“Virtù e Fortuna” expands the world of Westworld with new parks, new characters, reunions galore, the return of a familiar face, and an intense and exciting battle.
“Virtù e Fortuna” opens in Park 6, a park set not in the old west, but in British-occupied India, circa the early 20th century. Welcome to The Raj (that’s the official name of the park, per Entertainment Weekly, although why they couldn’t call it Raj World is beyond me), where we meet new characters Grace (Katja Herbers) and Nicholas (Neil Jackson), guests who are preparing to embark on a safari to hunt a Bengal tiger.
This is Timeline A, which is set around the same time as the beginning of the host uprising over in Westworld. When Grace and Nicholas make camp, Grace realizes the hosts have all gone. A guide host comes up behind them, utters a familiar phrase (“These violent delights have violent ends“) and fires on Nicholas, possibly killing him. Grace kills the guide with a gnarly shot to the face.
Grace escapes through the jungle and finds that she is being hunted by the very same Bengal tiger she was in the park to hunt. Irony. Then we get our first glimpse of a border between parks as Grace runs across a dam that separates Westworld from Raj World (because that’s what I’m calling it). The tiger has no problems crossing it, charges Grace, and the two fall off the dam into the water below.
We then jump back to Westworld and Timeline B, set an unspecified number of weeks after the host uprising. The Delos security staff and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) are heading into the bottom entrance of the Delos Mesa HQ. Once inside, they come upon Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) who is surprised Bernard made it there alive. She also asks Karl Strand (Gustaf Skarsgård) if he found the host Peter Abernathy (Louis Herthum), whom Delos wants to find very badly on account of him having been uploaded with 35 years’ worth of Delos proprietary code…and also probably sensitive information on the rich and powerful guests the company wants to use in a blackmail scheme. She notes that Abernathy keeps slipping away from them. Is she suspicious of Bernard? Maybe she should be.
Listening to the conversation between Charlotte and Karl, Bernard starts to tremble and looks confused.
We then jump back to Timeline A, but in Westworld. Bernard and Charlotte are tracking Peter Abernathy. They find that a group of renegade hosts has taken Peter hostage, along with some Delos board members. The group plans to sell them to the Confederales. Bernard and Charlotte create a diversion and attempt to run off with Peter, but the Confederales stop them and Charlotte flees the scene, abandoning Bernard.
Elsewhere, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), Teddy (James Marsden), and their army arrive at Fort Forlorn Hope. There, they meet the leader of the Confederales. Dolores convinces him to give her his men in order to repel Delos’ security force. Once inside the fort, the Confederales welcome a pack of new prisoners, including Bernard and Peter Abernathy.
Peter is Dolores’ father. Or he was, back when she was Dolores and not Wyatt. All these multiple identities can get confusing, but Peter is clearly still daddy to Dolores.
The two have a tender moment together, but then Peter starts to glitch out. Dolores then meets with Bernard and reveals that she knows more about the outside world than he does; Arnold, the man on whom Bernard is based, may have had a life outside the park, but Bernard has never left it. She then asks him to fix her father.
The next day, a massive battle ensues between Dolores’ “horde” and the Delos security force. Dolores uses the Confederales as bait to lure Delos close to the fort. She previously made a pact with their general that she would have them retreat before the battle turned in Delos’ favor, but she double-crosses them and has her men close the gates on the Confederales and fire through it to kill them. Then, as the Delos soldiers draw near, she commands Angela (Tallulah Riley) to fire a shot into a buried cache of explosives, killing the soldiers and finishing off the Confederales all at once.
Why would Dolores kill fellow hosts? “Truth is, we don’t all deserve to make it,” she says. Okay, then.
However, during the battle, Charlotte and a few men infiltrate the back of the fort and steal Peter Abernathy. Dolores tries to stop them, but they escape. However, we know from the earlier scene in Timeline B that Charlotte will lose Peter in the near future, so there are more twists to come.
Finally, after the battle, Dolores commands Teddy to take the rest of the Confederales, including Major Craddock (Jonathan Tucker) out back and kill them. Teddy does as he’s told, but before he pulls the trigger, he has a moment of indecision and decides to let them all go. Dolores watches this all unfold with a look of disappointment.
Elsewhere, Grace pulls herself out of the body of water into which she and the tiger fell in the beginning of the episode. She looks up to see members of Ghost the Nation there to greet her. Thoughts and prayers for Grace.
Throughout the episode, we see the continuing adventures of Maeve (Thandie Newton), Hector (Rodrigo Santoro), and Lee Sizemore (Alan Quarterman). We’re still in Timeline A here. When we first see the trio, they are about to cross a stream where they encounter members of the Ghost Nation.
Maeve is understandably shaken, as the Ghost Nation is the group that attacked her and her child in a past narrative. Maeve commands them to stop, but for some reason, it doesn’t work. She, Sizemore and Hector escape to an elevator that takes them to a network of underground tunnels. Once they are in the bunker’s access hallway, Hector and Maeve have a sweet moment before Lee ruins it by noting he wrote the very lines Hector is reciting.
The three walk for a long ways — or long for Sizemore to complain about it, anyway — when they hear gunfire and see a Delos security guard running toward them engulfed in flame. Behind him, Armistice (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) is following with a flamethrower. “She has a dragon!” Hector exclaims in what has to be the best line of the season thus far. With Dolores making alliances, fighting an army and betraying her allies, this episode already felt a lot like Game of Thrones, and now they have to bring dragons into it.
If you don’t remember, Armistice was part of Hector’s gang in season 1. We last saw her in the post-credits scene of the season finale as she hacked her hand off and attacked approaching Delos security. As it turns out, Armistice survived the finale and found Felix (Leonardo Nam) and Sylvester (Ptolemy Slocum), the two Delos employees who helped Maeve try and escape Westworld last year (they didn’t always help of their own free will, but still) and had them create her a new robotic hand.
Finally, we see Maeve’s group entering a snowy forest at night. They come across a campfire, but before they find anyone, Lee finds the head of a Samurai host buried in the snow. He tries to warn Maeve that they need to turn around, but before they can, a warrior charges at them, his katana raised. Cut to black. Did we just see Shogun World?
“Virtù e Fortuna” was easily the most enjoyable episode of this season so far. Now that we have confirmation of “The Raj” as being park six, the door is now wide open for other parks to make an appearance. Shogun World or bust, you guys.
Next: Watch the trailer for “Riddle of the Sphinx,” the fourth episode of Westworld season 2
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