Look, honestly I was into it up until the last episode. I knew the story was twisting and turning a bit too much but I kept watching and very much enjoyed the last season.

I say that it lost sight of its original premise because yes, technically it did. But that doesn’t mean the content wasn’t still great — this is a perfect example of losing your audience by not following the original narrative. I sometimes think the show would’ve been more financially successful had they dragged out the first season into several but I wouldn’t have wanted them to actually do that.

[–] kromem@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Can't disagree more. I do think the clear conflicts between HBO and the executive producers (there's entire scenes in S4 dedicated to a meta-FU to the corporate demand for telling the violence story and not the maze in field story) led to a more disjointed later seasons than planned.

But rewatching S1 it's clear that the twist at the end of S4 was planned from the very start, which is just wild, and probably the biggest temporal misdirection in the history of film and TV — fitting from Jonathan Nolan, but still unexpected.

And then if you go and see the original Westworld film, the degree to which they were already starting off with such a different take can be even more appreciated. It goes from a film about a robot rebellion where the robots can talk but literally no one ever asks why it's happening or even talks to the robot at all to a series of "if you can't tell the difference does it matter?"

The whole point

The original narrative IS the narrative about it already being a simulation with the 'guests' also already simulated. It's just that it doesn't appear that way at first because it's a gradual reveal across multiple planned seasons that's got its own smaller first season set of reveals along the way. So when you realize the twist in the first season you think "oh, now I'm caught up with the events" and when you see Bernard is a machine of an earlier human you think "oh, this is the exception and not the rule." But there are details in the first season that can only be explained by the events revealed in the later seasons.

S2 has terrible pacing and I do think there are various issues with how S3-S4 progresses in certain arcs, but the broad plot was very clearly planned from the start in hindsight, but HBO had it out for them (look at how quickly after the cancellation the series wasn't even available on HBO's streaming properties), and unfortunately they didn't get the S5 to reveal just how much had been layered in earlier on.

TLDR

TL;DR: You were always supposed to have been watching the civilization level fidelity test, not original events playing out.

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago

I think S3 of Westworld was enjoyable and had a lot of good ideas, even if it was a tad disconnected from the original island they were from.

But, S4 just went too far. I was still kind of okay with the sudden shift at the second half, because the progression did sort of make sense. But, that whole arc after that was just overreach and too many god-like characters in the mix.

I can't believe they planned on having another season after that. How do you change the world to that degree and figure out some other season to solve all of the plot threads?

The whole writing process stunk of season-to-season short-term bullshit, without an overarching start-to-finish plan for the whole series. This is why Mr. Robot excels and Westworld didn't.

[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I've seen (and loved) the first season fairly recently, but after hearing so many people saying that the show went off the rails I decided early on that I was only gonna watch the one.

Would you say I'm missing out?

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

If you like Westworld for the setting then stop after the first season.

[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Are you referring to the western setting of the playground, or the corporate sci-fi setting surrounding it?

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 3 points 17 hours ago

The mix of both. From the second season on it's much more focused on the corpo sci-fi stuff.

[–] Lumun@lemmy.zip 2 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

I think season two was also really good and mostly still in the park. I'd say it's worth it, but stop after.

It also has a really stand-out episode, Kiksuya, that is really something special. Definitely worth getting to

[–] Pringles@sopuli.xyz 14 points 1 day ago

I wanted to come here to say Westworld. I never managed to finish the last season, I just lost complete interest in it. Great first season though and the second was also still enjoyable.

[–] RexWrexWrecks@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Had to scroll way too long to see this answer. It's the first one that came to my mind.