Verdict:
Westworld has a lot going for it: the first season has several high-profile actors doing a good job, excellent cinematography, and multiple story threads that were woven with care, with enough tension built to make you want to keep watching, to reach the resolution of all the introduced mysteries.
Was the writing a little bit up its own bum sometimes? Yes, sure, many scenes were drawn out, with the writers trying to be artsy and classy without there being that much value under the surface. But the show was still cool and interesting. The first season delves into questions of consciousness and identity, introducing moral ambiguity and playing with non-linear storytelling and multiple timelines to great effect.
With the interest of the audience peaked, the first season did not answer the main questions, leaving the answers for the second season, as so often happens with series.
The second season then promptly proceeded to completely disappear up its own rear, as the story stopped making sense, both in its broader strokes and within the individual scenes. Seemingly important moments in the story are handled quickly and awkwardly. The dialogue got increasingly pretentious. The actors are still doing a good job, but you can only do so much with a poor script. It also doesn’t help that Anthony Hopkins left the show.
At its core, Westworld is supposed to be about cowboy robots revolting against the humans. The moment of the uprising should be the pinnacle of excitement. Instead that moment is a drawn-out pretentious mess with no steam.
Is the quality of the first season sufficient to give this show a recommendation and a respectful sendoff. No, not really. Because the first season left all the tension to be resolved in the second season, it cannot stand on its own.
Hope was directed at subsequent seasons to recover. Instead, the show took a left turn and jumped off a building. It left the titular Westworld entirely, turning into some sort of second-hand cuberpunk show and transforming its characters into cardboard cutouts, as the creators seemed to try incorporating modern cultural hypes. Westworld is a great promise that eventually derailed and unraveled.
This show was somehow renewed for a 4th season. What a waste.