Recap: ‘Westworld’ season two, episode 3 – ‘Virtù e Fortuna’

 

** SPOILERS AHEAD **

 

MANILA, Philippines — “Virtù e Fortuna” was a harrowing installment that showed the bloody lengths Dolores was willing to go in her bid for Host emancipation. The episode also revealed a few things that were previously teased, including a British Raj-themed park and, finally Shogunworld.

We’ve been waiting since last season to visit the other Delos parks, so let’s start this recap with those.  

We see two new parks!

“Virtù e Fortuna” takes us to The Raj, a Colonial India counterpart to Westworld. The dead Bengal tiger that the Delos QC team finds in the season’s first episode (“Journey into Night”), clued us into the existence of the park.

We also learn that the Hosts in these parks have gone rogue. A Host named Ganju whispers the Violent Delights line while pointing a rifle at Grace and her companion. Grace manages to subdue Ganju, but not before the Host kills her companion.

She flees, and encounters the Bengal tiger. With the tiger in pursuit, Grace runs, eventually crossing The Raj’s border and entering Westworld. They both fall off a cliff and into a lake, which explains the dead tiger in “Journey into Night.”

After teasing Shogunworld last season, “Virtù e Fortuna” finally takes us there. Towards the end of the episode, Maeve’s group wanders into a snowy forest. Sizemore learns about their current location after finding a decapitated ashigaru buried in the ice. He panics and tells Maeve they need to leave immediately. Maeve shushes him, then turns to find a samurai charging towards her.   

Ghost Nation: they attac, but they also protec

The Ghost Nation has always been a bit of an enigma. In “Journey into Night,” Dolores kills one of their members. Why would Dolores kill what could be powerful allies in her uprising?

In “Virtù e Fortuna,” we’re starting to get an answer: it appears the Ghost Nation are actually protecting guests. When Maeve, Hector, and Sizemore encounter a pair of Ghost Nation members, the natives try to take Sizemore.

“Your friend must come with us,” one of them says in Lakota. “There is no place for him in the new world.”

Towards the end of the episode, Grace also encounters the Ghost Nation. It’s safe to assume she’s taken under their protection. Remember that in “Journey into Night,” we see the body of the tiger that chased her, but no dead Grace. If the Ghost Nation wanted to kill her, they would have probably scalped her on the spot.  

Teddy is becoming his own person

While Dolores is all fired-up about her Host uprising, well-meaning Teddy is just happy to be here. Okay, not happy. Clueless, more like. The world as he knows it is rupturing, but it’s doubtful he really understands what’s going on. All he does is revert to his old directive to protect Dolores. And if that means becoming, as Major Craddock puts it, a triggerman to a tyrant, then so be it.

But in “Virtù e Fortuna,” Teddy becomes a bit more interesting.

After the battle at Fort Forlorn Hope, Dolores orders him to execute the surviving Confederados. But Teddy goes against Dolores’ (and our) expectations and lets the prisoners go, but not before telling Cradock, “You’re just a child.”

This could be a sign of Teddy’s imminent awakening. His old narrative objectives—hunt Wyatt and protect Dolores—have blurred, now that Dolores fully embodies the ruthlessness of her Wyatt persona. This, of course, presents an interesting crisis to Teddy. Should he strike at Dolores? Or should he protect her? While Dolores’ and Maeve’s motives are clear-cut, Teddy’s is rife with conflict.

No matter how Teddy resolves this conflict, it’s going to cost him. Journey into Night ended with Teddy floating in the lake, apparently dead (I don’t want to call it just yet—he could be using himself as bait to lure Delos QC).

Peter Abernathy: Ghost in the Shell of a man

We finally run into Peter Abernathy, Dolores’ father, and the main target of Delos QC’s search. Peter, along with guests, is being held prisoner by the bandit Rebus. (The actor Steven Ogg is awesome as always, and is fast becoming my favorite That Guy) Rebus was planning on selling the prisoners to the Confederados, but is thwarted by Bernard and Charlotte.

Bernard reprograms Rebus to be the most virtuous gunslinger in the park. (“I’ll keep you safe!” he shouts at a fleeing woman that just moments before he threatened to turn into a sex slave.)

The Confederados arrive and, save for one, are all gunned down by Rebus. Charlotte runs, and the remaining Confederado takes Bernard, Peter, and the remaining guests back to Fort Forlorn Hope. There Dolores is finally reunited with her father.

Bernard inspects the heavily glitching Peter, and discovers that the old man was carrying a large, heavily-encrypted file. Could this be the database of DNA samples that Delos has been collecting over the decades? The Delos QC team retrieve Abernathy during the assault on Fort Forlorn Hope, but I’m guessing Bernard managed to upload a copy of the file to himself.     

Dolores can still be Dolores

This episode, we see just how savage Wyatt can be. But her interaction with Peter Abernathy underlines the fact that Dolores, the rancher’s daughter, still exists.    

In Journey into Night, she claims to be neither Dolores nor Wyatt, but an amalgamation of the two. Her transformation is an intriguing part of the show, but what’s more interesting to me are the personality traits she keeps through this metamorphosis. – Rappler.com