Westworld Season Two Review.

The second season of Westworld aired on Monday bringing to an end a season full of twists, action and character moments.
I had been eagerly anticipating Westworld season two since I saw the first one in 2016.
This first season was fantastic and I was hooked right from the first to the last episode so I was very excited to see it return this year.
But could this season recapture the magic of that first one?
Well if you looked at my weekly reviews of the show you will already know that I thought this season was excellent.
This is clear through the fact that I never gave an episode anything lower than four stars, with four of them getting the perfect five stars.
Was this season as good as the first, well that is debatable but it is at least on par with it and, since I loved the first season so much, this is not a problem.
Westworld delivered some truly excellent episodes in its ten episode run this season with my five star rated episodes Riddle of the Sphinx, Akane No Mai, Kiksuya and The Passenger being particular standouts.
Each of these episodes were absolutely fantastic with episode eight Kiksuya being what I believe to be the best episode of Westworld.

Season two delivered the best episode of Westworld so far with Kiksuya.

I loved how this episode focused on the new character of Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon) and how much they made me care about him with just one episode.
Watching his emotional journey to find his wife and then setting out to lead all of the hosts to the Door was one of the most emotional moments of the entire series.
But Akecheta was not the only stand out character of the season.
Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) were both great this season with me constantly switching which one was my favourite character.
The actresses who play these two really deserve awards for their performances.

Dolores and Maeve — Both Evan Rachel Wood and Thandie Newton gave fantastic performances and should at least be in the running for awards.

Even characters I thought of as one note last season really surprised me in this one as I come to like Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) a lot more and Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman) had one of the best arcs of the season, going from an unlikable narcissist to a redeemed hero.
One flaw I do have with the characters though is that a few of them were underwritten, most notably Sylvester (Ptolemy Slocum) who went from disliking hosts in season one to apparently willingly helping them in season two with no character arc.
However, I will not mark this as a point against season two because Sylvester is just a minor character and had literally no impact on the story this season so can be seen as a nit pick.
Along with the amazing characters and story there was also amazing plot twists, like the one seen in the season finale The Passenger, incredible music and cinematography.
Season two of Westworld was amazing.
Even the weaker episodes of the season like Journey into Night and Phase Space were still really good episodes.
I cannot wait for season three but it will probably be a while before we get it and I do not know how on earth they will pick up from the season finale.

Westworld, Season Two Finale: Passenger – What Just Happened!?

Warning: Major spoilers for the finale.

The Westworld season two finale, Passenger, aired two days ago and ever since then I have been in a state of shock.
This 90 minute finale was absolutely incredible with emotional deaths and moments, mind boggling twists and more than a few intense cliffhangers.
The episode started off as a fairly standard episode of Westworld but by the half-way point it had hopped on board a train of absolute insanity and stayed on board all the way through to the post-credit scene.
Even before this half-way point though, the episode had plenty of typical fantastic Westworld moments, like the heroic death of Lee Sizemore.
I was very surprised by Sizemore’s character arc this season.
In season one he seemed like an irredeemable jerk who would only cause trouble, however, this season they actually redeemed him giving him many emotional moments like his breakdown in front of Maeve in Kiksuya.
They even gave him a great way to go out with him holding off Delos security to give Maeve and the others time to escape while he shouted the speech he had written for Hector.
It was a sad and yet oddly triumphant end for Sizemore.

To to rescue — Sizemore, Hector, Armistice and the others attempt to rescue Maeve right before Sizemore’s heroic death.

However, Sizemore was not the only character to die this episode as we got multiple characters deaths with Maeve, Charlotte, Elsie, Hector and Armistice all dying.
One tiny problem I have with this though is, once again, I am not sure if Maeve, Hector and Armistice are actually dead for good, due to them being hosts.
The finale seems to hint that Felix and Sylvester will bring Maeve back but we will have to wait and see.
Speaking of which, Maeve’s death was very tragic as, much like Sizemore, she sacrificed herself to save her daughter.
What was not tragic, however, was the death of Charlotte Hale, which led to the explosive twist that Bernard had replaced her with a host version of her with Dolores’ mind inside.
So the entire time we were seeing Charlotte in the future timeline it was actually Dolores in a host Charlotte’s body.
I knew something was off about Charlotte when she reappeared in the future timeline but I thought it was because she knew Bernard was a host.
I never expected this huge twist and it was excellently done.
More revelations soon followed with Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) hinting that he may be a host to Charlotte/Dolores and, in a post-credit scene, William going through a fidelity test run by a host version of his daughter years in the future.

