Jonathan Nolan's 36-Episode Sci-Fi Thriller Was This Close To Greatness

Published Oct 25, 2026, 5:58 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. Even though Jonathan Nolan’s ambitious sci-fi Western started out strong, the HBO show fumbled its killer conceit and eventually became a cautionary tale for future small-screen entries into the genre. It has never been easy for sci-fi shows to balance complicated exposition with the more human work of character arcs and propulsive, engaging storytelling. Occasionally, hits like Netflix’s acclaimed 3 Body Problem find the right balance, but often, this proves elusive. After all, the creators of Netflix’s adaptation of the sci-fi novel trilogy Remembrance of Earth's Past already had years of experience working on HBO’s iconic fantasy series Game of Thrones. The infamous fumbled ending of that epic might have given David Benioff and DB Weiss some ideas about what not to do when working on 3 Body Problem, and the early, successful season of Game of Thrones proved the pair could be trusted to tell a complex story with countless moving parts effectively. Ironically, it was the success of Game of Thrones that resulted in one of HBO’s most ambitious genre TV experiments ever, only for that series to suffer the same fate as the George R.R. Martin adaptation in its later seasons. The show was Westworld, the second screen version of Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton’s story about a Wild West theme park where the robotic hosts go haywire and stage an uprising against the unsuspecting human guests. HBO’s Westworld Fumbled Its Story After A Phenomenal First Season Image courtesy of MovieStillsDb Although 1973’s original movie version of Westworld inspired an iconic spoof on The Simpsons, the movie itself was mostly a straightforward blend of dystopian satire and siege thriller. With stars like Yul Brynner and James Brolin, Westworld was undoubtedly entertaining, but the original movie never successfully married its commentary on robotic workers with the latter half of the movie’s violent chase scenes. If Crichton’s 70s movie didn’t devote enough time to investigating the humanity of its robot characters, it is fair to say that no one could possibly accuse 2016’s HBO version of Westworld of repeating this mistake. Starring a staggering ensemble cast including Thandiwe Newton, James Marsden, Evan Rachel Wood, Anthony Hopkins, Rodrigo Santoro, Aaron Paul, and so many more major stars, Westworld was a big-budget, ambitious sci-fi show with a sprawling, time-twisting plot and a lot to say. A year earlier, 2015’s British sci-fi drama Humans also followed a group of human characters interacting with robotic service workers and a parallel plot about these robots planning their revolution. However, while that show was surprisingly solid, Westworld was in another league entirely. The premiere marked HBO’s most-watched show since True Detective’s 2014 series premiere, and rave reviews marked the first season out as the start of something truly special. Westworld’s Later Season Struggles Made Its Mystery Box Plot Too Mysterious Sadly, the same elements that made Westworld so acclaimed soon proved its undoing. Not content with its story taking place across two timelines, one present-day story set in the park and a future story about an AI running humanity in the late 21st century, Westworld complicated things further with its Hosts. Like the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica’s reboot, Hosts were so lifelike that, theoretically, any human character could be revealed to be a robot all along. In practical terms, this resulted in a series that, like Lost crossed with Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, constantly left viewers guessing who was human, who was a robot, and who could secretly be the future version of another existing character from the present-day timeline. As this summary implies, the Mystery Box soon descended into a straightforward mystery. For Westworld, the search for answers ultimately outweighed the satisfaction of the show’s killer twists and, by the time season 3 rolled around, it began to feel like Nolan’s series was more invested in wrong footing viewers than setting up a truly satisfying story. Thus, Westworld eventually leaned too hard into pure mystery, and lost its considerable clout and audience goodwill as a result. Release Date 2016 - 2022-00-00 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