Westworld Episode 2 Recap

Logan is taking his friend, William, on his first visit to Westworld. William is quiet, introverted, while Logan is brash and loves to partake in the wilder side of the park. They ride a sleek, high-end bullet train into what looks like a sterile subway station. Logan informs William that there is no orientation; no guidebook. “Figuring out how it works is half the fun.” The men are greeted by their own hosts, and whisked away into a private suites. William is presented with a dozen different Western-themed outfits, all bespoke and designed for him. There are accessories, and a case of guns. The guns are “real enough,” with the host promising you can’t kill anyone you’re not supposed to. William turns down a sexual invitation from his host, gets dressed, chooses his cowboy hat (white), then waits for Logan in a Western-themed parlor. Logan comes in, zipping up his fly and the parlor rumbles. They are on the train, and they are rolling out. Logan warns William that this place seduces everybody, “this is where you find out who you really are.” They get off the train and venture into the center of town. It is a little hamfisted, but William wears a white cowboy hat and Logan wears a black hat. I wonder which side each will be on.

Logan mocks William for apologizing when bumping into a host. He warns William against helping an old “man” (another host) who has fallen out of his wagon. “They are just trying to sell you on another adventure.” Sure enough, when William and Logan are having dinner, the old man approaches William, and offers him the opportunity of a lifetime to go on a treasure hunt with him. Logan stabs the old man in the hand and he leaves. William is shocked, but I’m not sure if it is the sudden act of violence or the fact that these androids bleed that shocks him. After dinner, Logan has sex with a few people while William waits uncomfortably in the next room. Clementine propositions him, but William has “someone real” waiting for him at home. She understands and kisses him delicately. I want to see more of William’s experiences as a Westworld virgin, but we have other stories to get to.

The Man in Black interrupts a hanging in order to have a word with his “friend,” Lawrence. He shoots the lawmen dead, then cuts Lawrence down from the gallows. Kissy sent him, and he tosses Lawrence his scalp. On the underside is a maze, the deepest level of this game. He rides off, dragging Lawrence behind on his rope. They head to some south of the border cantina, Lawrence’s home. A little girl runs to Lawrence, calling him Papa. While Lawrence has an uneasy reunion with his wife and child, the Man in Black waxes poetic about how all the details in Westworld “add up.” He wants Lawrence to tell him about the maze, but Lawrence doesn’t know anything about it. The Man in Black gives the girl two bullets, then shoots the bartender. In the lab, engineers are watching. One asks if he should slow him down. Nah, he gets whatever he wants.

Lawrence’s cousins surround the Man in Black, but he laughs. This is why he comes here. He pulls out a knife and slaughters a few of the men, then shoots the others. All of them, dead. Then he takes the two bullets from the girl and tells Lawrence he decides how he uses them. The Man in Black dances with Lawrence’s crying wife – then shoots her. Lawrence gives in. “The maze isn’t meant for you,” he insists, but tells him to follow the Blood Arroyo to the place where the snake lays its eggs. The Man in Black gives the last bullet back to the little girl and rides off, Lawrence still his prisoner.

In the lab, there seems to be some disagreements over the hosts. Elsie wants to pull Dolores, worrying that if Abernathy’s episode was not dissident, it could be contagious. Bernard, voicing his concerns to Ford, is concerned because a photo alone could not have caused that level of corruption. He thinks it may be sabotage. Bernard insists Dolores was cleared. No one has updated or altered her, and Bernard is careful to tell her not to mention what they talk about, and tells her to erase the interactions. Dolores is back in the park, all smiles… but then something is not right. She remembers the bloodshed in the street. Maeve shakes her from her reverie, and Dolores mumbles: “These violent delights have violent ends.” Then she is all smiles and walks off.

Maeve is having her own issues as well. She chats up men in the saloon about her dreams and nightmares, but it turns her off. In the lab, the techs are close to decommissioning her – no one wants to have sex with her. They decide to give her another chance, and up her aggression 20%. Back in the park, Maeve gives the same speech, this time to a woman, but her aggressive behavior scares the woman away. Clementine admits to Maeve she has been having nightmares, and Maeve is struck by a memory. Her hand shakes.

The lab techs decide to decommission her in the morning, but will leave her on the floor in case anyone wants one last roll. Elsie notices a pained expression on Maeve’s face and requests a full physical for her. This, of course, yields all sorts of questions for me: why can these robots feel pain? How cruel is it to program them to feel pain? They are programmed to understand the concepts of dreams and nightmares in case their nightly wiping doesn’t work fully, so they can blame horrible remnants of the day before on a bad dream. The physicality of the hosts confuses me, but I assume it will be explored later on.

Maeve goes to sleep, and dreams of playing with her daughter. But then a native grabs her, is about to be scalped, when a man shoots the native. The cowboy is shot off his horse, and the natives slaughter him. Maeve scoops up her daughter and hides with her. She grabs her gun, and the native enters the house – only it’s not the native, but the Man in Black. She shoots him, but it has no effect. She shuts her eyes, accepting her death is inevitable, when suddenly she wakes – and is in the lab, undergoing a physical. The doctors/engineers found a MRSA infection in her abdomen, and when Maeve wakes, she discovers her abdomen cut open. The techs freak and try to talk her down, but she grabs a scalpel and escapes. Maeve runs, naked and in pain, and ends up in another building. It looks like a host chop shop, dozens of naked hosts piled up in a room, being hosed down. The med techs catch up with her, tranquilize her, and drag her out before anyone sees.

Ford takes an elevator into the middle of the wilderness of the park. A young boy says that he is there on holiday with his family, and Ford invites him for a walk. It seems pretty clear that the boy is a host, and quite possibly made to look like Ford as a child. As the two walk, Ford is looking for a town with a white church. They listen and can hear a bell. “See what a bored mind can conjure?” There is a snake on the ground, and with a wave of his hand, Ford makes the snake freeze, follow his gesture, then sends it away. He sends the boy away, too. Later in the episode, he returns to this spot with Bernard. He has a new story, something he has been working on for quite some time.

Sizemore creates a new, vicious storyline that will provide “horror, romance, and titillation,” one he calls “Odyssey on Red River.” He isn’t worried about Ford’s thoughts on the insane storyline; Ford hasn’t weighed in on storylines for years. But this one he does, and right off the bat, Ford says no. It’s a parlor trick. “They don’t return for the obvious, garish things we do. They come back for the subtleties. They know who they are; they want a glimpse of who they could be.”

Also: In the middle of the night, Dolores digs in her front yard and finds a gun buried. William steps into the Teddy role to give Dolores her can. Bernard and Theresa have a sexual relationship, but one that begins and ends at his apartment door.