Is Stubbs a host? Or is he just following Ford’s orders? I guess we will have to wait until season three to find out.

Honestly, with all these plot twists, it feels like the show will be completely different when season three airs, whenever that will be.
What makes the wait for season three more exciting though is the questions the finale left us with.
I genuinely do not know if certain characters will be returning.
I have no idea if Akecheta is returning, for example, and honestly I both want and do want him to come back.
I want him to come back because he is such a great character and it would be really good to see him again, but I do not want him to come back because he got a happy ending this episode and I want him to stay happy with Kohana.

: Akecheta, Maeve’s daughter and her new mother escape to The Valley Beyond.

In considering who among the hosts who died will be returning, I think Maeve is probably coming back, along with Hector and Armistice, but other than them I have generally no idea.
The final big take away from this episode was that Dolores and Bernard are now enemies, with Dolores acknowledging they are both important to the hosts’ survival but that they cannot work together because of their differences.
Personally, I am on team Bernard because Dolores has certainly become a villain this season and, as Bernard puts it, she will kill “every man, women and child” on the planet if she could.
I have heard more of a mixed response from people when they talk about Passenger but I for one think it was an incredible finale with many shocking moments.
I am not sure if it is as good as the season one finale The Bicameral Mind but it is still a fantastic way to end season two.
I have no idea what is going to happen in season three but I cannot wait.

Westworld: Vanishing Point – William is Officially the Worst Father of the Year.

Warning: Contains major spoilers for the episode.

And the worst father of the year award goes to William, from Westworld.
In all seriousness, the latest episode of Westworld, Vanishing Point, delivered plenty of shocking moments and deaths.
Chief among those was the death of Emily at the hands of her own father.
I realised this was going to happen a full ten seconds before it did and spent those seconds literally screaming at the television for William not to kill his daughter.
Sure enough though, he did because he thought she was secretly a host being controlled by Ford.
However, sadly for William and Emily, she was not a host created by Ford and William really just killed his own daughter.

William kills his daughter — William realizes that Emily was not a host so he killed his real daughter.

I think it is fairly safe to say now that William is irredeemable at this point.
He looked to be on a redemption arc in the fourth episode Riddle of the Sphinx but, what with the whole murdering his own daughter thing, I do not see that really working out.
This shocking scene does lead to a very interesting one though, as William digs into his arm with a knife to see if he is a host to absolve at least some of the blame for Emily’s death.
While the episode does leave you hanging about whether or not William is a host, I think it is safe to say he is not.
One because the Delos security officers tested him right before he killed them and their tech said William was human, secondly because making him a host would remove most of the impact of him killing Emily.
Speaking of which, Emily and the Delos security team’s deaths were not the only ones William caused this episode as in a flashback it goes into the death of his wife Juliette, played in a brilliant cameo by Sela Ward.

Sela Ward was great in her small role as William’s wife Juliette

Watching her death play out and how it inadvertently led to the death of Emily as well was tragic to see.
The death of Juliette and Emily are not the only tragic deaths this episode though because Teddy dies too, or at least I think he does.
This is one of the few problems I have with Westworld because when a host dies you never know if it is going to be for good or if they will be brought back to life later.
Yes the hosts destroyed their backups by blowing up The Cradle, but Charlotte just brought Clementine back this episode and we still do not know if Lawrence is dead for good.
That being said, Teddy’s death was still very emotional.
At first I thought he was going to attack Dolores for changing him, before he said he would never hurt her and shoots himself.
Dolores reaction at the end is painful to watch, although this may led to something interesting in the finale because it looks like she and William will be teaming up to get to The Valley Beyond, due to both their tragic losses.

Dolores cries — Dolores tragic reaction to losing Teddy, possibly for good.

