Lots of people thought HBO would do one more season to wrap it up. The lead actors will all be paid their full salary for season 5 even though it isn’t being made. They had pay-or-play contracts.
https://www.darkhorizons.com/westworld-cast-to-be-paid-despite-axing/
Keep in mind the severe cost cutting the new WB-Discovery team has been imposing across the board. Westworld is a very expensive show. The new team is going to very very selective in spending that kind of money on a show, and not sure that even House of the Dragon would have been given a go ahead if it was pitched now before numbers were known.
In that context a very pricey show that has tumbled in viewer numbers, and that even those who watched were often a bit meh about?
@Mahaloth, this is a management team that swallowed the sunk costs of Batgirl rather than spend any more to release it. They are pulling completed shows from streaming to save the marginal fees (including the amazing Infinity Train). Actors costs are a small fraction of Westworld’s total expense. As per your citation, the cancellation saves them roughly $80 million. The only surprise to me is that anyone is surprised.
I can’t say I’m too surprised, and I won’t really mourn it, given how uneven the last few seasons were. I also like that the show came full circle, with Dolores walking back into the dusty railroad town. Not a bad note to end on.
I wonder if another network or streaming service will try to pick it up, either for a whole season or just a single wrap-up movie, like Deadwood did? I kind of doubt it.
AFAIK, there are no humans left. And so the show lost interest to me.
But they aren’t. They can not have children. They are immortal.
Yep. Once Upon a Time still had some moments, but I lost interest.
What was there to do? Everyone was dead.
The Aaron Paul character’s daughter was human, and presumably her girlfriend, who escaped Manhattan on a boat at the end. I think that may have been it, though, at least that we saw.
Well, the Robots said no humans were left, and altho I agree we didn’t see them die, we don’t know how long they lasted.
I’m quite sure that had they gotten the renewal there would have been stories left to tell. Of course, I’m also skeptical that any “death” in this show is permanent. Maybe some graphic novels to wrap up?
So you’re saying the humans are dead?
I admit that the very end of S4 didn’t really inspire confidence in S5 anyway. “The hosts fucked around for years and managed to drive the entire human race extinct AND all the physically-manifested hosts, several of which killed themselves in a sort of existential horror, so naturally the next step will be to go into the virtual world containing the only remaining sentient life on Earth and fuck around some more.” I mean - Jesus Christ on a cracker, Dolores, but have you considered not fucking around?
Westworld basically became Don Hertzfeld’s World of Tomorrow but without the time travel and tiny bubbly girlchild.
One problem with the show is that the creators thought viewers would be a lot more interested in Dolores than most of them actually were. Nothing against Evan Rachel Wood, but as written, her character’s motivations were consistently, frustratingly opaque, making her perhaps the least interesting person on the show.
I was interested in Dolores. In Season 1. And then they didn’t know what to do with her properly after that.
That sums it up well. Maeve was the interesting character after that. Probably followed by Bernard, but maybe he was interesting as he was used lightly.
I have to say, I at least didn’t find the Caleb character interesting. When he wasn’t a sidekick to Maeve, he dragged the show down.
As I noted above, I liked him when we thought he was just a normal, decent guy who got caught up in all the madness. Once we found out he was Special, he became a lot less interesting.
I haven’t watched the last season yet, are people saying it makes for a decent ending and no more was needed?
This is completely on the incompetent writers - Aaron Paul is an acting powerhouse, and his talent was utterly squandered with that role.
With some hesitation, I would say so, yes. At least it didn’t end on a cliffhanger.
I faithfully watched all 4 seasons. First one was great, second one interested me for a bit but ultimately disappointed me, third and fourth were watched out of sheer bloody-mindedness. I am rather grateful to have been spared a 5th season.
Absolutely, my experience matches.
Pretty much my experience as well. The later seasons just were not that interesting, so the only reason to watch was to see it through to the end.
This is illustrative of the difficulty in evaluating the value of a show for a streaming service, which came up in the Rings of Power discussion too: viewer numbers don’t really tell all that much. The service doesn’t necessarily care about how how many watch a show out of “bloody-mindedness”; they care about how many care about the show as a major factor in deciding to sign up or keep signed up, relative to its cost.
I thought the last season started off strong, but oof that ending was terrible. Rocks fall, everyone dies type idiocy.