We’ve got Samurai.
Westworld meets Eastworld in the newest episode of Westworld — “Virtú e Fortuna” — as we finally get a look into one of the other parks that Ford created (at least, I’m assuming it’s Ford, but I guess someone else could have created the other ones).
The new world is officially called “The Raj,” at least according to Entertainment Weekly. Basically, it’s somewhere in Asia: there’s elephants, tents, wild tigers (oh my) and, of course, lots of hosts who are ready to serve the human’s every need
Here, it’s Grace (Katja Herbers) we’re following — a sassy human who appears to be enjoying her time in the park. After taking back a guy to her room and shooting him to make sure he’s human (I guess robot sex just isn’t the same), the two get it on and then head out on a little jungle expectation the next day.
Right around then, presumably, is when the uprising in Westworld started. Looks like that uprising affected more than just our cowboy friends, too: the hosts of The Raj have become self-aware and begun killing the guest one-by-one.
The guy Grace was with goes down almost instantly, but Grace manages to escape into the jungle. That is, she runs into a wild tiger in the middle of a jungle who then chases her off a cliff.
Guess that explains what that washed up tiger was doing there in the premiere episode.
We’re back in the wild west for the remainder of the episode. That, of course, doesn’t mean we’re on one timeline, because we still jump around quite a bit.
In the timeline that’s well after all the carnage has gone down, Bernard and Charlotte are reunited (which is confusing, because we still don’t know how they got split up at this point). Charlotte seems slightly surprised to see Bernard, saying “You made it out alive. Didn’t think you had it in you,” but there’s also a slight twinkle in her eye. She knows something and, whatever it is, it isn’t good. This question is only further raised by her questions surrounding the disappearance of Peter Abernathy (Louis Herthum), whom Bernard failed to retrieve.
Back to the timeline in which Bernard and Charlotte are still together, and we see how Abernathy away. Initially, he’s being held hostage by one of the park’s most violent hosts, Rebus (Steven Ogg).
Due to some quick thinking on Charlotte’s part, the duo is able to separate Rebus from his troupe and knock him unconscious, then hacking into his hard drive and changing his personality settings to make him “the most virtuous, quickest gun in the West.”
Rebus then returns to camp, shoots all the men he was with and sets the prisoners free — providing Westworld with a humorous moment that really doesn’t come all too often. Bernard and Charlotte try to scoop up Abernathy, put that goes sideways upon the arrival of a secondary army who takes both him and Bernard hostage.
Things have gone full on Game of Thrones in Dolores’ storyline. She’s building up an army as she’s now come to Fort Forgone Hope to make her stand. She convinces the army who is staying there to let them in and fight for her, as the humans are inevitably coming.
That’s when Bernard and Abernathy show up. She instantly runs to Abernathy, as he played the role of her father in the previous storyline. While Abernathy initially remembers this, he then starts breaking down and glitching. Dolores brings Bernard in to take a look, who then finds the encryption that has been stored away in him.
He then begins hacking into all the information and sees something that’s apparently shocking. We’re not going to be told what it is exactly, and we probably won’t be for some time, but it’s probably nothing good.
The humans then arrive and the battle is on. Once again, I’m totally reminded of Game of Thrones in the way all of this is staged — and that’s not a bad thing. The humans start advancing in on the hosts (duh, they have machine guns and are fighting against ranchers with pistols) before Dolores reveals her secret plan that she’s had all along.
She locks all of her new comrades outside of the gate, leaving them to be picked off one-by-one while her army of dark cannibal looking guys hides on the inside. They begin gunning everyone down from behind the closed doors. Angela shoots a secret explosive that’s been buried underground, and then suddenly everyone outside the walls is dead.
Sadly, she does lose Abernathy though. Charlotte made it back to safety and instantly brought a team to go collect him. While Dolores is able to gun a few of them down, they stuff Abernathy in the back of a vehicle and drive him away before she can get to them.
Dolores, now angry, has the rest of the men who were supposed to be fighting for her gunned down execution style. At least, that were her orders to Teddy. Teddy can’t do it though and winds up setting them all free — with Dolores secretly watching from a distance. There’s no way that the relationship between them ends well, I’m telling you now.
Maeve is out and about during all of this too — with Lee (who is getting better and better every episode) and Hector of course. After a brief run-in with the Ghost Nation, which triggers some flashbacks for Maeve, the three find themselves underground.
That’s where Hector is reunited with Armistice (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal), who is exactly how we remember her from season one only, this time, she has a flame-thrower. Also down there is the two dumbest employees that Westworld has ever hired: Felix (Leonardo Nam) and Sylvester (Ptolemy Slocum), who get dragged along on the journey too.
They make their way upstairs again, to find themselves in a landscape with snow. Lee tells them this means they’re in the northern part of the park, right before he makes a terrible discovery: there’s someone’s head buried in a pile of snow. Not just anyone’s head either — it’s a samurai.
His warning comes too late. A second samurai comes charging out of the shadows, blade drawn.
Cut to black.
So far, I love The Raj. Kind of a dumb name, I know, but it’s a whole other park that has so much to explore and all I want to do is see more and more and more. Hopefully, that’s what’s coming in the next couple of episodes.
Watch the new episode of Westworld on HBO tonight and check out our other Westworld recaps by clicking here!