Those who watched the “Westworld” Season 4 finale would be forgiven for thinking it felt like a series finale, but if co-creator and co-showrunner Lisa Joy gets her way, it’s merely the beginning of the end.
“Westworld” has not yet been renewed for a fifth season, but if it is, Joy says “Westworld” Season 5 will be the end of the loop.
“We had always planned on ending the series next season,” Joy told TheWrap during a recent interview. “You know, we always thought that ‘Westworld’ should kind of come full circle and back to the West. But with Dolores, who was just a player in other people’s games, finally getting to write her own. Just to close up a lot of the stuff that we’ve seen before like the flashforward with The Man in Black and everything, so we have a plan for Season 5 – but, you know, life can make other plans for you. So we’ll just hope for the best.”
Joy stressed that she and the “Westworld” team are strongly hoping for a renewal so they can finish out the story they first started with Season 1 back in 2016, adding that the endgame for the series – which we would see in Season 5 – was plotted out back when she and co-creator Jonathan Nolan were writing the pilot.
“It’s funny, we had this planned out even when writing the pilot, which is bizarre. We’re like, well if we’re going to tackle all these things, what is the point we’re trying to make at the end?”
So what can Joy tease about the final season if it comes to fruition? Season 4 ended with Christine/Dolores entering the Sublime and choosing to spin up a new game, conjuring the Westworld of Season 1 in this digital afterlife. The final season would take place in that new Westworld, run by a very different gamemaker.
“It’s not an accident that they’re returning to the west, as Westworld, and this time with a completely different storyteller in charge,” Joy said. “I think point of view can change drastically the meaning of any kind of story or existence, and now it’s her turn. How often do you get to see the damsel in distress become the leader of a society? Somebody who went through what she did – I mean, look at our world now. How often does that happen and who holds power in most civilizations? It’s not a person or creature like Dolores. She was a “thing” to people. She lived through countless lives and reboots where she was at the mercy of guests in a park, indulging in their vices and id. She’s seen a lot of human nature, and maybe enough to know how to structure something or give a game in which some kind of hope for it might emerge.”
While previous seasons of “Westworld” received renewals while they were airing, HBO has not yet announced a decision on the future of the sci-fi series. Amidst a cloud of uncertainty at Warner Bros. Discovery and less-than-stellar viewership for Season 4, a fifth season is far from a foregone conclusion.
Those who have stuck with “Westworld” all this time, however, are no doubt crossing their fingers they get to see how it’s all meant to end.