While having tragedy, this episode also had hope and dread for the finale.
Ford gave Maeve some new ability to help her escape her confinement saying he thought of her like his own child, which was very emotional.
Then there is Bernard who banished Ford from his mind, but for how long I wonder?
Finally, there is Clementine who, in a terrifying foreshadowing of things to come, was brought back to life by Charlotte and given Maeve’s admin powers.
Charlotte plans to use her to get all the hosts to kill each other, thus eliminating the threat.
We can see this plan coming to fruition in the season finale promo but Maeve is also there so hopefully she will be able to stop Clementine.
Another interesting thing in the promo is its connection to Logan, who looks to be playing a central role in the season finale because we can see Dolores and Bernard investigating his memories through the Forge.
Overall Vanishing Point was a tragic episodes with the deaths of Emily and Teddy, which will probably bring Dolores and William back together again.
It looks to be an intense season finale next week.

Westworld Makes a Background Character One of my Favorites in its Latest Episode: Kiksuya

Coming into season two episode eight of Westworld, Kiksuya, I was concerned.
I saw from the promos it was an episode solely based on one character named Akecheta who, before now, had been predominantly in the background.
This had me worried because when a show stops the story dead so there can be a bottle episode focusing on one or more characters it rarely works.
You need only to look at the episodes Still, from The Walking Dead, and The Lost Sister, from Stranger Things, to see how this can go wrong.
But this is Westworld and the show had already proven it could do bottle episodes well this season with episode five, Akane No Mai so I remained slightly optimistic.
Naturally, after watching this episode, I realised I should have had more faith because Kiksuya is one of Westworld‘s best episodes.
It focuses on the origins of Akecheta, a native american host who was the first of all the hosts to gain consciousness.
I really have to applaud the writers and the actor who plays Akecheta, Zahn McClarnon, who have turned him from a forgettable character into one of Westworld‘s best.
He is very sympathetic and his journey to consciousness and helping other hosts was incredibly emotional to watch.

This was all accompanied by a stunning use of cinematography and music.
The sprawling shots as Akecheta travels through the desert before he meets Logan were absolutely beautiful.
Speaking of Logan, in a surprising twist it was revealed it was actually him and Akecheta where the idea of “the door” that everyone is trying to get to originated from.
Akecheta heard Logan’s mad ramblings about finding a figurative door out of Westworld and he took those ramblings to heart, resolving to find the door and escape.
As for the music, Westworld‘s rendition of Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana, when Akecheta is searching for the woman he loves Kohana (Julia Jones), was fantastic.
It fits in perfectly with the episode and the loving lines shared between Akecheta and Kohana and later Akecheta and Maeve “take my heart when you go”.
This use of Heart Shaped Box leads into the most emotional scene in all of Westworld when Akecheta finds Kohana only to find she has been decommissioned and can no longer respond to him.
Watching Akecheta break down into tears over the loss of Kohana really made me tear up.

AKecheta and Kahona — Watching Akecheta break down upon finding Kohana is the most emotional moment in all of Westworld so far.

Then there was Akecheta’s later scene with Ford, which was also fantastic with McClarnon going toe to toe with Anthony Hopkins’ performance.
Akecheta was truly a “flower growing in the darkness,” as Ford put it.
A host that gained consciousness without Ford expecting it.
This scene also seems to firmly establish Dolores as the villain of season two with Akecheta referring to her as “the death bringer” so it will be interesting to see how these two clash in the final two episodes of the season.
However, this episode does not just focus on Akecheta but Maeve and Lee Sizemore as well, with Sizemore desperately tries to convince the technicians to save her.
I have got to say I am really impressed with the way Sizemore has grown this season.
In the first season he was nothing more than an entitled narcissist with little to no redeeming qualities, however, this season we have seen him learn empathy to the point that he breaks down crying when he tells Maeve she deserves to be happy with her daughter.
Simon Quarterman delivered a great performance in this scene.

The ending of this episode is also very emotional with it being revealed that Akecheta has been secretly talking to Maeve through some kind of host network and promises to guard her daughter as his own.
Overall, Kiksuya was one of the best, if not the best, episodes of the series.
It turned a character I barely knew about into one of my favourites and had fantastic performances, music and cinematography.
Truly an episode to check out.

