‘Westworld’ Season 2, Episode 8: The Wrong World

Boring and pretentious. I will watch the entire season, but if the last two episodes don't salvage it, I'm done. No season three for me.

How did Ake know how to use an escalator? Discuss.

Zahn McClarnon was terrific in this episode. I became emotional just watching his movements when there was no dialogue-truly good acting

I love mythology and always have, so this episode really resonated with me. The first half of the episode is archetypal, the story of Orpheus who goes loses his love then travels down to the underworld to find her again. But then the myth is adapted and stretched into the narrative of Westworld. Beautifully done.

Amazing episode! By far my favorite of the season. It was full of powerful emotion and Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box was the perfect choice for Ake. Well done.

Count me in as one of the people who really liked this episode. And when Heart-Shaped Box started playing I was really moved, thought it was a great song for the episode. Still a lot of problems with the season so far, and inconsistencies and questions about the park and stuff, but was nice to have a WW episode where you can lose yourself in a moving narrative with characters you care a bout, and not have to be solving a puzzle the whole time. I think at the end of the season, I will be reasonably happy with the product but we will see!

Did anyone else think that Maeve was the author of that whole conversation between Ake and her daughter--I thought that was the point of Charlotte's realization that Maeve is "controlling" the hosts. Maeve extracted from him the promise to protect her daughter, and I was left wondering if she is now interfering too much with the hosts in pursuit of her own emotional arc, that she is becoming like a guest in her instrumental use of various people.

I love this show in all of its complexities. This episode was beautifully presented. I’m as confused as everyone else, but deciphering where the show is headed is part of the fun. Contrast Westworld, with Billions, where the show keeps looping back on itself in an aimless effort to extend the plot to get to the magic 7 season run. As for the Nirvana song. I thought it was presented for its tone and emotion. Whether the lyrics match or not wasnt relevant to me. The mournful piano solo was a perfect accompaniment to the moment.

I thought this was a very beautiful and powerful story that is perhaps the strongest episode of the entire series. Love is a powerful motivator, whether in response to biochemistry or errant code. And as the scene with Sizemore and Maeve demonstrates, the hosts are not the only ones becoming woke.

Like others here, I liked this episode the best of this season so far. I think "Heart-Shaped Box" was hugely relevant to Ake's story too. "I've been locked inside your heart-shaped box for weeks; I've been drawn into your magnet/tar pit/ trap trap; I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black". Ake's core self is all about loving Koha, he's trapped by his own love, as well as being locked into this fake world. He'd do anything to free Koha but he can't. And then there's the line, "forever in debt to your priceless advice", could easily refer to the advice Ake got from Ford, that is directing his actions now. At any rate, this episode held together a lot better than most, and really drove home just how evil it is to imbue creations with intelligence, put them into this kind of meat-grinder, and then (even inadvertently) let them remember everything that kept getting taken from them.

This episode was breathtakingly beautiful! The story, the acting, the use of the Lakota language for the majority of the episode were superbly woven together. I am now rooting for Ake and Maeve to find their happy places!

This was a beautiful episode, perhaps one of the best. I have to admit I'm not sure why Akecheta gave William to his daughter. All she said was the she wanted to hurt him too. There muts be a reason he agreed to let him go. Interesting that Akecheta believes Wyatt will end them all.

I really liked the zen-like narrative of Ake in this episode. It was quieter and more reflective than is the norm for WW. As Scott pointed out it gives us a different perspective on this world then we are used to seeing. Perhaps what other commenters are stating as a confusing, drawn out narrative this season could be interpreted as what happens when we (humans or hosts) are displaced from our normal surroundings. All of these quests are the result of the host uprising and the usual settings have become dangerous. It will be interesting to see how this season ends.

It's interesting that there are so many hardcore and thoughtful fans of this show still left. I watch largely because Sunday night television is so dismal. But I'm beginning to think the main objective of the writers is to simply string out the narrative in such an opaque manner that another season is always needed to understand what is going on.

Really enjoyed the first season. This season the writers are struggling and the scene pacing is all over the place. Too many scenes are padded to fill the 42 minute time frame. Its a shame. The season finale will make "sense" of a sort of course but for me at least it was not worth the ride. I suspect I am not alone.

Scott, the meaning related to Heart-Shaped Box is very obvious. He was looking for the love who owned his heart and instead found a box.

