Westworld Season 2 Episode 5 Recap: Welcome to Shogun World, Motherf—kers!
In any other week, the climax of this week’s Dolores storyline—which sees her capture and reprogram Teddy to change him from an aw-shucks white-hat to a ruthless badass—would be the biggest event in the episode. This is a tactic we’ve only seen employed by Bernard, but it’s easy to imagine a whole army of hosts manipulated this way, with their courage and capacity for violence cranked up to 11. And it’s also the kind of tactic Dolores herself would abhor if it were employed by a human—yet another sign that Dolores’ rebellion is turning her into the kind of monster she originally rose up to oppose.
It’s a lot to think about! But also: Who cares? Because the rest of this episode takes place in motherfucking Shogun World!
Westworld originally teased the existence of Shogun World—a park based loosely on Japan’s Edo period, and "an experience expressly designed for the guests who find Westworld too tame"—in its Season One finale. Now, Maeve and her companions have accidentally stumbled straight into their sister park just in time to run afoul of the glitchy shogun himself.
Westworld can be so arty and pseudo-philosophical that it’s easy to forget this is a show about a theme park full of robots. Among other things, this foray into Shogun World is actually fun. As Maeve and company wander around the park, they quickly realize that Shogun World is directly modeled on Westworld. (There’s even a cover of "Paint it Black"—the song that played during a similar scene in the Westworld premiere—played on what sounds like a shamisen.) As they watch the events of their own lives play out in parallel—albeit with swords and samurai instead of six-shooters and cowboys—Lee Sizemore confesses to his laziness as a narrative writer: "You try writing 300 stories in three weeks."
The cut-and-paste nature of Shogun World means, inevitably, that Maeve and Armistice and Hector meet the Shogun World versions of themselves—experiencing a funhouse-mirror version of what it would be like to be a guest. Armistice is fascinated by her Shogun World counterpart, who has a dragon tattoo instead of a snake; Hector wants to kill the badass ronin who serves as Shogun World’s Hector equivalent.
But the episode’s emotional crux is the bond that develops between Maeve and her counterpart, Akane (Rinko Kikuchi)—a former geisha who is devoted to protecting Sakura (Kiki Sukezane), a younger geisha she raised and trained from childhood. The shogun demands Sakura for himself, but Akane refuses to give her up. And Maeve—flashing back to the "daughter" she’s still desperately trying to find—takes pity, and vows to help Akane and Sakura escape Shogun World via a secret escape hatch that will take them all out of the park.
Along the way, Maeve discovers a weird new superpower: The ability to make guests do anything—including kill themselves—simply by ordering them to do it. But it’s still not enough to protect Sakura, who gets kidnapped and abused by the shogun. When Lee rolls his eyes at Maeve’s determination to rescue what he calls "a literal sex machine"—why do they keep this asshole around again?—Maeve bristles at his callousness: "You can’t keep doing this to us. Giving us people to love and then getting upset when we do."
She’s thinking, of course, about her own daughter. In a way, Maeve is getting a version of what Westworld promises all its guests: the ability to live out their greatest fantasies. For her, it’s a chance to help Akane—the parallel-universe version of herself—and succeed in rescuing Sakura where she failed in saving her own daughter. Even her mysterious new ability echoes the "superpower" of the guests, who were impossible for the hosts to kill when the park was still playing by the Delos Corporation’s rules.
And as soon as Akane starts telling a very familiar story about going across the sea, where you can be whomever you want, Maeve realizes that she can offer her Shogun World counterpart one more great gift: freedom. Maeve attempts to explain the true nature of the park, and the real world that exists beyond it. But Akane isn’t ready for the truth; when Maeve begins to explain, Akane practically shuts down, begging her to stop speaking.
It’s a classic philosophical dilemma: Is it better to live in blissful ignorance, or painful reality? And it’s made all the more complicated by the terror of Shogun World, which keeps Akane immersed in a kind of painful ignorance. But in the end, Maeve acquiesces, allowing Akane to continue living in the fantasy she escaped back in Season One.
Which may have been a mistake—because that fantasy is obliterated when they actually come face-to-face with the shogun, who stabs Sakura in the stomach and forces Akane to dance for him. Akane has the presence of mind to draw a hairpin and stab the shogun to death, but belated revenge isn’t enough to shake her grief over Sakura’s death.
We’ve long been conditioned to recognize the hosts on Westworld as real, complicated characters, with their own goals and motivations—but it’s worth remembering that this cruelty and chaos is exactly what Shogun World was designed to deliver. Early on, Lee Sizemore indicates that all this business with the shogun is actually part of a preprogrammed storyline called "Army of Blood." It goes off the rails when the shogun himself begins to malfunction, but it’s still just a kind of entertainment; the shogun’s deep cruelty, and Akane’s thrillingly bloody revenge, are just two of the park’s many violent delights. Under normal circumstances, their bodies would be swept up, repaired, and deployed so the whole tragic cycle could begin again.
The goal is to break the cycle—and if Akane isn’t quite ready to do it, Maeve has more evidence than ever that it’s long past time to stretch past the boundaries of her programming. And maybe her new powers are the logical endpoint of that—because as the shogun’s men charge at her, she walks away untouched. How has Maeve essentially become the Neo of the Westworld universe? And if this power gives her control over basically every host in the park, how is she going to use it?
