The Streak of Great Episodes Continues with ‘Westworld’
As The Who once sang, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Westworld takes us to an entirely new park in this week’s episode, but are things really all that different? Spoilers below!
Finally, Westworld gave its viewers an extended look at the long-anticipated Shogun World last night. And oh man, did it pay off! Described by Lee as an experience designed for guests who found Westworld “too tame”, Shogun World is a beautiful Edo-inspired attraction full of misty mountains and cherry blossom trees.
Yet, we quickly discover that the more things change, the more they stay the same. After being captured by Japanese soldiers near the border of Westworld, Maeve and her party are dragged to a town that begins to look eerily familiar to Sweetwater. As a variation on season one’s awesome “Paint it Black” orchestral cover begins, a heist in the town is enacted in a way that mirrors the same one we see from Hector’s crew in almost every way. Maeve, Hector, and Armistice marvel at how their Shogun World counterparts are living the very same actions written into their own code, while Lee makes excuses about the sheer amount of writing required for all the parks’ quests.
As the heist draws to a close and we see some of the bandits begin to threaten some of the town’s Geishas, Maeve and her posse break out of their bonds and fight back against the bandits. After a brief tussle, the Westworld gang realizes that they’d be better off forming an alliance with Mushashi, Akane, Sakura, and Hanaryo (the Shogun World equivalents of Hector, Maeve, Clementine, and Armistice, respectively).
Later in the town, the group is beset upon by an ambush of Ninjas. Lee voices some concern about this, as Ninjas apparently aren’t supposed to venture into this area of the park. Maeve tries to use her vocal control powers against the Ninjas (after realizing that she needed to speak Japanese instead of English) but the assassins cover her mouth to prevent her from speaking. It’s then that she realizes that she can also subjugate the hosts using nothing but her mind, and she manages to cause her attacker to impale his own face.
After the ninjas’ attack fails, the Shogun’s army arrives at what I like to think of as “Not Sweetwater”, and again Lee worries that the narratives are off the rails (which seems like a really weird concern when you consider what’s happened at Westworld already anyway, in addition to The Raj). The Shogun’s envoy requests to take Sakura, and Akane reluctantly agrees.
Maeve has some sort of reaction to this, and thinks of her daughter back in her own park. It’s currently unclear whether the caring relationship between Akane and Sakura triggered this, or if Maeve also had motherly feelings toward Clementine that she somehow also associates with her daughter.
Lee tells Maeve that the Shogun’s camp is near one of the park’s secret exits, so they plan on going with Sakura to the encampment. Once there, the writer realizes that the cortical fluid is leaking out of the Shogun’s head and causing him to make irrational decisions, which could also be a dark omen of what’s to come with Bernard. One of these hideous decisions is that he ended up cutting off the ears of each of his men, preventing them from falling subject to Maeve’s “witch” powers. Yeah, hang tight for a sec and we’ll see how that goes.
The Shogun and Akane strike a deal, that if Akane also dances that night, he’ll let Sakura go. She accepts, but in his madness the Shogun instead stabs Sakura, killing her. Almost without any show of emotion, Akane finishes her dance, and in the end she removes a knife from her hair and uses it to gruesomely saw off the Shogun’s head. The samurai prepare to execute Maeve and Akane, but obviously Maeve’s powers do not require that they be vocalized anymore, and she causes the rest of the Shogun’s camp to kill each other. As an army stationed outside the camp charges toward Maeve, she turns to her group and picks up a katana. “I told you I found a new voice.” she says; “Now we use it.” She’s possibly alluding to the idea that she’ll convert these soldiers to her own cause, or perhaps just cause them to continue killing each other… We’ll find out soon enough.
Meanwhile, back in Westworld, Dolores is continuing her campaign against the guests. It’s extremely clear that she and Teddy are having a massive conflict of visions, as Teddy has been growing more bold in his complaints against the violence in the park. In fact, in every scene that they shared in this episode, I considered the possibility that she may just end up killing Teddy.
After returning to Sweetwater, which Teddy notes has been tarnished by the violence and gore, he offers Dolores a life in which they leave behind the violence and live together in love like they used to want. Dolores turns down that offer with some weird story about burning diseased cattle, which ends up being the world’s weirdest aphrodisiac since the two get it on later that night.
After their lovemaking session, Dolores leads Teddy to a barn where once again I honestly thought there was no way she wouldn’t kill him. Instead, though, she uses one of the Delos techs to change his code, likely to do the opposite of what Bernard did to Rebus a few weeks ago, making him cruel and lethal. It’ll definitely be interesting to see what Teddy is like next week.
Overall, I really didn’t think that Westworld could follow up strong after last week’s incredible episode in “The Riddle of the Sphinx”, and I totally expected Shogun World to be a fun but ultimately meaningless diversion. Instead, I think the show took a really smart approach, using Shogun World to highlight the cold existential crisis that the hosts face, and giving them an opportunity to react to it with compassion, of all things.
Personally, I’d say this is the third episode in a row of just incredible quality, so let’s hope next week continues the streak!
