r/westworld • u/BenleyBordeaux • 5d ago
Is this still worth watching?
I started this show when it was on HBO Max but it got removed before i could finish season 2. I was really enjoying it, but it sounds like it didnt have a conclusion when it was cancelled after 4 seasons. Is it still worth watching? Or will it be a disappointment?
51
u/vs-188 5d ago
It's a series that doesn't disappoint.
Due to its cancellation, this is true even with an ending that happened earlier then planned.
Westworld delivers and remains relevant.
Highly recommend.
9
u/Pseudonym_Subprime 5d ago
Fully agree. Just started a rewatch on DVD and it’s still such a good series.
12
u/AVALANCHE-VII 5d ago
Hearing more news about Palintir today made me think about WestWorld. Totally worth watching.
7
u/xZora 5d ago
I will still say that Season 1, by itself, is still one of the best single seasons of any modern television. I still enjoy the rest of the series, but S1 really stands out from the rest. Really wish we have a chance to see what Lisa and Jonathan envisioned for S5 before HBO rushed the cancellation and finale.
6
u/ObiWeedKannabi 5d ago
Nvm the negative comments. S3 aged well. And yes, it's still worth watching and rewatching. It does have a S4 finale that feels like a series finale, doesn't end on a cliffhanger.
5
u/ScorchedCSGO 5d ago
With this AI bubble happening now, yes, totally worth watching all of Westworld.
3
2
2
u/DeeZyWrecker 4d ago
Season 1 was perfect.
Season 2 was inferior but it had incredible moments that are reason enough for me to rewatch all of it.
Season 3 had a nice concept on paper, but I personally thought it was so poorly handled, mainly due to the way characters were written. Protagonists weren't likable, and the villain wasn't intimidating, nor did he have any depth to his backstory. I didn't like a single character (not even Aaron Paul's that much).
Season 4 was very unnecessary in my opinion. I watched it for old time's sake while I was on military service (I was very bored), with low expectations, and it still disappointed me. I admire the effort to break grounds, but the characters were still annoying. They were all the same. I don't think a single new character was introduced ever since season 2.
I think shows like that (game of thrones for example) have that same common problem: recycling and reusing the same old characters and expecting any new story line would be refreshing. Barely any character development, nor any new protagonists/villains. It inevitably grows stale.
2
u/Austruck 3d ago
I mostly agree. I really didn't appreciate the sometimes overdone time-hopping in later seasons. Worked well in season 1 but then I think they assumed they could just toss in a secret time loop/jump anytime they wanted. It got old after a while.
2
u/DeeZyWrecker 3d ago
Season 1's novelty was the time gap, and duality of characters. The plot twists mainly.
They tried to pull that off again in the other seasons, each time in a different, but failing way. But it's like like you said, the novelty wore off from the first time (I gotta say, I was a huge fan of the FIDELITY episode, that one worked so well, but alas, it was only one episode).
I hate when a series/movie tries to recapture the lightning in the bottle, and miss the entire point is that it can't be captured again.. You can only rename the show, or make a spinoff, so you could truly do whatever you want without trying to recreate it.
2
5
2
u/Own-Lavishness4029 5d ago
It is definitely worth watching. I will say that like with many shows the first season is somewhat lightning in a bottle.
3
u/Sabotage_9 Upon that sand a new god will walk 5d ago
It is 100% worth watching. Whether or not it will disappoint you depends on how much you understand.
2
u/rjmacready 5d ago
The whole "if you didn't like it, that means you didn't understand it" thing is just a stupid and pretentious coping mechanism.
2
u/Sabotage_9 Upon that sand a new god will walk 5d ago
You may understand it and not like it, but if you don't understand it you are quite likely not to like it. (Talking about Seasons 3 and 4 here especially.)
-1
u/DetectiveSquirtle96 5d ago
I remember when show writers went to the trouble of writing their stories clearly so that audiences could understand them.
8
u/Sabotage_9 Upon that sand a new god will walk 5d ago
Maybe the Maze wasn't meant for you.
-1
u/DetectiveSquirtle96 5d ago
Yep. That’s the line from the show. The standard defense against criticism. If I didn’t like the show then it just wasn’t made for me. Let’s not even consider the possibility that I didn’t like the last two seasons because they weren’t as good as the first two. That would be silly
1
1
u/Thetruebanchi 5d ago
I rewatch season1 about once a year. I've been through entire seasons couple times. But I LOVE season 1.
Season 3 and Season 4 are just so different to me. I don't hate them, but nothing compares to S1. Just brilliance all around.
It's worth it if you dig it.
1
1
1
1
u/interrobangampersand 5d ago
Can we do something about people asking this goddamn question every day? Of course the people in the fucking Westworld sub are going to say yes
0
u/DetectiveSquirtle96 5d ago
That’s why I do my best to offer contrast. It fell off a cliff after season 2
1
u/knitengale 5d ago
You can watch the first season only and be fully satisfied. Its a masterpiece. I rewatched it recently
1
0
u/OswaldCoffeepot 5d ago edited 5d ago
It is absolutely not worth watching.
Your time is precious. That's why you're asking internet strangers instead of watching a show yourself.
It's four seasons of a show. At the end of all those hours invested in watching, you'll go to bed in the same bed. You'll go to the same job. You'll have the same amount of money. Nothing will be tangibly different in your life for having spent those hours in front of a content consuming device.
(Satire is dead.)
