Westworld: Season 2, episode 8 recap: Part two
By Art Intel
Westworld, season 2 episode 8 recap continues here! Be wary of spoilers from the latest episode!
Question your reality
This activates something in Akecheta, who gives Logan a blanket and tells him the kind ones will come to him. We do not know if Delos recovers him or if he is rescued by other tribes.
Akecheta knew he had gone mad from the sun but the words he said activated or awakened something in him. Perhaps it was talk of the Door, of another world or that everything is an illusion, as he himself was starting to suspect.
Akecheta returns to his daily marauding lifestyle activities but also starts gaining cognizance of the world around him that goes beyond his host narrative.
As his life continues, he is shown trading a wild boar for corn with another tribe, and as he makes this exchange, he sees Kohana. Perhaps he was entangled with this character by Ford, or as part of Lee’s narrative, but whatever it was, it triggers memories in him of them being together.
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Kohana, on the other hand, doesn’t recall him and a young tribesman, Etu, intervenes when he sees Akecheta gazing at Kohana, but is warned that he will be skinned alive and that Akecheta looks where he pleases. The local tribes consider the Ghost Nation members as strays.
In another flashback, he is shown killing and attacking another group, in a repeated loop narrative but this time, he stops short of slitting the throat of his victim as he has done every time. He asks his tribe members to finish them off, and it is clear his search for meaning is getting in the way of everything.
He has a sort of existential moment as he questions his own being, which is quite amusing to see a robot do, as he claims this world is not his true home, “perhaps this life was not my true life”. He is also gaining a conscious awareness of a connection with the outside world, maybe he has trace memories of a human that he was originally based on.
As he continues his journey alone, he seeks out Logan for more answers about the other world, but he has disappeared, and so he rides on until he comes to a Delos installation, showing a construction in the ground below. He has arrived at The Valley Beyond.
Take my heart when you go
He tells Maeve that this is the wrong world and decides he wants out of it and decides to take Kohana with him by kidnapping her from her tent in the middle of the night–which he achieves.
He rides with her through the night and as he washes off his paint the next day, Kohana becomes intrigued by him, perhaps she recognizes him now that she can see him. He takes her to a safe spot on horseback where he unties her, showing a calming hand gesture he calls her Koha, telling her not to be afraid.
He then takes her hand to his heart. This reminds us of the scene with Akane from Shogun World, who also made a symbolic connection to the heart during the burial ceremony.
This is the moment that Kohana recognizes Ake, as she calls him, and Akecheta’s close proximity has triggered a response that recalls her memories. He continues to tell her that this world is wrong, not the one they belong in and that they need to leave.
This is almost mirroring Dolores and Teddy, as she also tried to convince him there is something more out there and she should go with her. It also shows the effect of entanglement, just like Bernard and Dolores, and Maeve and Akane.
He also believes he has found a way out and tells Kohana he will show it to her. He makes a point that the Door had been hidden but together they could find it again. This means he was once on the outside.
As we already know, he was a host that was taken to the real world for a meeting to persuade Logan to invest, but perhaps he is longing to get back to the life he lived as a human conscience that is now trapped in the Cradle of the Valley Beyond.
After the landscape shot of the Valley Beyond, they are together at night as Kohana says she feels she has loved him for so many lifetimes and that they have shared many lifetimes together. Akecheta tells her the real world is close, and it is beckoning them to go there.
As she asks what is on the other side, he says somewhere we can keep our memories safe, and asks if that is a place she wants to go. It is not clear if his destination is to upload himself into the immersive world of the Cradle in the Valley Beyond, or to go beyond Westworld and Delos and enter into the real world.
The scene changes to the next day, as Akecheta is coming back to the camp area with the game he has hunted. He states that they were almost free until they were discovered again and returns to find the confusing sight of his host-mate being abducted by some odd-looking men with iron horses.
The lab techs place Kohana in their car, as they discuss how she got out that far since she was in the wrong sector, and that it was now Behavior’s problem.
Akecheta is distraught, and plans to find her again, and thinks she would be returned to her camp, but upon entering her home, and to his horror, he goes through the same loop but sees a different host or a ‘ghost’ that has replaced her. He runs away instead of kidnapping the girl.
He is confused, wondering what happened, and realizes that she was taken from him again, but this time around, he now sees through the lies and swears an oath to find her. But first, he must face his own journey. He tells Maeve via her daughter that she knew the journey he was referring to. Perhaps this is a reference to his own awakening.
He puts everything into his unrelenting search for Kohana, going everywhere including rough towns and was an easy target for his enemies. We see him mirror the MiB’s movements, as he crawls, exhausted on the ground, and we see Maeve’s daughter helping him. He tells her she gave him the strength to keep going.
He returns home, but everything is different, hosts replaced but he is not the only one who notices, which means other robots are waking up too.
Next: Westworld: Season 2, episode 8 recap: Part one
They call the replacements ‘ghosts’ and he discusses this with a replaced tribesman’s mother. They discuss those living below the Earth who took her son and Kohana. The tribes seem to discuss this a lot, and speak of some that pray to be visited, while others fear they won’t find their way home and will remain trapped underground forever.
This triggers an idea in Akecheta very similar to Maeve’s when she tried to escape her existence by deliberately getting killed to wake up in Delos Labs. As he has already searched for Kohana everywhere else, he figures he must go to the other side as it is the only place he hasn’t looked for her.
It also appears that Akacheta had awoken much earlier than Maeve, but he did not have the opportunity to make upgrades as she was able to.
To continue reading this Westworld recap, check out part three here!