'Westworld' recap: 'Akane no Mai'

Ninjas ninjas ninjas ninjas

After months and months and months of teasing us, Westworld finally introduced us to Shogun World in the show’s newest episode, “Akane no Mai.”

Which means we finally got some ninjas up in here. Thank you Westworld, thank you so much.

We start with a quick Westworld scene — Bernard is at the lab, presumably after all the carnage has gone down after they found all the bodies drowned in the lake.

Someone tells Bernard that all of the hosts are remarkably clean, meaning there’s no information or source of life that’s stored at them in all. Bernard then turns to see Teddy, lying dead in a heap amongst the rest.

That should be something of a shocker, but I’m pretty sure everyone is so used to Teddy dying all the time at this point, making it feel more like a punch line.

On to the good stuff — the one samurai who charged at Maeve merely captures her and her squad instead of killing them. He brings them all back to his home, which is in one of the park’s other worlds — Shogun World.

Right from the get-go, something looks awfully familiar about Shogun World. Lee comes clean and admits that it’s basically the same as Westworld — same storylines, same map and even the same people (meaning they all have a doppelgänger running around). After all, creating 300 different characters in a matter of a couple weeks was no easy task for Lee, so this definitely doesn’t count as self-plagiarism.

That leads to some interactions between Maeve and her double Akane (Rinko Kikuchi) and Hector and Musashi the Ronin (Hiroyuki Sanada) — even if it doesn’t really make sense why the guests would ever visit more than one park if everything is exactly the same.

Turns out there’s a whole bunch of drama going down in Shogun world that Maeve has walked right in the middle of. The Shogun is demanding Akane to turn over a young geisha named Sakura (Kiki Sukezane), who is meant to echo Clementine. The storyline calls for Akane to do so, but since all the hosts are free to do whatever they please now, she refuses. Akane kills the messenger and the rest run off.

Not forever, of course, because later that night we get a ninja attack. There’s a whole bunch of elements from various samurai and martial arts movies, as well as some bits that reminded me of The Wolverine, but it’s all really a ton of fun.

During the attack, Maeve tries to stop some ninjas with her voice but is gagged and unable to do so. Instead, she discovers a new power — she can now control hosts with her mind. She gets the ninjas to stop attacking and all turn on each other, basically now confirming that Maeve is now the most OP character in Westworld.

The Shogun still managed to get Sakura during all of this, so now they got to launch an attack on him. They head towards the camp and start to come up with a plan — which nearly gets them all killed.

They come before the Shogun (who happens to be glitching at the moment), only for Maeve to find out that she can’t command any of the Shogun’s men because he had all their ears burned off.

The Shogun then kills Sakura in front of everyone and demands Akane to dance. She begins to, but the decides ‘aw, screw it’ and takes off the Shogun’s head in the bloodiest of fashion.

A battle ensues. Maeve uses her mind-trick to control the earless guys, and a lot of people wind up dead. Along the way, Lee steals a walkie-talkie too, which is sure to come back in future episodes.

As for Westworld itself, we see some drama play out between Dolores and Teddy.

Teddy is still being Teddy, as he’s trying to get Dolores to settle down while saying that he’ll do whatever he asks from her. Dolores, though, is finally starting to catch on that the feelings of love she might have towards him might all just be programmed.

While the two spend one-night having sex, Dolores calls Teddy into a backroom the following night. There’s some sort of rotting carcass (couldn’t figure out if it was animal or human) lying on a table that she makes him stand in front of.

Suddenly a bunch of strong guys pin Teddy down as Dolores takes out Teddy’s personality settings. His compassion has been brought down to zero, while she raises his aggression, bulk apperception and hostility. Finally, maybe Teddy won’t be so desperate anymore.

Even though we still know he’s going to end up drowning in a lake at some point, so maybe not.

Either way, there’s still a lot more that this season of Westworld has to answer for, as we’re now halfway through season two. Check out the next Westworld recap on HBO and read some of our other recaps by clicking here!