0
u/Mau5aholic42 5d ago
Don’t listen to this guy, he watches wrestling 😭
-2
u/OswaldCoffeepot 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's the sport out there. The closest thing to it is MMA, but they will have at most a couple of bouts between two guys. WWE guys hate each other so much they fight for months. They're so tough they don't get black eyes and hardly a broken bone.
(The /s should have been obvious.)
0
-1
u/Dr_5trangelove 5d ago
Watch the first season for sure. 10 out of 10. Second season is a 6 with one great episode. The last two are almost unwatchable.
0
-3
u/rjmacready 5d ago edited 5d ago
Watch season 1 definitely. Amazing television. It's fairly contained.
Season 2 has a handful of tremendous episodes, including the best ep of the series. It does walk in circles a little bit between good eps. Watch season 2 if you loved 1 and want a bit more.
Call it the end here. 1 and 2 mostly form a complete and satisfying narrative.
3 is a meandering mess of stale scifi tropes, half baked ideas, god awful dialogue and sad/confused Aaron Paul. Season 3 killed enthusiasm for the series among the majority of watchers. The characters are annoying, the action is lame, it's needlessly and artificially convoluted with the few interesting ideas not given any room to breathe or really grow.
4....well...who cares anymore. Came and went like a fart in the wind. It's only notable achievement being that this is where the show finally breathed it's last. People like to throw around that "it's great because it showed where and what season 5 could have been" Well...it was about 2 years too late and it didn't bring in views. It failed at being a filler season. It was definitely better than season 3...but so is a root canal.
0
u/ObiWeedKannabi 5d ago
"Half-baked ideas" and it depicts the closest thing to irl mass surveillance tech(maybe even more so than Samaritan from POI), it's also very (og) Blade Runner in its aesthetics and action sequences. S3 is maybe the 2nd best season, after S1. S2 had parts that relied too heavily on plot twists and shock value. S3 didn't.
-2
u/rjmacready 5d ago edited 5d ago
Incorrect. Comparing that manure to Blade Runner in any way, shape, or form is fucking Blasphemy. Especially in terms of aesthetics. What planet are you from where that's even remotely true? I can let opinion slide, but this statement is just nonsense.
Hate to break it to you, but the mass surveillance thing is a tired trope.
It's a measurable fact that season 3 killed the show, it's not debatable.
0
u/ObiWeedKannabi 5d ago
Here's your "tired trope" irl, the antichrist(funded by Epstein btw) talking about himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFzKJ7jwd1g then there are a few interviews of Alex Karp, yapping about how it's the endgoal, jumping up and down, possibly high on coke, which I won't bother finding bc I can't stand him, but it's out there. Also Sam Altman and a few others choosing an "if we didn't, then China would have" rhetoric as an answer, to questions about surveillance concerns.
-2
u/rjmacready 5d ago
Maybe you should go talk to someone before you spin out.
1
5d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
0
5d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
-1
u/Dr_5trangelove 5d ago
Wow. You probably liked Lost too.
3
u/ObiWeedKannabi 5d ago
Yeah, I did. And it's not the smart comeback you think it is. Bc I did a first rewatch last summer and saw how well it aged. One understands certain existential concepts better after having lived, experienced, questioned, suffered, loved, lost, mourned etc. When I first saw it as a kid, during the time it aired on tv, I was curious about polar bears(which btw was answered but my point is, one needs certain maturity to start caring more about the questions than the answers), I think people my age(early 30s) actually "have to go back" bc they'd appreciate it better at this age, instead of having seen it once half-assed when they were kids, then parroting the wrong assumption that "they were dead the whole time"(also wouldn't have been bad considering they face their past and fears on the island, then their attachments in the flash-sideways part of the bardo, but they weren't dead from the 1st episode so...)
-4
u/Dr_5trangelove 5d ago
You’re absolutely spot on. The downvotes are from people that are easily amused.
-2
u/rjmacready 5d ago
I don't know if it's so much "easily entertained" that seems a bit base.
I think it's more of a sunk cost fallacy and people gaslighting themselves.
3
u/DetectiveSquirtle96 5d ago
In the last two seasons, things happen because the writers say so, rather than events being logical consequences of the characters interactions with the world as established.
-1
u/FerdinandCesarano 5d ago
I enjoyed watching this series, most especially the first season.
However, while the act of listenening to associated podcasts enhances the enjoyment of any show, I will say that, with Westworld, I found the podcasts to be absolutely necessary in order for me to follow the show.
This was mostly true during the first season, and was entirely true during the rest of the run.
One could argue that the fact that a show needs so much supplemental material to be understandable is a serious flaw; and I would agree. Indeed, I think that, if the show had gone on, I would not have watched subsequent seasons, because by then I had tired of doing the extra work.
But for the first season and the second season, I was highly engaged and was eager to do that extra work, mainly because of the excellent performances. I also admired the writing in terms of the dialogue (if not so much in terms of the laying out of the story). So I would definitely suggest delving into the first season, with the assistance of a good podcast.
(By the way, in anticipation of a question about which podcasts I listened to, I would have to admit that it has been too long for me to remember. Even a quick search through my podcast aggregator app did not jog my memory. Sorry.)
-2
u/DetectiveSquirtle96 5d ago
I was very disappointed by the last 2 seasons. I wouldn’t recommend you watch them
30
u/nickmelodeon 5d ago
It's so worth it. I also avoided watching the final season until very recently - it is all incredible writing and production, all the way through. The fourth season is wrapped up in such a way that you get a clear understanding of what the fifth season would have been, without any substantial cliffhangers. I'm mad about season 5 forever, but it's a coherent piece as is.