HBO Max Westworld Season 4 (1 Viewer)

[Brian L]

Spoiler: Riddle me this

After Haloes is killed but Host TMIB, she is rebuilt with what looks like a 1st generation electro-mechanical host body...recall the young boy living in the cottage in S1. Dolores is also rebuilt at one point onto a mechanical host frame (S3, what it?).

Why? New production hosts are built off what looks like a human scale 3D printer.

 

[Citizen87645]

She directed the drones to make her stronger. When Host William later stabs her the knife doesn't penetrate. Not sure if the frame was a season 1 callback or just one to help her be more impervious.

Didn't remember Ogg was in Season 1, but was the woman he was with also an original Westworld host?

 

[Brian L]

She directed the drones to make her stronger. When Host William later stabs her the knife doesn't penetrate. Not sure if the frame was a season 1 callback or just one to help her be more impervious.

Didn't remember Ogg was in Season 1, but was the woman he was with also an original Westworld host?

I did not recognize her, nor did my wife, but I assume she was a previous cast member/host.

Ogg was with the "milkman" that murdered Dolores's mother and father in one of the opening scenes of S1. He had a recurring part.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I felt the thud of disinterest as this season's finale winded down. I felt as invested as I did watching those old-school electronic football games with the vibrating field and the players move in all sorts of random-ass directions.

 

[Lord Dalek]

The Westworld cycle:

Wow this is really interesting! I really want to know where this is going! -> I'm sure this is going somewhere! -> This is going somewhere right? -> No really where is this going... -> This isn't going anywhere is it? -> THIS SHOW SUCKS! -> ...AGAIN!

A+ job there again Lisa. A-PLUS. =/

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Steven Ogg will forever be etched in my brain as Trevor from Grand Theft Auto V. I crack up every time I see him pop up in shows.

 

[Citizen87645]

The Westworld cycle:

Wow this is really interesting! I really want to know where this is going! -> I'm sure this is going somewhere! -> This is going somewhere right? -> No really where is this going... -> This isn't going anywhere is it? -> THIS SHOW SUCKS! -> ...AGAIN!

A+ job there again Lisa. A-PLUS. =/

I guess it's ironic fitting her last name is Joy.

 

[Keith Cobby]

Finally watched the last episode (holiday) and caught up with this thread. It ended as it began for me, a downbeat ending to a downbeat show. In order S1, S3, S2, S4, I doubt there will be a S5.

 

[Josh Dial]

I think the show is a lock for season 5. For what it's worth, Ed Harris said in an interview he plans to be filming the final season in spring 2023 (quote: "We have one more season, which will start filming next April and May. I have no idea where that’s going to end up").

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Agreed, there will be some kind of conclusion to the show - I have no idea what the viewership was this season but if it was poor, they’ll cut the budget or episode order to compensate.

Right now it’s a mystery show without a conclusion. Every bit of market research shows that for it to have value as an asset in perpetuity, it needs to have a conclusion. The cost of making a shortened final season or finale movie is quite possibly less than the amount of value the entire property would lose if it didn’t have a conclusion.

This is what the studios realized when they started green lighting reboots and continuations of long dormant shows a decade ago. Streaming viewership for shows that had conclusions eclipsed that for shows that were ended before being wrapped up. It makes sense - it’s not an appealing prospect to start watching something that has no end and will have no end.

You can bet HBO will crunch all the numbers they can to find a way to bring to story to a conclusion.

 

[TJPC]

The worst version of this are shows which have a new mystery. Or whatever to set up season 2 which never materialized ( colony)

 

[benbess]

I feel in retrospect that HBO may have given the creators and showrunners too much freedom and too many seasons. The first season was a very good hybrid between sci fi and Western, but I don't much care for the rest of it. I still hope, however, that they give it a grand conclusion of some kind.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It’s interesting you say that because if memory serves, HBO was heavily involved in the firsts season, even going so far as ordering a shutdown in production for the second half of the first season’s scripts to be retooled. Apparently HBO felt that the show was moving too slowly and that the audience was either going to be way ahead of the showrunners or get bored. The dual timelines with Jimmi Simpson and Ed Harris were apparently supposed to continue for at least another year, with the revelation that they were the same character coming seasons later instead of at the end of the first season.

I think HBO was right to speed them up because that wound up being something that many people picked up on almost immediately, but speeding up the story may have left the showrunners in a position where all of their best ideas got used up early on.

As someone who has viewed all of the seasons, I have to admit that I enjoyed the first season the most by a long shot. I didn’t necessarily sign up for a show about artificial intelligence and the end of humanity; I signed up for a sci-fi western theme park, and it’s amazing how quickly a show called “Westworld” abandoned its Westworld setting.

 

[Josh Dial]

I liked the first season the most until I did a full re-watch in advance season 4 (at which point my preference shifted to season 3). I think audiences tend to enjoy initial world building and character introductions so first seasons tend to get a bit of a soft touch from fans.

