When the news came out that HBO had canceledWestworldafter its fourth season, fans of the ambitious sci-fi series were rightfully enraged. After all, creatorsJonathan NolanandLisa Joyhad a pretty clear plan on howthey were going to wrap things up on Season 5. Furthermore, Season 4 ended with apretty big cliffhangerconcerning a future war between humanity and hosts. Still, from a business standpoint, there were pretty good reasons to off the show:the costs were high and the audience had been dwindlingever since the end of its first run in 2016. And, to be frank, it’s not hard to understand why.
It’s always sad when a show is killed before its time, especially when there were already plans for a neat wrap-up in the near future. However, inWestworld’s case, the series had already met its natural ending long before its cancelation. To be more specific, the show should’ve ended after its very first season. From then on, what started as a perfect piece of television gradually turned into a confusing mess that completely lost touch with what made it so great to begin with. Sure, maybe Nolan and Joy had plans for a five-chapter book, but, in reality,Westworldshould have always been a short story.
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Season 1 of ‘Westworld’ Is a Perfect Miniseries
The first season ofWestworldis a fine example of how great storytelling can be achieved through television, and one that stands perfectly on its own. It’s a story about the nature of humanity, about oppression, and about the dark path that grief takes us through. It’s the story of an old man, Ford (Anthony Hopkins), who becomes disillusioned with humanity after the death of his partner and decides that it’s time for a new kind to take over the world. It’s also the story of a bright-eyed young man, William (Jimmi Simpson), who discovers the darkness in him through his many visits toWestworld, and the story of The Man in Black (Ed Harris), who believes himself to be a god, the center of the universe, only to be proven wrong. Finally, it’s the story of two women, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve (Thandiwe Newton), and their journey towards consciousness and liberation. All of this is neatly wrapped up in a classic “us versus them” narrative about humans and robots — or, rather, hosts.
The story is divided into two timelines. In the past, we meet William during his first visit to the Westworld park, in which he falls in love with a host named Dolores. Throughout his travels with her, he becomes convinced that she has a mind of her own and, therefore, is different from all other hosts, who merely follow their programming. This belief is quickly destroyed when he returns to the park only to discover that Dolores doesn’t remember him anymore. Her mind has been erased, just like a computer’s memory.
Years later, William returns to the park as The Man in Black, a vicious killer interested only in one thing:finding the center of the Maze, a secret game hidden in the depths of Westworld. What The Man in Black doesn’t know, but will soon enough find out, is that the Maze isn’t meant for him or any other guests of the park. In reality, the Maze is a path created for Dolores and other hosts to reach consciousness.
The first season ofWestworldends with Dolores finally becoming aware of her nature and of all the violence committed against her kind by the human guests of Westworld. With the help of other hosts, she conducts a massacre in the park and announces the rise of a new species. This is revealed to be all part of Ford’s plan: the creator of Westworld became so disillusioned with people after seeing how they behaved in a world with no real consequences that he decided it was time for humanity to end.
While Dolores enacts her own version of Judgment Day, another host, Maeve, makes plans to escape the park complex, believing herself to have achieved consciousness. However, her escape was also part of Ford’s plan, having been conceived as a decoy to allow the hosts in cold storage to join Dolores’ forces. Upon realizing this, she achieves true consciousness and free will by deciding to go back into the park to find the daughter that she lost.
It’s a perfect ending for a story that was all about what it means to follow our hearts’ desire. Two hosts reached consciousness. However, one of them — Dolores —, merely enacted the bloodbath that her former master wished upon humanity. Did she really want to do this? Or was it just part of her programming? What is the difference, in the end? On the other hand, we have Maeve, the one who was truly able to surpass the wishes of her creators and look for love instead of murder. Humanity will meet its fate, but not through her hands. And, thus, will it meet its fate truly through the hands of hosts, or are hosts merely another weapon created by humans?
Expanding the Universe of ‘Westworld’ Ultimately Didn’t Work
TheWestworldSeason 1 finale leaves many questions up in the air, but not of the kind that need to be answered later by the creators. They are questions that viewers are supposed to think on and come to their own conclusions. And, yet, in 2018,Westworldgot itself a second season that appeared to answer all of the viewers' doubts about what happened after Dolores’ massacre.
Now, there are plenty of good arguments as towhyWestworldshould’ve actually ended after Season 2. Particularly, the series’ second run offers a neater conclusion for the storylines of Dolores and Maeve. However, are these conclusions actually necessary? Let’s examine them a little closer, shall we?
At the end of Season 2, Dolores escapes the park, something that we already knew she would do after she killed everyone in the Season 1 finale. Meanwhile, Maeve found her daughter, but was once again separated by her in an attempt to save other hosts from Dolores and the Clementine (Angela Sarafyan) virus — a very unsatisfying ending for a character whose main purpose was to be reunited with the life that she lost because of the whims of her creators. Instead of a person with her own desires, Maeve is turned into merely a foe for Dolores. This becomes an even greater problem in Seasons 3 and 4, in which Maeve has absolutely no purpose besides stopping Rehoboam and then Dolores from controlling humanity.
Another problem that emerges in Season 2 that would become even greater in following seasons is just how confusing the plot got just for the sake of being confusing. The writers seem to have mistaken structural complexity with narrative and thematic depth. The two timelines from Season 1 were brought back just for the sake of it, which forced us to spend a lot of time with the people running the park — characters we didn’t even care that much about to begin with. New layers were added to Ford’s plan to replace humanity with a new, robotic kind, and now there was a super convoluted scheme to copy human minds and remake them into hosts. By Season 4, this all had led to Dolores turning the whole world into a park for former host to play in as guests, torturing humans now deprived of free will.
By Diving Into the Real World, ‘Westworld’ Lost the Excitement of the Park
But perhaps the greatest crime ofWestworldSeasons 2, 3, and 4 isn’t the messy plot, but how they abandon the park for a more generic sci-fi narrative. A great part of what madeWestworldfun to watch was how the show subverted Western tropes through the use of science fiction elements, making us wonder about the more complex undertones of the stories that we tell ourselves. The Western setting also gave the series a unique look that set it apart from other shows of the genre. By choosing to leave this old-timey atmosphere behind,Westworldbecame nearly indistinguishable from all other stories about robots trying to take over humanity.
Granted, Season 2 still had a lot of moments set in the original park, and they were pretty great. However, they were only half of the story. The other half was just a bunch of people dressed in regular dark clothing speaking technological mumbo-jumbo just like in any unimaginative, run-of-the-mill sci-fi tale. In Season 4, they tried to recapture some of this magic by havingMaeve and Caleb(Aaron Paul) travel to Prohibition World, but that didn’t last long.
Now, to be fair,WestworldSeasons 2 through 4 aren’t entirely irredeemable. Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon) and Bernard’s (Jeffrey Wright) journeys towards consciousness were almost as exciting to watch as Dolores’ and Maeve’s. Caleb’s fight against Rehoboam was also pretty interesting, though it would certainly have felt more at home in an entirely different show. In the end, there were interesting ideas scattered throughout the later seasons ofWestworld, they just didn’t fit well enough with what the series originally was. And considering just how great and cohesive Season 1 was, they ended up cheapening what would have otherwise been a perfect story.