I didn't even recognize "Heart Shaped Box" in this episode. I know the lyrics and I don't get the connection at all to this episode.

Are we sure the death-bringer is Dolores and not the Man in Black, who identified himself as death a few episodes back? So the hole in the ground with what looked like possibly a literal door is the place where everyone is headed? The Golden Valley or whatever it's called? This is what Dolores is going to use to destroy...uh, the guests? Delos? Humans? And since Maeve answers with the phrase that Ake and his beloved exchanged, is it possible Maeve was Ake's wife in an earlier build? Or was she just empathizing? Does anyone think WW had a five-year plan when they started (as is often the case with dramatic series), or are they just making it up as they go? One thing I continue to love is the philosophical aspect of the story. e.g., this week when Ake told the Man in Black that death is an exit from this brutal world, and he doesn't deserve that exit (or words to that effect). I'm looking forward to the finale.

I keep reading the recaps of last night's episode because I can't understand that I saw the same episode that is generating all this fawning. WW has become convoluted for the sake of being just that, or clever, or opaque, etc. There is no purpose to the twisted time-line other than to draw-out the number of episodes. This episode in particular was beautiful to watch, but boring, self-serving, and stereotypical in its portayal of the stoic and noble Native-American. I envisioned a writer's room smug with self-congratulations for writng an entire episode in Lakota, when they should have been worried about all of us eagle-eyes wondering how the maze got etched into the inside of all the scalps; just how many times Deloros has killed Bernard and why no one figured out that Bernard was a host before sometime during the uprising; how could Ake have run into Logan at least 30 years ago, but only have not been updated for 9 years; how did he just happen upon the cold storage room that Kohane was in? And on and on. I'll finish up the season because I'm a glutton for punishment, but I can't say that I'm on board for the next go around.

"It takes a lot of squinting to see how “Heart-Shaped Box” is relevant to what Ake is experiencing." Huh?: "Take my heart when you go" bookends the episode's arc, and the song's title is a perfect metaphor for this sentiment.

Westworld has gotten so confusing that it's lost a significant part of its audience....I stopped watching several episodes ago when I couldn't figure out what was going on even AFTER reading the NYT summary.

I agree with the general assessment of this episode’s quality. However, didn’t Arnold (the creator) plan the massacre of all the hosts? How did the Native American hosts avoid the initial Dolores/Wyatt (the death-bringer) scourge? Are these Ford’s (the man who put us to sleep) creations? Ford has been watching the Ghost Nation develop independently of the loops. He says “I built you to be curious, to look at this empty world, and dream meaning into it. All this time, you’ve been a flower growing in the darkness.” What waking dream has Ake revealed? To his people? To Ford? To us? Is it important that these hosts are Native Americans? It should be—and not simply because they fill some stereotypical role. Recognizing their part in the story, we realize that there is a story we have missed, as Arnold did, while being so focused on our own.

Hey! Wait! I got a new complaint. You don't see the connection between an episode subtitled "Take my heart with you when you go" and "Heart-shaped Box"? The song was also used in the trailer for Season 2, and seems to have greater significance than you give it credit for. Which characters have a heart, and which ones have only a heart-shaped box where their heart should be? Which characters are human-shaped boxes, and which ones have souls? "I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black." What is the cancer, and who/what is the carrier? "Forever in debt to your priceless advice." Who gives Akecheta priceless advice near the end of the episode? And to whom does he give priceless advice? This beautiful retelling of the Orpheus myth will go down as one of my favorites.

This episode is incredibly compelling, the best one yet. The way he talks about the door... And I love the way it affirms that what's important in life is the lives we touch and our interconnectedness. I'm old enough to have lost more than a few people and this episode captures the longing for those now gone. Great work folks, can't wait for the last few episodes of the season.

"Heart Shaped Box" fits in perfectly as Ake is looking for his true love which you know hearts tend to represent. I thought the episode a bit draggy but interesting nonetheless.

