HBO must have looked at the ratings for season 4 of Westworld and thought, “This doesn’t look like anything to me.” THR reports that the sci-fi drama has officially been canceled after its fourth season, putting an end to the series that kicked off on the premier cabler in 2016. While the show started off strong with high ratings and critical acclaim, things have changed dramatically with the series in the years since. Viewership was plummeting by season 3 with season 4 drawing even lower viewership. Viewers had also been criticizing the increasingly-confusing storylines.

“Over the past four seasons, Lisa and Jonah have taken viewers on a mind-bending odyssey, raising the bar at every step," reads a statement by HBO addressing the cancelation. “We are tremendously grateful to them, along with their immensely talented cast, producers and crew, and all of our partners at Kilter Films, Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television. It’s been a thrill to join them on this journey.”

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An additional statement from Kiltner Films adds: “Making Westworld has been one of the highlights of our careers. We are deeply grateful to our extraordinary cast and crew for creating these indelible characters and brilliant worlds. We’ve been privileged to tell these stories about the future of consciousness – both human and beyond – in the brief window of time before our AI overlords forbid us from doing so.”

Westworld’s Creators Wanted One More Season

     HBO

Even with falling ratings, the cancelation comes as a surprise even for some of those working on the show. Often, the team behind popular shows are given a notice when getting canceled is imminent, allowing them to properly close out the story with a series finale that wraps up all storylines. The creators have recently said that their hope was to get one more season which would let them end Westworld with the vision they had planned for the conclusion.

“We had always planned on ending the series next season,” co-creator Lisa Joy told TheWrap. “You know, 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. 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.”

In a separate interview with Deadline, co-creator Jonathan Nolan also said, “We always planned for a fifth and final season. We are still in conversations with the network. We very much hope to make them.”

You can stream all four seasons of Westworld on HBO Max.