2 min readApple’s streaming service has never shown any interest in saving the series that its rivals cancel, but it should make an exception when it comes to Westworld.
If a third season of Foundation is the price that needs to be paid to get a fifth season of Westworld, so be it. Although it has its defenders, the former is only the third-best science fiction series that Apple TV Plus has to offer.
Even if it does have a truly fantastic Lee Pace performance in it, it’s hard to make the case that Foundation has lived up to the lofty expectations that its source material and outsized budget thrust upon it. In contrast, Westworld far exceeded what many expected given the uneven quality of the 1973 film that preceded it. If anything, you could argue that the series’ lavish production values and star-studded cast made it something of a precursor to the house style for Apple TV Plus series like Severance and Silo.
Even if it was never quite as intellectual as it imagined itself to be, the series’ unique gift for trapping bonafide movie stars within its titular setting gave it a gravity that series like Foundation lack. The outsized on-screen presence of stars like Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, Tessa Thompson and Anthony Hopkins breathed new life into the Westworld name and made the series’ labyrinthine plot worth paying attention to.
We probably don’t live in a world where Apple has the choice between another season of Foundation that most people are going to overlook and a final instalment that puts an end to a decade of Westworld theory-mongering., But if we did, I know what I would choose and it’s not even close.
The first four seasons of Westworld are currently available to stream on Binge in Australia.
