Well, we finally saw the payoff of a long-awaited reveal: Shogun World The Raj! Exactly the park we all thought we’d be seeing next. amiright? But that’s just like Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, isn’t it? Get us all hyped up for this seemingly awesome Shogun World and then show us a different park first? In Raj, we meet Grace (according to IMDB, at least) who has a rude introduction to the host rebellion. This also is the “Park 6” referenced in the premiere, as there are mentions of bengal tigers. And then of course, there’s the slightly more obvious hint with the bengal that we actually saw in the season premiere. Back to Grace, who we see prepping for a hunt when she comes across a group of murdered guests. She and her hunting partner are approached by a rogue host, who murders the other and makes a failed attempt on Grace’s life as well, who is able to load a shotgun just in time to kill her would-be murderer.
Grace makes her way through the forest and eventually finds herself the target of a hungry bengal. After running away, she finds herself on the edge of a cliff and we get an awesome shot of Grace shooting the bengal as it leaps at her, sending them both off the edge into the water below. Of course we don’t get any payoff until the very end of the episode. The bengal is dead on the shore, as we already saw, and Grace pulls herself to the shore where she is promptly found and presumably captured by members of the Ghost Nation. She’s having a rough go of it isn’t she?
The rest of the episode takes place in Westworld and is more straightforward than most past episodes. The Bernard/Charlotte story takes us on their search for Peter Abernathy. Bernard is glitching hard yet again. With so much focus on this, you know there’s more to it that we’re just not seeing yet. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly going out on a limb to say this, but I can’t help but feel that Bernard is going to play a much bigger part in all this than you might think. Again, what that is, and in whose plans exactly, are anyone’s guess. But Bernard’s storyline is what I’ll be paying extra close attention to going forward.
Bernard and Charlotte find Abernathy, but because nothing on this show is easy, some of Dolores’ men show up and capture both Abernathy and Bernard. Charlotte, however, is able to escape. Abernathy is also going through some major glitching, so Dolores has Bernard examine him. He finds the information that Hale is so desperate to smuggle out of the park. Unfortunately for him it’s behind some seriously impressive encryption key and will take lots of time and attempts…what’s that? He already got in? Okay then. Apparently Robot Bernard is an expert hacker. And in a moment that can only be described as overly predictable, Bernard is shocked at what he finds and we learn nothing further. Come on, Westworld! Can’t you throw us a bone, just once?
They get interrupted by that pesky QA team and we get our first real human-host battle. Dolores doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice some of her newfound Confederado allies, as she closes the fort door to trap them out front right in the line of fire. Unless I missed it somewhere, I don’t think it’s been explicitly stated, but it seems Dolores is becoming selective in which hosts she lets continue on with her in her rebellion. During the battle, Charlotte has two QA members go in to retrieve Abernathy. Dolores sees and immediately goes after them. She takes bullets like they’re nothing more than a slap on the cheek and keeps firing away. Charlotte and her QA team are able to get away with Abernathy.
What we see next could be the beginning of the end for our dear friend Teddy. Dolores has him take Major Craddock and some other Confederados to be killed. There’s still some humanity (or the host equivalent) left in the man and he lets them all go. Dolores watches this all go down and walks away, clearly disappointed in her close friend and ally.
Last but not least, we have the Maeve, Hector, and Sizemore trio. Real quick aside, Sizemore’s outfit was maybe the best thing about this episode. I mean just look at him.
The three amigos find themselves surrounded by members of Ghost Nation. The Ghost Nation will let Maeve and Hector go free if they hand over Sizemore. Luckily for him, he’s still vital to Maeve’s plans. She tries to Obi-Wan Kenobi them and it seems like it’s about to work. But then a bunch of other Ghost Nation guys pop out and Maeve can’t control them all. They wisely decide to run and are able to safely make it to an elevator that takes them to another underground location.
Sizemore continues to provide most of the humor for the show, whining about the fact that Maeve and Hector falling for each other is breaking from their programed storylines. I get the fact that it might be upsetting seeing something you’ve worked so hard on go so wrong. But in the grand scheme of things, with everything else happening, I’m not sure this should be what he’s most concerned about.
Underground we meet up again with three characters. They come across Armistice who has a fancy new robotic arm that she’s using to wield a flamethrower like a total boss. Her entrance rocking that flamethrower was probably the coolest visual of the episode (behind Sizemore’s outfit of course). And the other two are hapless park employees Felix and Sylvester. Maeve brings all three of them into their funny little family and off they go.
They make their way to a snowy mountaintop. Are they in a new park? Nothing from what we’ve seen previously in the Westworld park would suggest there was a snowy region. But I would think Sizemore would have made a bigger deal about the whole thing if they had indeed ventured into a new park. That being said, we know someone on that mountain isn’t where they’re supposed to be. Because out of the darkness runs what we’re left to assume is a samurai warrior. He raises his sword, seemingly ready to attack Maeve, and it cuts to black. Either way, it looks like we’re getting our first real park crossover action. The episode titles likely give away which episode we’ll be fully into Shogun World, so if you want to avoid spoiling even that, try to stay away from seeing that information.
There were some big moments this week, but I actually have this as my lowest rated episode of the entire series, at an 84/100. Which is still quite a good episode. It really says something about the quality of the show where, even through only 13 episodes, the “worst” is still rated that high. While this wasn’t my favorite episode, it seemed to set up a number of intriguing upcoming plot points. I think we could be in for a nice run of episodes here, maybe even the rest of the way. HBO sent screener to critics for the first five episodes, and there’s been a lot of buzz about next week’s episode. Thankfully I haven’t come across anything that gives away any more than that, but I’ll be waiting for next Sunday with even more anticipation than usual.
