Maeve the force be with you
See ya later, Shogun World! It was nice to know you, however briefly, and we really appreciated that sword fight between those two dudes at the end there, with the hand getting chopped off. But now, it’s time to go. It’s time to leave the Japanese-themed park so grand it has its own Mount Fuji, get back in the tunnel, throw on a fresh set of clothes and go steal somebody’s child.
Perhaps we will return to Shogun World at some point, but for now Maeve has done with it. Having tried and failed to save the life of a geisha she had barely known, Maeve leaves her buddy Akane and handy ronin Musashi and heads back to Westworld. There she must complete the mission that drives her: finding her daughter.
Maeve and Sizemore and Hector and so on are soon back in Westworld, every smear of Shogun eviscera washed from their faces. They find a service entrance that opens in the middle of graveyard and there, just over the hill, is Maeve’s old house. She runs down there, alone, to find her daughter sitting on the stoop. The daughter is worried that her mother will get done in by bad men. It won’t happen, says Maeve, because Mummy is strong. But wait, here comes the child’s real/current mummy, and she wants to know what’s going on. Here’s what’s happening Real Mummy: the Ghost Nation are hovering on your shoulder and about to take you away again, that’s what.
With the other mother detained by the natives, Maeve is saved from having to negotiate visiting rights, and tears off into the brush with the child. The Ghost Nation give chase and for a second it looks like curtains. Maeve is surrounded. Will she use her new telepathic powers to make them stop? No, for some reason, she does not. Instead she listens as a Ghost National imparts a message suggesting he and Maeve are not enemies at all. “We are born for the same path,” he says. Before we can find out more about this path the National is shot to the floor by Maeve’s gang. They’d been told to leave her alone, but really this lot just won’t listen.
So what happens now? It appears like Maeve has completed her cornerstone mission. She has a gang, has a love for her fellow hosts, and also has the power to kill them all should she so desire. Now all she needs is an incident that will drag her into the bigger drama unfolding elsewhere in the park. Might Sizemore’s call for help assist in bringing that about?
Character development
There aren’t many “characters” in Westworld, not as you’d traditionally understand them. Few have a clear motivation that drives them, even fewer have personalities that are complex and contradictory. That can leave a lot of the interaction between characters to be less than compelling. But this week there are not one, but two moments which do that job for me. I enjoyed them.
The first occurs during the reunion between the Man in Black and his long lost daughter, Emily. She’s tough as old boots and having known the park well enough to track her grizzled father down, this week she saves him from an ambush. She’s tougher than he gives her credit for and, for his part, he’s not as impervious as he likes to make out. The Man in Black has long been shadowed by the knowledge his daughter blamed him for the suicide of her mother, his wife. Now, sitting together over a camp fire in the park, she tells him she no longer holds that grudge. The Man in Black, apparently relieved at this news, smiles. He agrees to accept her forgiveness and rebuild their relationship, starting by leaving the park together. Emily retires for a kip in front of the campfire, feeling content. But when she wakes up, her father is gone. He might not be the evil so and so his daughter once thought, and the Man in Black might even be grateful to know that. But, at the same time, he is still far removed from the point where familial ties take first place in his order of priorities.
Meanwhile, on a train heading for Delos HQ, Teddy observes to Dolores that he has developed a sense of wanderlust. “I never thought I would want to leave” he tells his lover of Westworld, “But I suppose you fixed that, too.” Teddy, you’ll recall, has had his personality rewired by Dolores to make him less of a softy, more of a cold-blooded killer. It’s a role that will be more useful to her in the upcoming battle with humanity. Teddy’s remark on the train, and others dotted throughout the show, suggest however that not only is Teddy aware he has been changed, he is also not sure how he feels about it. As Teddy adapts to his new personality, he has a sense of poignancy about the man he once was.
Basically these two moments remind us, and hopefully those making the show, that conflict is the heart of good drama and that, sometimes, conflict needs to come from within a character, rather than through the weapon on the end of their arm.
A knees up at the old Joanna
Now we come to the twist. The final scene of the episode reveals Robert Ford to be alive and well. Or his mind is. Or, at least, a digital simulation of his mind. Viewers and characters alike were led to believe the man who created Westworld had been killed during last season’s finale. But Ford has, in fact, been uploaded to the Cradle, a digital network built to connect the hosts with each other and keep them reading from the same script. To make matters worse it was Bernard who did the uploading, as the host recalls during one of his temporal glitches.
Now the pair come face to face. Bernard, with the help of Elsie, uploads himself to the Cradle, too. Now apparently inhabiting a persona in the park, Bernard arrives in Sweetwater on the train, and wanders into the Mariposa. Who should be tinkling the old ivories there but the person who built Bernard in the first place. “Hallo, old friend”, Ford says, as if he has been waiting for Bernard – or is it Arnold? - all this time.
There’ll be questions as to when, where and how this meeting actually takes place. After all there appears to be no sign of the uprising in Sweetwater, though we know Dolores has already torn through it. But if anyone can make things happen in Westworld, it’s Ford. He enabled the uprising by reprogamming his hosts and brought it to reality by creating the Wyatt storyline. Since the rebellion he appears to be directing those who are trying to stop it, assuming control of hosts around the park and issuing elliptical instructions. He’s been paying particular attention to the Man in Black (who even thinks his daughter is possessed by Ford for a moment), but he might also be speaking through the Ghost Nation to Maeve and Emily. Now he is face to face with Bernard. Perhaps he will now explain what he’s actually up to.
Notes from the Prairie
- I think there might be a big white hat for Teddy to wear in this whole shebang yet, despite his reprogramming. I also think the same might be true for the beleaguered Ashley. Westworld’s head of security hasn’t been doing a great job of it and spends this week in the company of a guy who lets him know it. But despite being on the end of a lot of verbals - “Amateur hour is over” being one - Ashley’s experience of Westworld, and his ability to survive it, might yet see him become useful.
- Sizemore has had his phone all the time, so why not use it before now? Probably too worried about what Maeve might do if she spotted him using it. But surely he could have disappeared round the back of a ryokan and dashed off a text message from Shogun World at some point?
- Both Dolores and Ford play the piano in this week’s episode. Which begs the question: might Ford occasionally wander into the mind of his favourite host? Would seem rude not to.
- Question born of my complete ignorance: is the Delos techie currently speeding on an uncoupled train into La Mesa out of it? He’s got a gun and a single bullet (a very specific bullet at that, found behind a tin of condensed milk). Presumably it’s to do himself in, but for what reason? I am confused.
- Finally, a quick note of apology. This recap will now be going live on Monday night. For the first five weeks I’ve been able to watch previews of the episode through HBO. This is now no longer the case. So from now on I’ll be writing following the UK simulcast of the show.
Questions
Will Ford reveal his plan, or just make a series of cryptic remarks on the theme? Will Sizemore get his help? How long before Emily finds her dad again?
