And as for any lessons about “easing back on the complexity or weirdness of something,” consider them not learned.

Westworld might have been a cautionary tale to some showrunners — an example of a critically acclaimed show suffocated by the weight of its own ambition. But not for Jonathan Nolan.

Now helming the adaptation of the popular video game series Fallout for Amazon, Nolan has not only refused to learn any lessons but fully intends to finish Westworld, in some iteration, despite the show being canceled — and subsequently scrubbed from existence — by HBO/Max.

Westworld

Ed Harris in ‘Westworld’.John Johnson/HBO

When asked by The Hollywood Reporter if he had any plans to produce the original ending of the scifi drama that they had intended, Nolan replied, “Yes. 100 percent.”

“We’re completionists,” Nolan explained. “It took me eight years and a change of director to get Interstellar made. We’d like to finish the story we started.”

He continued, “I’m so f—ing 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.”

Westworld, once one of HBO’s flagship series with 54 Emmy nominations and 9 wins to its name, was canceled after its fourth season amid faltering ratings and continued criticisms about the show’s writing and narrative cohesion, or lack thereof.

Then, to add insult to injury, HBO Max (now called Max) pulled the series, among others, from its streaming service, shipping it off to free and ad-supported platforms, thanks to the great Warner Bros. Discovery merger of 2022.

Though Nolan doesn’t see it as an insult at all, noting, “The amount of people you can reach with a free, ad-supported service is vastly higher than with a subscription service.”

Later, while reflecting on any lessons learned from the rise and fall of “Peak TV,” Nolan had this to say: “If the ‘lesson’ was to ease back on the complexity or the weirdness of something, I don’t want to learn that lesson.”