HBO’s Westworld was axed before the show’s creators had a chance to finish the story with a planned fifth and final season. However, there are still hopes that the season will one day get made, allowing fans to finally get some true closure after the events of Season 4 of the sci-fi series.

Based on the original film from 1973 by writer-director Michael Crichton, Westworld was rebooted as a TV series for HBO by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. The show would run for four seasons, launching in 2016 with Season 4 wrapping up in the summer of 2022. The show was canceled that year and has since been pulled from HBO’s streaming service, Max, and there haven’t been any official indications that more episodes will be made. However, per TheWrap, Nolan said he and Joy still have hopes to finish the story they set out to tell with Westworld sometime in the future.

“Our philosophy from the beginning was you make sure each installment, each chapter should be somewhat complete, tell a good story and then you get a chance to keep going,” Nolan said. “But Lisa and I did have an architecture for the series and I’m big on getting a chance to finish these things. I think our hope is still somewhere down the line [for] a chance to revisit that story, and I would hate to have spoiled it now if we get a chance to do so.”

Clearly, Nolan and Joy have some ideas in mind on how to properly end Westworld, but it doesn’t seem like fans will be privy to that information anytime soon. The good news is that this will keep the hope alive for Westworld to get its fifth season, so fans can see what happens next by watching it play out on-screen. Nolan’s tease is similar to how Joy previously said how the final season would take the show back to its roots, set in a digital version of the Westworld park that was introduced in Season 1.

“We always thought that Westworld should kind of come full circle and back to the West, but with Dolores, who was just a player in other people’s games, finally getting to write her own [story],” Joy previously told the outlet in 2022 “Just to close up a lot of the stuff that we’ve seen before like the flash-forward with The Man in Black and everything, so we have a plan for Season 5 — but, you know, life can make other plans for you. So we’ll just hope for the best.”

Would Westworld Season 5 Be on HBO?

It remains to be seen if the fifth season gets made. As for whether that might be back on HBO or elsewhere, Nolan said that it’s just “too early to say” at this time. He went on to explain how the primary focus at this time is on Fallout, the new series developed by Nolan and Joy for Prime Video. Ultimately, Nolan would still be “pretty happy” with his Westworld experience even if Season 5 never comes to be, though he noted that it would nevertheless be “amazing” to return to that world.

“We’re having fun concentrating on Fallout right now, but the experience working on Westworld was such an extraordinary one. That cast, that crew, like a family. Everyone says that, but it’s usually bulls–t. With this group, it really was the case,” Nolan explained. “Just an extraordinary group of people, an extraordinary subject and the experience of making that show, we just cherished it. So if we never get a chance to go back to it, we’d be pretty happy with the experience that we had. But I love that story, I love the cast and so if we had a chance to revisit it somewhere down the line, that would be amazing.”