HBO’s Wildest Sci-Fi Show Could Come Back From the Dead
Westworld creator Jonathan Nolan still has ideas for a fifth season. Could it actually happen?
We don’t really need a fifth season of Westworld. HBO’s twisty sci-fi drama shocked audiences with a somewhat definitive ending for its characters and their world. But Season 4 was also the best the series had been in a long time, and it finally introduced us to The Sublime, the fabled realm that serves as an afterlife for Westworld’s sentient robots. In that regard, Season 4 still didn’t feel like the end of the story. At the risk of dipping further into spoilers, the latest season brought an end to the world as we know it. But a different world awaits, allowing the tale to continue for at least another season.
Unfortunately, that future was cut short just after the Season 4 finale. In 2022, WarnerMedia pulled the plug on Westworld, and moved the series off its streaming platform. The studio’s choice still stings for cast and crew members, and Jonathan Nolan, who co-created the show with his spouse, Lisa Joy, isn’t quite ready to say goodbye.
Westworld might have been cancelled by HBO, but it got a second life on ad-supported streamers.
Nolan is currently promoting his latest project, Fallout, an adaptation of the video game series. In a recent conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, the filmmaker shared his thoughts on the end of “Peak TV,” and whether shows like Fallout and even Westworld would have been greenlit under modern market conditions.
“Certainly, there are shows that they would not make now that they would a couple years ago,” Nolan said. It’s been years since he first pitched Fallout to Amazon Studios, and he’s “grateful” fan interest in the show has kept the project alive.
There might also be renewed fan interest in Westworld, thanks in part, ironically, to its departure from HBO. The series briefly streamed on Tubi, garnering a larger audience there than it ever would have gotten on Warner’s platform alone. “The amount of people you can reach with a free, ad-supportive service is vastly higher than with a subscription service,” Nolan said.
Nolan said he wasn’t “bothered” by Warner’s choice to cut ties with the series, but that he’s still holding out for the chance to continue the story. “You understand that you get the time that you get, sometimes it’s as much as you want, sometimes it’s not,” he said. “But there’s still very much a desire to finish it.”
If Westworld were to continue, it could be in a different medium — and without the characters we followed for four seasons.
Whether Westworld returns for Season 5 or continues its story in a graphic novel or film, Nolan and his team are searching for a way forward. “We’re completionists,” he told THR. “It took me eight years and a change of director to get Interstellar made. We’d like to finish the story we started.”
Given that logic, it may be a while before we get to reunite with these characters in the Sublime. But Nolan is determined to get the last word, so there’s a chance Westworld will get a proper conclusion sooner or later.