But the first season's appeal could never sustain much beyond the second. Were were really just supposed to watch Dolores et al on slightly different loops for 18 episodes? That would be boring.

And it also would be at odds with the central themes of the show: the nature of consciousness, humanity, and life. The show was always building toward a grand over-aching plot about those themes. It was always building toward leaving the park, spiralling outward, and then--like the Maze--back inward.

I'm not sure what some viewers (nobody here--I'm referring to the faceless trolls elsewhere on the internet) wanted from the show. But if they wanted to just watch Ed Harris stomp around shooting robots for 40 episodes, this was never the show for them.

I think the show did a great job in the first season teasing the themes and implying the bigger picture. If anything, I couldn't wait for the show to leave the park and go outside.

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

I liked the first season the most until I did a full re-watch in advance season 4 (at which point my preference shifted to season 3). I think audiences tend to enjoy initial world building and character introductions so first seasons tend to get a bit of a soft touch from fans.

But the first season's appeal could never sustain much beyond the second. Were were really just supposed to watch Dolores et al on slightly different loops for 18 episodes? That would be boring.

And it also would be at odds with the central themes of the show: the nature of consciousness, humanity, and life. The show was always building toward a grand over-aching plot about those themes. It was always building toward leaving the park, spiralling outward, and then--like the Maze--back inward.

I'm not sure what some viewers (nobody here--I'm referring to the faceless trolls elsewhere on the internet) wanted from the show. But if they wanted to just watch Ed Harris stomp around shooting robots for 40 episodes, this was never the show for them.

I think the show did a great job in the first season teasing the themes and implying the bigger picture. If anything, I couldn't wait for the show to leave the park and go outside.

Get outta my head because you are saying all the things rattling around in my mind. I feel like the nature of this show, and the expression through story and production, were made just for me. It’s a perfect combination, in the right and evolving measures, of what I am drawn to. This has become one of my favorite shows of all time and I am enamored by it.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I can’t speak to what anyone else expected but I would have assumed after the first season that the show would have worked to broaden the outside world through the lens of the world inside the park - that the show would have expanded to encompass the real world in addition to the park, rather than instead of.

I’m not arguing against the validity of the storytelling choices they did make but simply stating that it moved in a direction different than what I expected, and that I wasn’t as enticed by some of those moves. I think they can also be obtuse in their storytelling choices in a way that can make the show feel like a chore rather than entertainment.

But that’s enormously subjective. Twin Peaks makes perfect sense to me, but is impenetrable for many. There’s so much of that that is subjective to where a viewer is coming from, and Westworld is a particularly uncompromising show in the sense that it has no desire to meet its audience where they are.

 

[benbess]

After the first season, I was hoping they'd do much more sophisticated version of what was done in the Futureworld movie from the 1970s, but with worldbuilding like Spielberg and Kubrick's AI. But I think one season of that might have done it. But anyway, what we've got now doesn't seem to have much rewatch value for my tastes—and I'm someone who has watched favorite episodes of the various Star Trek shows dozens of times each lol!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I feel like I’m stuck in a catch-22 when it comes to rewatching this show.

I acknowledge that there are lots of little connections and hints within the show that would pay off better if I rewatched each older season before beginning the new one.

But I don’t enjoy watching the show enough to take on an obligation to rewatch 10-30 hours of old episodes before watching new episodes. It’s not really a “fun” show for me in that way. So I struggle with some plot points because the show takes two years between seasons and that’s a long time to retain specific, minute details. I’ll concede that some of that is on me.

 

[Josh Dial]

I feel like I’m stuck in a catch-22 when it comes to rewatching this show.

I acknowledge that there are lots of little connections and hints within the show that would pay off better if I rewatched each older season before beginning the new one.

But I don’t enjoy watching the show enough to take on an obligation to rewatch 10-30 hours of old episodes before watching new episodes. It’s not really a “fun” show for me in that way. So I struggle with some plot points because the show takes two years between seasons and that’s a long time to retain specific, minute details. I’ll concede that some of that is on me.

For me (and my spouse--she and I pretty much watch our shows together), I have certain shows that are in my "hall of fame" that I watch once every five years or so. These shows get my undivided attention when I re-watch them. We burn through them binge-style. The list is short:

LOST​

BSG​

The West Wing​

Twin Peaks​

Assuming Westworld gets a season five and sticks the landing, I'll be adding it to the hall of fame.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Pre-kids, we did a lot more of that. With kids, there just isn’t the time to do that together. So it winds up that we prioritize the stuff we most want to see together (which is usually new shows and then a classic sitcom for casual viewing), and then the rewatches happen on our own time individually. We started Westworld together initially but at a certain point she felt she couldn’t follow it without rewatching the older seasons and we didn’t have time to do that, so we agreed it made sense for me to keep going if I wanted to instead of waiting for free time that doesn’t seem likely to open up soon.

I’m glad we took advantage of time to binge stuff together when we could