The Super Powered Fancast

Westworld

HBO

Season 2 Episode 5

Akane No Mai

It looks like the team from Delos has managed to retake the control room and they are processing the recovered Hosts control units and what they’re finding isn’t good. It looks like all of the data from the hosts they recovered is missing and the backups are gone too.

Maeve and her group find themselves captured by the hosts of Shogunworld and she quickly finds that the tricks she’s been using in Westworld don’t work there. At least until she gets an idea. We come to find out that this land is a lot more brutal than Westworld ever was. What makes it even more entertaining is that it plays out the same way Hector and Armistice are aware of.

The parallel storylines are a nice touch in this episode and it shows the limitations of the humans in this world, especially the writer of these scenarios.

Dolores and Teddy return to where it all began in Sweet Water and she decides to take the train to go get her father back. There’s a great moment with Clementine where we can see the actual emotional toll that the narratives are having on the Hosts, especially in how the repetition of them is affecting them. What follows is something I didn’t think I needed to see in Westworld, a Ninja fight and it was absolutely worth it to see Maeve lose some of the control she’s been building over time. It gives another interesting dynamic and a limitation that she overcomes in an unexpected way.

Someone I do feel for is Teddy. This episode gave he and Dolores the opportunity to convey where they are philosophically and that Teddy is more at odds with Dolores than we thought. It will be interesting to see if Dolores decides to take some of what Teddy said to heart or if she’s too far gone on her mission to think about what Teddy is offering. The episode actually gives Teddy some much-needed character development and he feels more tangible a person than he has so far.

The contrast between Dolores’ story and Maeve’s is brought into clear focus in this episode and the ramifications for everyone going forward get even darker, especially for Teddy. This episode brings into focus many of the darker elements of the series and it does it well. As awesome as it is, it does lose some of its emotional core, but that might be what the writers were going for.