One of their problems was dragging various actors/characters through season after season - I got absolutely sick of every single one of them. I don't know how they managed their lines with a straight face.
Another was setting everyone up for this ongoing global-stakes quest. Andor just showed that you can make an exceptional story out of small slices of a bigger setting. It often feels to me that when a show/movie sees its character attain super powers, they struggle with storytelling afterwards, being forced to invent higher and higher stakes. Marvel movies (outside of something like Logan), The Matrix (IMO), etc.
Or if there's value in Westworld (the other themeparks, James Delos storyline, etc), tell a fresh story in that world. Dragging out Maeve and her daughter was tiresome.
It ended up with zero tension, despite all the grand standing. I just didn't care who was about to fight who and even less who might win. The ideas were convoluted and pointless. S2-3 had some decent ideas/plans mixed in. S4 had almost nothing I think would be worth keeping.
When my parents tuned in to watch the final episode, I predicted that the ending would be bullshit and not resolve anything. That's exactly what happened. Yet so many people who watched the show all the way through are in denial to this day.
> I could probably write something really mean about Westworld here but I'll just instead say that it's really, really, really sad that they canceled it after season 1.
Funny, because by the end of Westworld season 1 my first thought was that it was just going to be like Lost. The "maze" gave me "hatch" vibes, and I noped out permanently.