I thought this was a beautiful episode. "Heart-shaped box" fit perfectly - I thought that was obvious. Also, I disagree a bit with your characterization of Ake and Maeve's parallel journeys. While Maeve is motivated by the desire to save her daughter, Ake seems to have given up on rescuing Koha; as his monologue indicates, he realized his love and pain were "selfish" and that so many others had the same experience. His mission becomes not saving Koha for himself but awakening the others. In that sense, he is driven by a higher cause, moreso than Maeve and possibly the same cause as Dolores, but he seems to be taking a different path. Dolores' story remains compelling; Ford is no longer pulling her strings, but he has arranged it so that her "Wyatt" personality is dominant. She believes, as he does, that only by being ruthless and violent will the hosts gain their freedom; she is willing to sacrifice her own people to achieve this goal. She certainly reflects Ford's worldview and the lessons he was trying to teach her/that she learned through her own experiences. But others have learned different lessons. Maeve just wants her daughter. Ake is trying to bring self-awareness to as many as he can, with the hope they can exit through the door. Ford knows of all of these different strategies, some of which he did not plan, and he has let them all continue. It suggests his willingness to give others a chance, even as he pursues his own goals.

The most compelling part of this episode was its examination of the nature of existence and consciousness. When does a robot cross the threshold to humanness? This has been a philosophical question in science fiction for years. What is the nature and purpose of our existence? This has been a philosophical question in human life for years. Ake's story weaves together these two questions. And as he "awakens" and begins to ponder his life and his world, two sides stories also address these big questions. First, Logan: he is "lost" in all senses of the world, and "naked" as well. He and Ake have reached the same moment in their lives: despair at the truth of their existence, and desperation for a way out. Second: Sizemore. He sees Maeve flayed on the table, clearly a host and not a human, and yet he crosses over some threshold to feel the empathy and compassion that he would feel for a human. The special effects razzle-dazzle and "Lost"-like puzzles may be fun. But these questions are really at the heart of Westworld's power. Without them, would we care at all what happens to a bunch of robots? ("Heart" reference intended)

I think most viewers were curious about the Ghost Nation and hoping that the show runners would take us into their world, and my gosh, they did not disappoint. What a beautifully written and acted episode this was. I think I preferred it to the Samurai backstory episodes. It just seemed to me to fit more neatly into the overall narrative, whereas the Samurai ones seemed more of an unnecessary departure that didn't really tell us anything new about the main cast of characters. Anyway, I'm very curious to see what's in store in the final two episodes.

Heart Shapes Box was a direct reference to what Ake and Kohassid to each other: 'Take my heart with you when you leave.' Fits perfectly.

My feeling, at the end, was that it was the best episode so far. Of course, that's not true, but it was a phenomenal one, a thoughtful dialogue mostly devoid of gore.

Great episode. I was not a fan of back story episodes, like all the backstory episodes on Lost, but this one was excellent. Loved seeing Native American's portrayed as being good people who are just living their lives, just like everyone else. The scene with Ake and Ford was excellent. A chronologically unambiguous episode also made it much easier to follow. I think you are overthinking the song choice. He is looking for his true love and they play Heart-Shaped Box. That seems quite clear. Plus the composition was excellent. I loved it. Also moved Mauve, William and Grace's story along a little bit. I am disappointed that there are only 2 episodes left in the season.

A vital aspect missing from this review was the gutsy move of the writers and director to do an episode almost exclusively in the Lakota language. It was an absolutely vital aspect of a beautiful story.

Re: “Heart-Shaped Box”: perhaps it was not meant to evoke the name of the song, but rather the name of the band, Nirvana.

One of the more powerful episodes, all the more so because of the universal truth to which it spoke - yearning to be with those we love. No, I have no idea how all this fits with AI beings with imprinted “memories,” but I think the point was to show the potential “humanity” of the hosts, which even Sizemore, the author of many of those backstories and narratives, appears to have finally recognized. So perhaps these are the show’s heroes, the “woken” hosts yearning for a new life in a new world. And perhaps Dolores is not meant to be among them, if she is the literal manifestation of the “Deathbringer” mentioned by both Ford and Ake, and the one meant to insure that the humans will not destroy them. It certainly gives meaning to her mission and perhaps explains why she has no compunction about killing hosts who have “woken” from their loops. Of course, I am no closer to understanding whether the “Door” is a physical gateway, a computer worldwide network access point, or something else altogether. What I do know, given all the pain the Man In Black has caused in all the worlds in his personal search for meaning, is that Emily was dead serious when she promised Ake that she would make her father suffer far more than anything Ake could dream up.

And ....we inch closer to the Man in Black getting the Jim Delos special...or perhaps his daughter just making him think he’s got a 130 day shelf life.