I adore the first season, I consider it to be one of the finest seasons of tv I've ever seen. Everything about it hooked me, and its ending was so good (while still being ambiguous) I would have been fine with it ending there. As far as I'm concerned it did.

Second season was a bumpy road, with some real high highs, and real low lows. It's biggest sin was repeating the tricks it had in S1. The cracks were beginning to show.

And then there's seasons 3 and 4, which just don't measure up in the slightest. They're not bad tv, they're just mediocre. It's like once they stepped out of the park, it devolved into just another generic dystopian sci-fi show.

And I think that's the crux of the issue. Westworld as a concept isn't conducive to a multi-season tv show. It's premise (robots in a theme park become self aware and go on a killing spree) works as a movie or a limited series that expands on the concept. The park is the show's identity. Once you leave the park, it stops being Westworld. It stops feeling like Westworld. But you can't stay in the park forever in a tv series because you'd just be spinning the wheels. So from a writing stand point they had to leave. But now the magic is gone.

They try, but like the hosts they just keep repeating themselves. Everyone is a secret host, nobody dies, there are always multiple time lines. Nothing has ever lived up to the promise of what was to come when Dolores put that bullet in her maker's head. My imagination was far more satisfying. Perhaps it should have stayed that way.