In a surprise decision, Westworld season 5 was canceled by Warner Bros Discovery and HBO Max and the Western sci-fi show will never get its proper conclusion. So why was Westworld canceled by HBO Max? Was it due to audiences no longer tuning in, plot issues, or perhaps other factors?
Why was Westworld Season 5 canceled?
Westworld was canceled due to declining ratings, extended waits between seasons, and a desire by Warner Bros. Discovery to cut costs.
Westworld season 1 launched to massive acclaim, big ratings, and around 54 Emmy nominations when it appeared in 2016. It was quickly picked up for season 2 while the show was still on the air, which appeared in April 2018. However, it wasn’t as warmly received, garnering generally good reviews but also complaints about the increasingly convoluted story threads. Arriving two years apart, seasons 3 and 4 increasingly made things worse, and there were also complaints about the characters, too.
As a result, Westworld’s ratings steadily dropped over its four seasons. While season 1 had an impressive average viewership of 1.8 million and season 2 maintained this, season 3 lost over half its viewership, with an average of 0.8. 2022’s season 4 plummeted to a 0.3 average.
The show was very expensive for HBO Max, too, with reports that season 4 cost around $160 million to make. House of the Dragon season 1 reportedly cost around $200 million and is the most expensive series HBO Max has commissioned, yet 10 million viewers watched that show’s premiere. Despite the showrunners’ plans for Westworld season 5 as the last in the series, the plug is now pulled and Westworld is canceled. Season 4’s ambiguous ending is how the sci-fi show concludes.
Westworld showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan are now working on the upcoming Fallout series for Amazon Prime.
