I agree with your assessment and IMO season 4 is not worth it. It's pretty much a mess. Each successive season has seem to have gotten worse, and I loved season one.
I wanted to like S4 but it only seemed good in comparison to S3, which was awful. S1 and S2 were pretty damn good. Too bad they don't appear to be able to do that kind of quality any more.
And that’s all she wrote: HBO Cancels ‘Westworld’ in Shock Decision The acclaimed sci-fi drama is considered finished after its recent fourth season, despite creators hoping for a fifth season to wrap things up.
Yeah, they screwed it up beyond repair in seasons 3 and 4. I wasn't going to be watching season 5 - if reviews were good when it was over I might have binged it. But the last 3 mins of season 4 setting up the goals of season 5 were just awful and repetitive. I was hoping that wasn't what they were actually going to do and I think they could have made some interesting choices in season 5 - but then, I had those hopes in the previous two seasons as well and they didn't pan out. After the first two great seasons I've watched a couple of things by Lisa Joy - and they've all been meh. Oh well, I was hoping she'd be a big contributor and kick off a great career. Maybe she just needs more time between projects.