Leaving the Park Was Westworld's Fatal Decision
HBO canceling its award-winning sci-fi series Westworld, which showed poor ratings and lost it audience by the end of Season 5, is the right one, many fans believe. But it came too late.
The show should have been discontinued much earlier – after Season 2. And it is the writers' room and the producers that are to blame for the show's poor performance.
According to the mainstream opinion, leaving the Westworld amusement park was the prelude for the series' later demise. It was the park that gave the show its unique 'flavor'. Apart from losing its 'flavor' the series lost its identity after Season 2 and it didn't feel like the same show anymore. Once they stepped outside, Westworld turned into a rather generic sci-fi project and we have lots of them out there.
There's also another reason for Season 3 being problems-ridden. The show's great success was to a large extent due to Ford's actions. Played by Anthony Hopkins, this villain's scheming, unveiling the park's secrets, watching the man in black go through trying to find the maze, you name it, was absolutely amazing. This genius has always been one step ahead of everyone else and he was in control of everything in the Westworld park.
Many fans agree that Anthony Hopkin's portrayal of Ford was phenomenal and gave goosebumps every time they watched him; it kept the audience's attention. But Ford ended up dead, and Season 3 was nowhere close to the show's former glory.
One of the Redditors has brought up an interesting take on why leaving the park was the biggest writers' mistake that ultimately lead to the show's being canceled.
It was not necessarily bad per se; the fact that people were kept waiting for 2 years was worse.
"I think what hurt WW as much (or even more than) was the two year wait between seasons. It's just too much time… If you're going to make your audience wait, you better deliver. And introducing something completely new after a long wait is simply too much for an audience to handle. They want to go back to the world they've waited for, but instead it's basically a new show," Redditor ParsleyMostly suggested.
The fact that the writers completely changed the direction of the show in Season 3 was something that many fans refused to accept. And while the ideas of using AI and social media to control people are quite relevant in today's society, Westworld didn't feel like the same show anymore.
Westworld was released in October 2016; HBO announced its decision to cancel Season 5 in early November.