HBO
The latest episode of Westworld is called ‘Virtu e Fortuna’, which is a clear reference to Machiavelli — ‘Virtu’ being overall how effective a ruler is, balancing compassion and ruthlessness or whatever, and ‘Fortuna’ being luck basically. These are the two traits to success, because without some luck, you can’t win anyway.
Winning is never a sure thing in Westworld, as we once again follow three primary timelines, one broken into two. The easy one to follow is the adventure of Maeve, pulling along the childishly entertaining Sizemore, who’s revealed to be pushing his idealized self onto Hector, the cool ‘anti-hero’ in a parallel that’s repeated throughout the episode, pushing the ‘other’ self.
The gang runs into the stereotypical Lakota ‘Ghost’ warriors, who are barely a line under the potential for offense. Their particular adventure really delves into more straightforward stories at times, sneaking in a few themes as it goes. I also sincerely was pleased to see old Sylvester Lutz and Felix, the Odd Couple Techs again, buffoons in entirely different ways. This helped lead up to the ‘shocking’ (not really) reveal that there’s apparently a sort of Shogun or Samurai styled world bleeding over into Westworld.
HBO
This was paralleled by the mysterious ‘Indian styled’ world where people hunt robotic Bengal tigers with stereotypical Indian servants. So it’s a lot of clichés combined together, but we are introduced a new mysterious woman quite familiar with the park and with a mysterious secret of her own. The simultaneous shooting the tiger as it leapt at her was impeccably done, and certainly helped set the tension for the rest of the episode.
On the other timelines, there’s more from Charlotte Hale and the QA mercs tracking down Abernathy with the encoded secrets in his head and Bernard slipping in and out of time. It was delightful to see him turn Rebus from a monster into a pre-first wave feminist champion, really touching into those parallel projection themes, and connecting to how Bernard is himself conflicted with his dealings with the others.
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This came up again with the fascinating push and pull with Dolores, who has shifted from her righteous rebellion and become a new sort of character, a terminator styled monster with touches of humanity. Teddy has so far served as the bulwark of her descent into insanity and destruction, but for how long?
Overall, the episode moved things along briskly, not really raising a lot of weird questions, but continuing the narrative in a fun way. That’s fine with me, I don’t need every episode to be filled with mystery boxes. Great to see Armistice with her robot hand back again with her Game of Thrones dragon, and how can I be mad about killing a bunch of Confederados?
I don’t believe I can.
What did you think of this episode? Tell us in the comments below!
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