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Westworld 02.05 ‘Akane No Mai’ recap

By Bethany Lewis

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For the first time in a long time, we get some information about what’s happening now in Westworld, after the host rebellion.

The Delos team fish the dead hosts out of the water and bring them back to the lab to analyze, see if they can find out what happened to them. But of course, they find something weird, that a third of them have been completely wiped clean of data. Not just wiped, but virgin, as if they’ve never had anything in them at all. Bernard looms darkly over proceedings, foreboding. Did Westworld really kill them all? And why delete the data on only a third of hosts – or any at all?

Back in Shogun World, Maeve and Co are taken prisoner and taken back to the local village. There they find a number of characters that are suspiciously familiar. It’s basically Sweetwater but replanted in Japan. Maeve meets the geisha Akane (Rinko Kikuchi), her Japanese doppelgänger. The ronin Musashi (Hiroyuki Sanada) is Akane’s protector and Hector’s doppelganger. Maeve convinces them to negotiate as they watch a familiar storyline play out. Maeve accuses Lee of plagiarism, stealing their personalities and stories. But of course, the story doesn’t plat out the way its supposed to and Lee is surprised again by the hosts’ increasing free will.

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The local Shogun sends a representative to buy one of Akane’s dancers, a shy young woman named Sakura (Kiki Sukezane). This girl is like a daughter to Akane, so instead of agreeing like she should, she kills the messenger – which will inevitably bring the Shogun’s army down upon them. They expect retaliation, but not the ninjas that assault them in the night and kidnap Sakura, or the army he sends after them. This never happens, so maybe the Shogun is awake. Maeve finds that she’s developing the ability to control hosts with her mind, maybe like some kind of wi-fi connection she can manipulate.

While Hector, Armistice, and Musashi distract the army, Maeve, Akane, and Lee sneak off to confront the Shogun (Masaru Shinozuka). But when they arrive, they find that the Shogun’s not awake, he’s broken and quite insane. He’s burned off the ears of his men so Maeve can’t control them with her voice. The Shogun makes a deal with Akane – if she dances for him with Sakura, she can have her back. But as the performance begins, the Shogun kills Sakura. Akane performs a fierce dance that ends with the Shogun’s bloody murder. Maeve uses her mind to turn the Shogun’s army on themselves. As more samurai come to flight them, Maeve wields a sword and tells Lee that she’s “found a new voice” and that she intends to use it.

Back in Sweetwater, Dolores has her army repair the train that will take her to the Mesa. She and Teddy are both trying to figure things out between them. Teddy asks her to run away with him, leave the war behind and start their lives together now. If they have free will, then they can choose to be together. Oh sweet, dumb Teddy. They share a night of passion together. In the night Dolores wakes Teddy up to show him something.

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She confesses that she’s been struggling with her feelings for him, trying to decide if they’re real or just part of her programming. She has decided that they’re real, but that Teddy won’t survive the war as he is – he’s too kind. “Where we’re going is no place for a man like you,” she says. So she has her technician change his settings, warning that the extreme changes without a reset might pull him apart. It’s going to be quite exciting to see what Teddy turns into after this!

What did you think of this week’s Westworld? Tell us in the comments what your theories are for the rest of the season!

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