Westworld - S2E3 - Virtù e Fortuna

Previously on Westworld, “Reunion” 

We knew going in that we’d be seeing another Delos park with Shogun World, but after the chaos of the first episode of the season, “Journey Into Night,” it was clear it would only be a matter of time before we were treated to other parks as well. This week’s cold open (only the second or third of the series) revealed Park 6: The Raj, set in British Colonial India where rich White folks can be served by brown people, hunt defenseless animals, and do whatever else it is rich White folks like to do for fun.

We navigate this park via an unnamed woman (credited on IMDB as Grace, played by Katja Berber) who flirts with another guest, Nicholas (Neil Jackson). After shooting him to determine he’s not a host, they have sex and then head off to hunt. When they arrive at their camp, the woman notices immediately that something is wrong: the Hosts who usually serve and care for them are missing. Then they find two dead guests in a tent. Nicholas assumes it’s a new horror twist to the narrative, but the woman knows better. Nicholas is shot by a Host who mutters, “These violent delights have violent ends.” The woman kills the Host and runs for it, but is chased by a Bengal tiger. The tiger follows her past the park’s border with the operational facilities. She manages to get off one shot before the tiger pounces, sending them both off a cliff and into the lake below.

Present Day

Strand, Bernard, and the PMCs head for the Mesa where Maling reports all hell as broken loose there as well. Inside, Bernard is reunited with Charlotte, who wants to know how they keep managing to lose Abernathy.

The After Party

Bernard and Charlotte find Abernathy being held with other guests by Rebus and his men. They’ve been selling guests to the Confederados. They trap Rebus alone long enough for Bernard to knock the Host out and reprogram him to be a faster gunman and a chivalrous man. This explains his attitude adjustment before he’s shot on the beach in episode one. The new Rebus turns on his own men and lets the hostages go, but the Confederados show up before Bernard and Charlotte can make off with the confused Abernathy. Charlotte escapes on horseback while Bernard and Abernathy are captured. Charlotte teams up with a group of PMCs as they’re about to embark on their park-wide sweep. She leads her own crew to Fort Forlorn Hope.

Dolores and her followers arrive at Fort Forlorn Hope with Major Craddock. She uses the captured QA worker’s gun (what newfangled sorcery is this?) to convince Colonel Brigham (Fredric Lehne) to join her fight - allowing him to use the gun to mow down the QA worker didn’t hurt. When Dolores discovers her father among the group of hostages, she demands to speak to him alone. Abernathy is still malfunctioning, cycling between his old narratives including that of being a human guest who needs to “get to the train.”

She asks Bernard to fix him, and tells Teddy that since they’ve broken her father, he’s all she has left. But is he? More on that in a bit.

Dolores and her horde of Wyatt followers, including Angela and Clementine, betray the Confederados when the PMCs attack. They’re slaughtered and blown up with the PMCs when Dolores uses their own explosives against them. Meanwhile, Bernard discovers the encrypted data within Abernathy just before PMCs storm their tent and take him. Dolores goes full-on Terminator/Wyatt in trying to stop Charlotte and her men from taking off with her father, but they get away. She orders the horde to split up to find them, and informs Teddy they’re going to Sweetwater for something she needs. First, though, she orders him to execute Craddock - and watches from a distance as Teddy is unable to do it, letting the man go instead.

Meave, Hector, and Sizemore encounter members of the Ghost Nation, which causes Maeve to flashback to how they terrorized her and her daughter on the homestead. Hector speaks to them in Lakota, and they’re willing to let him and Maeve go, but they want Sizemore. Since Maeve needs him, she can’t let that happen. When her narrative voice doesn’t work, they’re forced to run for it and escape by going underground.

There, Sizemore takes issue with Maeve and Hector’s romantic relationship. This is not what they’re programmed to do; how they’re programmed to behave. Hector is shaken when he tries to put into words his love for Maeve and Sizemore is able to recite them word-for-word since it’s what he wrote for Hector to say about his fictional love, Isabella. Hector was modeled after the type of man Sizemore wants to be and Isabella was modeled after the woman who left him.

They’re reunited with Armistice — who’s setting PMCs on fire with a flamethrower while holding Felix and Sylvester captive — and the group make their way above ground once more. When they reach the northern edges of the park and snow begins to fall, Sizemore believes they’re close to their destination and the Klondike narrative. Then he finds a severed head in the snow and warns the group to run just as a samurai charges.

The woman who escaped The Raj, and the tiger apparently, washes up on the shores of Westworld and is greeted by members of the Ghost Nation.

Analysis. What Prompted That Response? 

• Considering her knowledge of the park’s narratives, procedure, and behind-the-scenes layout, plus her penchant for violence, it’s safe to assume that the mystery woman at The Raj is Emily, William’s daughter with Juliet Delos. Why she’s there is still unknown, but I doubt it’s just a coincidental vacation.
• Whether or not she’s Emily, her banter with Nicholas was kind of ridiculous. The Hosts are programmed to behave as humans, but they don’t have any idea that they’re NOT human. Therefore, a Host trying to have sex with her wouldn’t understand her skepticism, nor would it say things like, “Do you think the park would go to the trouble of programming Hosts to pretend they’re human?” Emily has to know that. So, it feels like her behavior was similar to her father’s: she gets off on some freaky shit like shooting a man before having sex with him.
• Maeve’s narrative voice doesn’t work on the Ghost Nation, but it worked on Hosts in episode one. Maybe she needed to say it in Lakota? Either way, hopefully it’s explained otherwise it appears they took an easy way out of a plot device that would make Maeve unstoppable.
• Dolores is tripping. She has the godliest of god complexes right now. She doesn’t realize — or maybe she does and doesn’t care — that she is just putting the other Hosts in a new type of bondage. She’s not actually explaining to them what they are and why she’s doing what she’s doing. She’s using them to embark on her own path of revenge.

• Dolores has mentioned twice now that not all of them deserve to make it to the Valley Beyond or Glory. How is she determining that? Is it only for Hosts who are truly conscious like her and Maeve? If that’s the case, what does that mean for Teddy? Is he “woke” because he disobeyed her or is that part of his programming? Also, his actions may be due to her own words when she explained that Host like Craddock are like children who don’t know any better. He repeats this before letting Craddock go. Maybe Teddy didn’t think it fair to murder someone who doesn’t fully understand who and what he is.
• Humans can be scanned on the back of their necks to determine they’re not Hosts. Can’t wait to see how that comes into play later.