Westworld recap: Some thoughts on Dolores' shocking اقدام 

recap: Some thoughts on Dolores\' shocking move

Westworld unveiled its long-awaited new park Shogun World in Sunday’s episode which played like a mini samurai movie featuring Thandie Newton seamlessly delivering dialogue in Japanese. But the biggest surprise wasn’t what happened in the feudal Japan theme park but rather what went down in the Wild West when Dolores totally brain-violated her loving boyfriend Teddy. We start with…

Westworld backstage: We get a brief bit with Bernard “Unreliable Narrator” Lowe with the QA team examining piles of dead hosts. This is after they found the lake full of drowned host bodies (so they weren’t just pretending to be dead after all — eliminating one popular fan theory).

We’re told about one-third of the hosts are “virgin” — like they never held data at all. And the host backups have all been destroyed. Hmm. We figure Dolores is up to something here, but we don’t know what yet. The QA guy is all: “How did all these disparate threads come together to create this nightmare? If we figure out, we’ll know how this story turns.” That’s a pretty on point comment, to say the least. Bernard just stares at the dead Teddy body again, which should fuel yet another fan theory out there…

Shogun World: Maeve and Co. are captured by a ronin named Musashi (played by veteran actor Hiroyuki Sanada who you’ve seen in everything from The Last Samurai to The Wolverine to Life). They’re brought to a town that’s set up suspiciously like Sweetwater. Lee explains that this place is basically a feudal Japan bizarro version of Westworld — the town, the storylines and even the hosts are doppelgangers for ones we already know. So Musashi the Ronin is Hector the bandit. Akane (Rinko Kikuchi) the geisha is Maeve the madam. Akane’s favorite employee, the young and doomed Sakura, is the young and doomed Clementine. And of course, we get a version of “Paint it Black” (played on, I think, a koto?), echoing the same song used during the Westworld pilot (and, yes, a version of the Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M” later on).

“You try writing 300 stories in three weeks!” explains Lee.

The recycling works on a few levels: It’s a meta-commentary on TV trope recycling, a clever way of creating a connection between the familiar hosts and the residents of this new environment, and a way of adding another sci-fi techno wrinkle. I’ve often wondered why there was only one of each host.  Wouldn’t popular characters like Dolores and Maeve have replacements since they’re constantly being damaged and repaired? Back-ups and clones? The show’s writers actually considered doing that, but ultimately decided to do this more unique cross-park “double-bot” concept instead.

(Another behind the scenes fun fact: The Westworld production team build the Japanese town set back to back with the Sweetwater set. So buildings on the right side of the street, if you walk into them and then go out the “back door,” you pop out the other side into Sweetwater. Given the level of immersive 360-degree detail of both sets, walking back and forth between them is incredibly trippy).

Anyway: The Shogun demands Akene turn over the young Sakura. Akene is supposed to comply. But since all the hosts are free to make their own decisions, Akene kills the Shogun’s messenger, putting the group in danger. Bet you didn’t think you’d spend half this episode reading, huh?

That night: Ninja attack! (And yes, for the stickler, ninjas are not from the exact same time period as some other historical elements in the episode. The idea is that Shogun World, like Westworld, combines iconic elements from different years into one theme park).

Maeve discovers she can halt the ninjas not just by using voice commands, but by using something unspoken. Her “new voice” is tapping into the host wifi “mesh network.” She can get hosts to do anything (as long as she’s speaking to them in their “native” language which is apparently Japanese rather than, say, C++). Maeve is now playing on the game on God-mode.