Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan has vowed to "finish the story" he had planned before HBO abruptly cancelled the series.
Nolan, who created the show with his spouse, Lisa Joy, told The Hollywood Reporter he is "100 percent" committed to giving Westworld a proper ending to allow fans to find closure after the fourth season finale, "Que Será, Será," ended up being the last anyone saw of the series, as HBO pulled the plug shortly after.
"We're completionists," Nolan said after being asked about the prospect of Westworld continuing. "It took me eight years and a change of director to get Interstellar made. We'd like to finish the story we started. I'm so f**king proud of what we made. It was an extraordinary experience. I think it would be a mistake to look back and only feel regret [over how it ended]. But there's still very much a desire to finish it."
HBO announced in November 2022 that it would not hand out a fifth season renewal for Westworld after figures showed declining ratings between the second and third seasons. This decision meant that the fourth season finale served as the end of the series, leaving the fate of the oncoming human extinction up in the air.
The ambiguous ending left people with plenty of burning questions, including Evan Rachel Wood, otherwise known as Dolores on Westworld (and also Christina in Season 4), who revealed earlier this year that she never found out how the show would have ended because the creators kept their cards very close to their chests.
"I asked the creators after we got cancelled, 'Can you please just tell me how you're going to end?' And they wouldn't tell me," Wood shared with The Hollywood Reporter. "I think because, I don't know, maybe somehow, someway, in some iteration, we'll get to finish it, but I still don't know. It does still keep me up at night."
Westworld premiered in 2016 and focused on a Wild West-themed amusement park inhabited by robots that parkgoers could interact and roleplay with. Later seasons saw the robots gain sentience and free themselves from the park and into the human world, building up to a grand conflict between the two sides.
Like many other shows, it stopped short after being axed due to a drop in viewership. A few, however, have been brought back by popular demand, including Lucifer, which had three seasons on Netflix after its FOX cancellation; Sense8, which got a feature-length finale; and Warrior Nun, which is returning as a film trilogy.
Before finding a possible avenue for Westworld's conclusion, Nolan and Joy are tapping into another sci-fi world as co-creators of Prime Video's Fallout adaptation. Many anticipate it to be one of the biggest shows this year, with the entire first season releasing in a single drop on April 11, a day earlier than previously announced.
Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on X/Twitter @AdeleAnkers.
