“Westworld” took itself back offline on Sunday with its Season 3 finale, which drew 1.8 million multiplatform viewers. That’s down 18.2% from the final episode of the Evan Rachel Wood-led sci-fi show’s second season, which scored 2.2 million overall sets of eyeballs in June 2018.
That 1.8 million number was 13% better than last week’s episode. Perhaps that’s why Dolores is smiling.
For its initial 9 p.m. airing alone, the 75-minute Season 3 closer, titled “Decoherence,” earned 888,000 viewers, which is down a whopping 44.5% from the 1.6 million that tuned in to HBO for the 9 o’clock showing of the second season finale on June 24, 2018. Adding in an encore and streaming via HBO Go and HBO Now, and Sunday’s episode rose to that above-mentioned audience tally.
The eight-episode third season of “Westworld” premiered to 1.7 million multiplatform viewers and 901,000 linear viewers on March 15, down 43% and 57%, respectively, from the numbers put up by Season 2’s premiere. We should note here that the Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy-created series aired its Season 3 premiere on the night of a Democratic debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, which was broadcast from 8-10 p.m. on Univision and CNN. Stiff competition.
“Westworld” Season 3 starred returning cast members Evan Rachel Wood as Dolores (pictured above), Thandie Newton as Maeve, Ed Harris as Man in Black, Jeffrey Wright as Bernard, Tessa Thompson as Charlotte, Luke Hemsworth as Stubbs, Simon Quarterman as Lee Sizemore and Rodrigo Santoro as Hector Escaton. They were joined by series newcomers like Aaron Paul, who played Caleb, and Vincent Cassel as Serac.
Readers can find our post-mortem interview with Nolan and executive producer Denise Thé about the finale here.
Last month, “Westworld” was renewed for Season 4.
“From the western theme park to the technocratic metropolis of the near future, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed every twist and turn from the minds of master storytellers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy,” HBO programming president Casey Bloys said in a statement at the time. “We can’t wait to see where their inspired vision takes us next.”
“Westworld” was created for television by Nolan and Joy based on the 1973 film written by Michael Crichton. Nolan and Joy are showrunners and executive produce the series alongside Thé, J.J. Abrams, Athena Wickham, Richard J. Lewis and Ben Stephenson.