HBO's 10/10 Sci-Fi Western Gets A 3/10 For Historical Accuracy

Published Jul 24, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT Zach Moser has been writing for ScreenRant since 2022, covering movies, classic TV, and streaming TV. His areas of expertise cover a wide range of genres with a particular interest in horror and drama, and the conversations around the TV and film industry. When he's not covering the latest film releases or chronicling the latest season of a new show, he's writing humor pieces for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and Points In Case or working on short stories and his second novel. One of HBO's best original series is a science fiction Western that plays fast and loses with Western history, but that's just part of the story. Not every show has to have an accurate retelling of history to be considered worthwhile. There's a reason it's called fiction, and it rarely pays to judge a story by its dogmatic adherence to reality. Certainly, there are some cases where it's inappropriate or even irresponsible to change real history, even in a TV show, but when it comes to the details, TV shows aren't history books, they're entertainment, and if anything, it's more important that they adhere to the thematic reality of a person, place, or time they are depicting. Still, no matter how fictitious a story, you can often find at least one internet commenter or even historian willing to throw in their two cents. Westworld takes place in a place of complete fiction, yet there are scenes in the show where real history is alluded to. Of course, this is real history alluded to by the show's corporation. There are layers. Westworld takes place in a Western-themed amusement park, at least for the most part, where wealthy attendees can participate in all the classic events associated with that American time period, free to behave however you like with the park's animatronics, Hosts, which are nearly indistinguishable from humans. You can drink at a saloon, round up some outlaws, or indulge in your most base, cruel fantasies, all draped in the garb of the West, or more accurately, Western film tropes. As one historian pointed out about the series, it's far from the reality of the West, but that doesn't end up necessarily being all that important. Westworld Got A 3/10 For Historical Accuracy (But That Almost Makes Sense) In one of those "historian rates" videos on YouTube for Insider, historian Michael Grauer specifically looked at the scene from Westworld season 1, episode 5, "Contrapass" where William (Jimmi Simpson) and Logan (Ben Barnes) are invited to participate in an army wagon robbery. Dressing up as Confederate soldiers, the pair steal an army wagon filled with nitroglycerin. According to Graurer, there's quite a lot wrong with this scene, and he gave it a 3/10 on the "reality" scale. For comparison, he gives Dances With Wolves an 8/10. Grauer says that the wagon used in the robbery is all wrong. The "outlaws" are robbing an army ambulance, which would generally be used to transport people, not highly valuable goods like nitroglycerin. An army transport would also have a lot more soldiers protecting it, and William and Logan would need more than two people to lend a hand. Westworld Got A Slightly Higher Score For Its Depiction Of AI Considering Westworld is primarily a science fiction show, with many episodes taking place outside the Western-theme park, maybe judging its historical credentials isn't necessarily a fair test. What it does get right is its depiction of artifical intelligence, with an Insider rater giving it a 6/10. Sasha Luccioni, an AI researcher, said the series had some accurate instances of Artifical Intelligence, pointing to a speech predictor as a good esxample of how AI works. In this 2024 interview, Luccioni says that drones are too inaccurate to be used in warfare like they are in Westworld season 3. How times have changed in only a few years. Release Date 2016 - 2022 Network HBO Showrunner Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy Directors Fred Toye, Jennifer Getzinger, Stephen Williams, Vincenzo Natali, Craig William Macneill, Anna Foerster, Craig Zobel, Hanelle M. Culpepper, Helen Shaver, Jonny Campbell, Michelle MacLaren, Neil Marshall, Nicole Kassell, Tarik Saleh, Uta Briesewitz, Lisa Joy, Meera Menon Writers Roberto Patino, Carly Wray, Ron Fitzgerald, Daniel T. Thomsen, Karrie Crouse, Wes Humphrey