Westworld gave us one of its most poignant episodes yet–and a phenomenal performance by Zahn McClarnon. Please be wary of spoilers ahead for ‘Kiksuya‘.
What goes around comes around
The scene opens with the MiB crawling in pain towards the river. He does not look in decent shape at all, as he convinces himself not to die in the park and to make it out alive. Most viewers are no doubt happy to see him finally get a taste of his own medicine, but you can’t help pity the man as he lies collapsed from exhaustion without any hope of rescue!
He is then approached by Akecheta on horseback. The camera shows a wide-shot that captures the beauty and natural environment as we see the landscape and the MiB who explains he doesn’t speak whatever language Ford programmed him to have.
Akecheta checks to see he is alive, and then as he speaks to the MiB in English, saying he remembers him. MiB looks worried.
He is taken to what seems like a Ghost Nation holding camp for captured humans, but the MIB is separated from the rest and he speaks to Akecheta by asking why he didn’t leave him to die. Akecheta says, “Death is a passage from this brutal world. You don’t deserve the exit”. The Ghost Nation want the MiB to suffer in this world so they patch him up.
Maeve is grave
Akecheta suddenly turns to Maeve’s daughter who is sitting on a log in the same camp, as he makes eye-contact, we see a flashback of Maeve and her daughter playing with some dolls.
As they are playing, Maeve notices a stone with an image of a maze painted in blood. She asks her daughter what it is, and she says it was given by Ghost Nation and it is a warning. She also tells her mother that they are being watched.
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The scene cuts to Maeve, who is on a stretcher being wheeled to the repair tech with Lee by her side, trying to reassure her that everything will be okay. He has now become very useful, as opposed to just being Maeve’s tour guide.
He has trouble convincing the tech to save her but then manages to persuade him that her data is distinctly different after mentioning that she can control hosts with her mind, prompting the tech to review Maeve’s profile.
This is a lucky break for Maeve as she will not be destroyed like all the other hosts, although it is of little comfort as she has lost her gang and seems to be in the same predicament as Peter Abernathy before his lobotomy. We also get to see a more caring side of Lee, whose only concern in life has been himself.
As the tech reviews the screen, Lee tells him: “You can’t let her die” and to his relief, as well as the viewers’, the tech realizes her value and clears the room as he orders a lock-down.
Kindred spirits
The scene shifts back to the Ghost Nation camp as Akecheta talks with Maeve’s daughter, although we learn later that he is addressing Maeve through her child host unit. It was predicted that Maeve would have to rescue her daughter which would force her into a dialogue with Akecheta, but it was not necessary, as Maeve is now able to communicate with remote hosts by proxy through her daughter.
Akecheta notes the fear in both Maeve and her daughter upon seeing the MiB at the camp, but he reassures her that she has nothing to be afraid of as he can’t hurt her daughter. He then asks her if she can remember all the things she has seen, the lives she has lived, as he can.
We are then shown Akecheta’s previous build, and see him living a peaceful life, with family and close bonds. He says he had a different path then, a peaceful home and a love he would die to protect, who was Kohana.
This does not sound like the Ghost Nation we all know and fear, so this was an interesting back story and shows that Akecheta had the same early host qualities that were being changed by Delos Incorporated as Ford told Bernard in the previous episode.
Akecheta says he found something that would change his life, and this is where we see him looking out towards the church where Dolores was killed by the MiB. We see a white horse crossing the scene, perhaps to show he is about to embark on a new journey.
As he heads into town, he sees carnage, bodies strewn everywhere, including Bernard who is lying near Dolores. He walks into the bar to find a bottle of bourbon that the MiB was drinking and a game of the maze. This sparks his curiosity in the maze and activates him.
Notice the fly that is on his hand, a little device used to tell us that Akecheta is no longer a host but is now becoming sentient, just as we saw in Episode 6 when flies were buzzing around the Teddy 2.0 at the Sweetwater train platform.
Life is but a dream–Akecheta 2.0
The scene changes and we see Kohana studying a scalp with the markings of the maze on it. As a tribe member approaches and takes the scalp away, he accuses her partner Akecheta of losing his mind, drawing symbols instead of leading the tribe, as we see him in the background carving an image of the maze into a stone. Akecheta also tells of a voice he heard, and that his way of life was abruptly destroyed before he understood it’s meaning.
The scene takes us to Akecheta in a lab in sleep-mode, where the techs have detected some form of anomaly that has happened three times, perhaps it was an alteration in code, but the Behavioral tech is not interested. She states that Ford wants to change his entire narrative and make him more aggressive and less docile, more of a ‘strong silent type’ who guests won’t feel bad about attacking.
This comment does not sit well, as Ford was always interested in preserving the older models and their more human qualities and blamed Delos for having made the changes to more aggressive hosts.
Akecheta speaks of being reborn once they had changed his settings, as he mentions how he “came out breaking fire” when we see his tribe attacking some hosts. He says after that point, the altered hosts had no master and no fear, they ravaged enemies and ruled the land as they saw fit, always looking for new conquests.
At one point we see him guiding his warriors north to a spring along the ridge, as he goes off in another direction.
Next: Westworld: 5 major takeaways from ‘Kiksuya’
He now has the hands of his murders painted on his face, as he walks to a ledge and surveys the distance with another wide angled landscape shot, looking out over sand dunes, which he then traverses as he heads to an unknown destination.
He mentions that he felt the presence of the ‘newcomers’ and those lives he was forbidden from taking. At this point along his journey, he stumbles upon a significant person who triggers his curiosity further.
He sees Logan, who is naked, sunburnt and delirious, lying against a post babbling incoherently. He sees Akecheta, and says “We must get out”. He tells him that this is an illusion and that it is all broken. He continues by saying “There’s gotta be a way outta here, where’s the door?” and “This is the wrong world”.
To continue reading this Westworld recap, check out part two here!