather ambiguously – which was certainly not unusual for Westworld.
“Making Westworld has been one of the highlights of our careers,” Nolan and Joy said in their statement. “We are immensely grateful to our extraordinary cast and crew for creating these indelible characters and beautiful worlds. We have been privileged to tell these stories of the future of consciousness – both human and beyond – in the short time before our AI overlords forbid us to do that.”
The Westworld Story
Westworld is largely inspired by the 1973 film of the same name and was initially set in a futuristic theme park populated by AI-controlled robots. Designed to look something like the American Old West, the park gave its human visitors the opportunity to role-play and indulge in fantasies.
As you would expect, things quickly went wrong at the park. The show’s four seasons took viewers on a journey through the ideas of free will, consciousness, artificial intelligence, morality, and technological advancement. The scope of the show expanded to other theme parks and eventually to the real world.
It also attracted quite a bit of star power: Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Tessa Thompson, Aaron Paul, Jeffrey Wright, Ed Harris, Anthony Hopkins, James Marsden and Jimmi Simpson were some of the actors who appeared on the screen. The series earned 54 Emmy nominations and nine wins over the course of the series.
Ultimately, though, it seems like it couldn’t keep enough audiences for HBO to keep it going. Strong ratings during season one dropped season after season, with some critics complaining that the show’s various ins and outs — by leaps and bounds in time, memory and reality — were too hard to keep up with.
Ultimately, HBO didn’t give a reason why Westworld was disapproved, whether it’s for budget cuts or ratings or anything else – but it’s clear the series didn’t end up quite the strength it was in the beginning.