HBO is responsible for several of the greatest TV shows ever made, and has conquered just about every genre along the way. From comedies like Veep to dramas like The Sopranos and The Wire, via fantasy (Game of Thrones), supernatural mystery (The Leftovers), Western (Deadwood), and superheroes (Watchmen), there aren’t many avenues it hasn’t explored in its quest for Sunday night dominance across the past 25+ years. And yet one genre it’s not as celebrated for is Sci-Fi.
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That’s not to say there haven’t been great HBO Sci-Fi shows: Station Eleven is a phenomenal miniseries, though it never got the wider attention it deserved. The Leftovers is an all-time great, though I think it’s more supernatural fantasy and mystery than it is pure science fiction. But the one that should’ve been destined to mix critical acclaim, audience popularity, and a long-running arc is Westworld. I can still remember watching the pilot back in 2016, and not only being immediately sucked into its world, but also assuming it was going to be HBO’s next big thing.
Westworld Seemed Destined To Be The Sci-Fi Game Of Thrones For HBO
Based on the 1973 movie of the same name, Westworld takes place in a dystopian future, at a theme park for the super wealthy, where they could live out all their Western fantasies (and things inevitably go wrong). The first episode alone cost a reported $25 million, but you could see every cent on screen; it’s an all-time great pilot, perfectly establishing its world, rules, and themes, while simply being an engrossing hour of TV that makes you want to watch so much more.
That continued across all of the first season, which is up there with some of the best Sci-Fi TV of the 21st Century. There are stunning visuals, shocking twists, compelling mysteries, and lots of sex and violence. It plays around with multiple timelines and blurs the lines between hosts (its robots) and humans. Crucially, all of that was underpinned by intriguing questions around morality and free will, strong character work, some fantastic performances from the likes of Anthony Hopkins and Evan Rachel Wood, and Ramin Djawadi’s superb score.
Season 1 was never topped, though I don’t buy the notion that it went completely off the rails after that. Season 2 is still an enjoyable, complex season – Season 2, Episode 8, “Kiksuya,” is as genius and emotional an episode as anything in the series – and even Seasons 3 and 4, to varying degrees, have their moments. But it never hit those same masterful heights as the first season. The series became increasingly convoluted, its storytelling more muddled, in an effort to create more suspense and to stay ahead of viewers (in part because theories on Reddit had predicted Season 1 plot twists).
With all of that, the audience dwindled, and eventually HBO cancelled Westworld after Season 4, despite there being plans for a fifth season that would’ve given it a complete ending, and even removed it from HBO Max. This show felt designed to be HBO’s Game of Thrones replacement, something that could’ve, and perhaps should’ve, been one of the biggest hits in the world, and it’s a shame it was never able to really get close to that. Honestly, even with that, I think the show is still worth watching, because at its peak, it delivers some of the best Sci-Fi thrills and mysteries you’ll find on TV, but it also stands as such a major “what if?”
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