This week gave us what was quite possibly the most deeply emotional Westworld episode to date. It focused almost entirely on Ghost Nation, specifically on warrior Akecheta, or Ake. But before we get into that, we need to briefly check back in with the Man in Black.
He’s in bad shape, as most are after taking multiple gun shots. He is found by Ake, who brings him back to his camp. When MiB questions Ake, “If you’re just going to leave me here to die, you could have kept riding,” Ake delivers a great line, one of the series’ best, I’d argue. “Death is a passage from this brutal world. You don’t deserve the exit.” After leaving MiB lying on the ground, Ake begins a conversation with Maeve’s daughter, explaining the story of his life in the park.
Ake and his wife, Kohana, lived a “warm, easy life” along with the rest of their tribe, far away from the guests and the other hosts. But that all began to change when Ake came across the massacre in Escalante, where he also first encounters Arnold’s consciousness maze. He becomes obsessed with it, marking it anywhere and everywhere.
Unfortunately for Ake, he doesn’t have much time to ruminate on the meaning of the maze, as the Ghost Nation narrative is changed by park overseers. This is when he is transformed into the more savage Ghost Nation warrior we were first introduced to. Even with this new narrative, Ake says he still could feel the “presence of the others, the lives I was forbidden from taking,” meaning the park’s guests.
Speaking of guests, it’s sometime during this stretch of Ake’s life that he finds one Logan Delos, alone and naked in the park, after being left by William at the end of season one. Such long, constant exposure to the sun has understandably knocked a few screws loose in Logan’s head. When Ake finds him, he is muttering to himself. There are a couple key phrases he utters: “Where’s the door?” and “This is the wrong world!”
Logan’s ramblings triggered something in Ake, and he remembers the life he lived before his current one. He travels out into the park on his own, eventually finding the now-famous dig site, or the “Valley Beyond,” or “The Door,” all depending who you ask. Ake recognizes this as his way out of this “wrong” world, but he first must find Kohana, as any journey is not worth taking without her.
Ake is able to trigger Kohana’s memory of their old life by repeating their oft-said version of “I love you.” “Take my heart when you go,” Ake says. “Take mine in its place,” Kohana responds.
Together they go searching again for the Door. Kohana is ultimately taken by lab techs, and Ake dedicates his life to searching for and finding his one true love. Unable to find her, Ake realizes he has looked everywhere except “the other side of death.” He allows himself to be killed so that he will be taken in to the Mesa. While the lab techs leave him alone to be updated, he goes off searching for Kohana.
In a scene reminiscent of Maeve’s tour of the facility in season one, Ake makes his way through the Mesa, searching for Kohana. We get an emotional cover of Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box” to score his search. He does eventually find her, though the version he finds is a lifeless one in cold storage, along with hundreds of other decommissioned hosts.
(Still my favorite scene of the series, btdubs.)
It’s this moment that puts Ake on a new path: Helping other hosts achieve their own consciousness. He spreads the maze symbol to whoever he can, including Maeve and Maeve’s daughter. Ake explains that the memories Maeve and her daughter have of Ghost Nation are misconstrued; they were never in any danger. Rather, Ake was trying to help wake them up. This was an effort of repayment as Maeve’s daughter had once offered him help during a search long ago for Kohana.
Eventually Ake met Ford, or as he called him, “the man who put us to sleep in the first place.” Ford was intrigued by Ake, and offered some vague assistance. “When the Deathbringer returns for me, you will know to gather your people and lead them to a new world. Keep watching, Akecheta, for a while longer.”
“Deathbringer,” as you likely assumed, is Dolores. When Ake finds another massacre in Escalante, he knows that is the moment to which Ford had alluded. Ake knew it was time to gather his people and “…find the Door, before Deathbringer ends us all.”
And with that, Ake’s story is done. But this is Westworld after all, which means there was one last little twist, though it shouldn’t have been all that surprising. In addition to Maeve’s daughter, there was one other listener privy to his story: Maeve, who had connected through the host mesh network as she was being studied back at the Mesa. Ake knew Maeve was listening, so he addresses her as the episode closes.
“We will guard your daughter as our own. If you stay alive, find us — or die will.” To which Maeve responds, “Take my heart when you go.”
Have you seen The Simpsons episode where Ralph has a crush on Lisa, who then rejects on while live on TV? This clip captures how I (and all viewers, at least those who have a heart) felt when Maeve delivered that line.
I don’t often get to relate The Simpsons (one of my other all-time favorite shows) so I’m going to take any chance I get.
That does it for Ake’s story, but we do get one last moment with Man in Black. Emily arrives at the Ghost Nation camp to collect him. Ake only agrees to release him to Emily after she says she will make him hurt much worse than Ake ever could. I have two thoughts on that.
One, she just said it so Ake would let her take her father. Or two, she meant it, but it won’t be physical pain coming his way. She has something up her sleeve that is going to mess with him mentally and emotionally. My bet would be on option two, but knowing this show, there’s probably a third option she’s going with that I never saw coming. And if that’s the case, I have no doubt that it will awesome.
So that’s it for episode 8, meaning only two episodes left in what has been a fantastic second season. With such a unique, one-off episode coming so late in the season, I have to believe these last two episodes will go back to standard fare Westworld, and I’m guessing it’s going to get bonkers.
