As science fiction gets closer and closer to science reality, the cancellation of HBO’s Westworld seems even more tragic. Debuting in 2016, the sci-fi masterpiece was a reimagining of Michael Crichton’s 1974 film about a Western theme park where the robotic hosts start to malfunction. Created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the television series was much more ambitious than the film, tackling themes of AI and bodily autonomy.
Evan Rachel Wood stars as Dolores, a host in the park who embarks on a harrowing journey toward sentience. Westworld lasted for four seasons before getting cancelled and ultimately scrubbed from the platform entirely. Fans had always held out hope that Nolan and Joy would return to finish their series as initially envisioned, but now it seems less likely than ever before because of a new development.
According to Variety, Warner Bros. is rebooting the Westworld franchise yet again. The new film will not factor in the HBO series but instead reboot the original Crichton feature altogether. After four years of hoping for good news, this is the last thing fans wanted and may even hurt the franchise in the long run.
‘Westworld’ Is Too Big For a Feature Film
It was only a matter of time before Warner Bros. returned to Westworld, especially because of the themes that have become even more relevant with each passing day. Concerns over artificial intelligence are paramount in the series as they are in viewers’ day-to-day lives. All the more reason that any return to Westworld should solely take place on television.
Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Personality Quiz Which Sci-Fi Hero Are You Most Like? Paul Atreides · Captain Kirk · Princess Leia · Ellen Ripley · Max Rockatansky
Five iconic heroes. Five completely different ways of facing an impossible universe. One of them shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of refusing to back down. Eight questions will tell you which one.
🏜️Paul Atreides
🖖Capt. Kirk
✊Princess Leia
🔦Ellen Ripley
🔥Max Rockatansky
01
How do you lead when the stakes couldn’t be higher? The way you lead under pressure is the most honest thing about you.
02
What is your greatest strength in a crisis? The quality that keeps you alive when everything else fails.
03
What is the thing you’d sacrifice everything else for? Your deepest motivation is your truest compass.
04
How do you relate to the people around you? Who you are to others under pressure is who you really are.
05
You’re facing a threat that no one else believes is real. What do you do? How you respond when you’re the only one who sees it defines everything.
06
What has your heroism cost you personally? Every hero pays. The question is what — and whether they’d pay it again.
07
How do you feel about the rules of the world you’re in? Every hero has a relationship with the system. What’s yours?
08
When everything is on the line, what keeps you going? The answer is the most honest thing about you.
Your Hero Has Been Identified Your Sci-Fi Hero Is…
Your answers point to the iconic sci-fi hero who shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of facing the impossible.
Arrakis · Dune
Paul Atreides
You carry a weight most people would crumble under — the knowledge of what you’re capable of, and the burden of what you might have to become.
You see further ahead than others and you plan accordingly, even when the vision frightens you.
You are driven by loyalty to your people and a sense of destiny you didn’t ask for but can’t escape.
Paul Atreides is not simply a hero — he is someone who understands the cost of power and chooses to bear it anyway.
That gravity, that willingness to carry what others won’t, is exactly you.
USS Enterprise · Star Trek
Captain Kirk
You lead with instinct, warmth, and an absolute refusal to accept a no-win scenario — because you’ve always believed there’s a third option nobody else has thought of yet.
You take the mission seriously without ever taking yourself too seriously.
Your crew would follow you anywhere, not because you demand it, but because you’ve earned it.
Kirk’s genius isn’t tactical — it’s human. He reads people, bends rules with purpose, and wills outcomes into existence through sheer conviction.
That combination of warmth, audacity, and relentless optimism is unmistakably yours.
The Rebellion · Star Wars
Princess Leia
You are the kind of person who holds the line when everyone else is losing faith — not because you’re fearless, but because giving up simply isn’t something you’re capable of.
You lead through conviction. Your voice carries because your belief is unshakeable.
You gave up everything ordinary the moment you chose the cause, and you’ve never looked back.
Leia is not a supporting character in her own story — she is the moral centre of the entire rebellion.
That same fierce, principled, unbreakable core is what defines you.
The Nostromo · Alien
Ellen Ripley
You are not reckless, not grandiose, and not particularly interested in being anyone’s hero — you just refuse to stop when it matters.
You see threats clearly, you document the truth even when no one listens, and when the time comes you handle it yourself.
Ripley’s heroism is earned, not performed. She doesn’t have a speech — she has a flamethrower and a plan.
You share her composure under the worst possible pressure, and her refusal to pretend the monster isn’t there.
When it counts, you don’t flinch. That’s everything.
The Wasteland · Mad Max
Max Rockatansky
You have been through fire that would break most people — and what came out the other side is something the world underestimates at its peril.
You don’t ask for help, don’t need validation, and don’t wait for anyone to tell you the rules no longer apply.
Your loyalty, when it finally arrives, is absolute — but it’s earned in silence and tested in action, not in words.
Max is not a nihilist. He is someone who lost everything and found, against his will, that he still has something worth protecting.
That bruised, stubborn, ultimately human core is exactly yours.
Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy didn’t even cover everything they planned on in four seasons. A single two-hour film has no chance of substantially addressing this material. Themes such as free will, identity, and sentience are concepts that need television to breathe. Just as Battlestar Galactica explored with the Cylons, Westworld also invested in character arcs with its robot characters.
Westworld does this through the character of Dolores, who, in Season 3, makes several copies of herself. Just as the copies in Battlestar Galactica are all different from each other, so too are the different Doloreses. The more these entities live apart and form different memories, the more they become different people. The complexity of these different identities and what it means to achieve humanity is what made Westworld a masterful series. There is an obvious way to course correct, but it is unlikely that HBO will take a chance on it.
‘Westworld’ Deserves a Return to TV
The best-case scenario for Westworld’s return would be to allow the fifth and final season of the series to come to fruition. Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have pulled back on releasing any information about their planned ending, holding out hope that they could one day put it into place. With the duo committed to Prime Video’s Fallout, that hope keeps getting further away.
A television reboot could be the answer to vindicating the missing final season, while also further developing the stories at the heart of the show. Westworld was already topical when it first premiered, but it has become even more so in the past year. Artificial intelligence has developed at an alarming rate since the series was cancelled, and there is even more content to explore in that arena.
Westworld clearly should have been able to finish on its own terms, but the time for that has passed. The only responsible way to course correct is to bring the story back to television and put the Nolan-Joy partnership back in the driver’s seat. From music to dialogue and everything in between, Westworld had a clear vision and one that has had no equal since.
