Westworld: Akane no Mai Review

There Are Spoilers In Our Westworld: Akane no Mai Review – Episode Discussion

So this week’s episode of Westworld just went to air and this week sees us finally travel to Shogun world, which is something that’s been teased every now and again for what seems like forever now. Back in Westworld, Dolores continues on her path, but has some issues with Teddy.

The Shogun side of this episode was the more interesting side of the tale, even actually it would have been great if the whole episode was just focused on Maeve and her journey over there.

Last week we saw the show have quite a dialogue heavy story, with excellent interweaving of character stories. But this week the episode is much more action packed. We see quite a bit of action moments from the Shogun characters, there’s arrows being fired, people being impaled and even one guy gets his head cut in half. It’s all pretty insane over there in the Shogun world and it made for an enjoyable episode to watch.

Interestingly, in this episode we discover that the Westworld writers are a little lazy. Not the writers of the show (lols) but the writers for the narratives for the worlds that exist in the show. Instead of creating original and unique stories for park visitors to go on for each new world, it’s instead adapted stories from Westworld. Interestingly the opening action sequences for Shogun world for our visitors are pretty much a repeat of what we saw in Westworld in the past. I find this really interesting. The bots inside the worlds are so advanced, but instead of Ford and the rest trying to do more with them, they for some reason have all the bots in various parks acting out the same scenarios? I sort of wonder if it’s a way to keep things safer in the parks as you don’t have anything going on that’s too risky. But really, I find it all really peculiar.

The next big thing out of this episode is that Meeve gains a new ability. It seems that from now on, Maeve is going to be able to essentially mind control other bots around her. If this is limited only to Shogun world or if it will extend to bots in Westworld is something I don’t know, but it’s very interesting. Two episodes ago, we saw Maeve and Hector display some affection towards one another that is essentially against their programming and see after that moment a little discussion on free will in that episode. But just a few episodes later, Maeve now has the ability to control other bots. I think this is an interesting concept for her character because what is the value of free will, when Maeve can so easily just take control of the other bots in an instant? Doesn’t that make those Maeve controls essentially ‘things’ and not ‘beings’? I’m curious to see how this will develop as things go forward.

On the Dolores side of the episode, she continues on her path towards her goals that she’s been following for most of this season. At this point, I wonder if Dolores might be a sort of villain for the Man in Black to deal with in his plotline in a few episodes time. We know that the Man In Black is essentially the only one knowingly playing Ford’s game and i’ve been wondering lately where that will lead him and I think, I don’t know really. But I think there’s something coming in the future for both Dolores and Man in Black. The two characters have such a long history together.

The thing that was interesting about Dolores in this episode was how she moved to control Teddy. The guy has been following her around for some time now, but really isn’t doing anything all that interesting. It seems Dolores is basically getting rid of him and he’s not going to develop further. It’s hard to say where this will go as the episode ended with Dolores moving against Teddy. But after seeing Maeve take control of others in this episode and making me wonder about the level of ‘free will’ these bots really have. I wonder what Teddy can actually do? But we’ll have to wait until next week for that.

Overall I really enjoyed this week’s episode. It wasn’t as filled with rich show lore like last week was. But the action packed Shogun world definitely didn’t disappoint. I also really loved the work they put into the sets for Shogun world and I’m hoping we continue to see more of it as more episodes air each week. The developments for Maeve were all very interesting and Thandie Newton is really becoming my favourite one to watch this season, she’s doing some great work. The situation that Teddy is now in looks pretty bad, I’m curious to see what will happen next week.