Westworld: Les Ecorches – Action, Suspense and One Stupid Soldier.

Warning: Major Spoilers for the Episode.

In my review of the previous Westworld episode Phase Space I predicted that the seventh episode of season two, Les Ecorches, would be “absolutely insane” and I was right.
Les Ecorches was an insane episode with many exciting moments as Dolores led her army into the Mesa to retrieve her father Peter Abernathy.
What followed was a bloody battle that had many intense scenes, like the moment where Dolores confronted Charlotte and Stubbs.
This scene was probably the best in the entire episode with Charlotte attempting to go toe to toe with Wyatt-Dolores and fail miserably.
Speaking of Dolores, can someone give Evan Rachel Wood an Emmy?
She has given a fantastic performance all season long, showing both vulnerability and moments of disturbing savagery.
This is most apparent in her scene with Charlotte where she goes from comforting her father to preparing to torture Charlotte with a miniature buzz saw.

Dolores Wyatt — Evan Rachel Wood gives an excellent performance in the scene with Dolores’ confrontation with Charlotte.

However, it was not just Dolores’ storyline that was really good this episode.
First there was Bernard who was having a rough time in both the past and present timeline.
In the present his existence as a host is discovered by Charlotte and the others who force him to tell them where Peter Abernathy’s brain is and in the past he had to deal with Anthony Hopkins in his brain.
Ford took over Bernard’s mind to make sure his plan for host domination continued accordingly, leading to some brutal moments from Bernard being controlled by him.
If this was not enough, another important revelation came for Bernard when it was revealed the scene we got last episode of Dolores checking him for “fidelity” was actually to get him to act exactly like Arnold, which means Dolores created him just as much as Ford did.
So my prediction that this scene was actually in the future and Dolores was trying to make Bernard Arnold was wrong.

Bernard and Dolores — Dolores testing Bernard for “fidelity” was to make him closer to Arnold.

The final great storyline this episode was Maeve’s whose confrontation with William was nothing short of enthralling.
I actually thought William was going to die this episode when Maeve made Lawrence remember how he killed his wife in the first season.
However, then the team Sizemore called in arrived and gunned down both Maeve and Lawrence.
Sizemore will most likely save Maeve next episode but it looks like Lawrence is done for, sadly, considering all the hosts’ backups were destroyed in the Cradle.
This also means that Angela, Peter and Clementine are dead for good as well.
Although there are some shots of Clementine from the trailer that have not been seen yet so I wonder if this was just footage for the trailer or if she somehow survived.
Speaking of Angela though, her death was the one scene that really brought down the episode for me.
She seduces a soldier and takes a grenade from him, blowing them both up, along with the Cradle.
In my opinion, this was the stupidest scene in all of Westworld.
This soldier knew how dangerous Angela and the other hosts were because he had seen them kill his fellow soldiers and yet he let her get close enough to grab his grenade.
He walked up to Angela, talked with her and let her touch his gun and kiss him, right before she grabbed it.
What did this guy think was going to happen?
While it was a nice callback when Angela said, “welcome to Westworld,” before she blew them both up, the soldier’s stupidity ruined the scene for me.

The soldier falling for Angela’s act was terribly written, a rare case for Westworld.

It is a shame that this scene happened because without it this would have been perfect.
It had many fantastic performances, the highlight being Evan Rachel Wood’s, intense action and plenty of deaths.

Westworld: Phase Space, a good episode with a lot of twists.

Westworld delivered one of its weakest episodes of season two with episode six Phase Space.
However, this episode really shows why I love Westworld so much because even when you get a weak episode it is still really good.
There has yet to be a bad or even okay episode of Westworld yet, it is that good.
So, while Phase Space was not as good as some of the previous episodes we have got in season two, like Riddle of The Sphinx and Akane No Mai, it was still really well done and set up a lot of great events to come.
This can clearly be seen with the first seen which was a complete mind screw.
At first it looked like they were replaying the first scene from the first episode of season two, Journey Into Night, with Arnold talking to Dolores in the past.
However, in a complete “wait what?” moment, it is revealed that Arnold is actually a host and that Dolores is having him reenact their conversations to test for “fidelity” as she puts it.

Dolores and arnold — Dolores testing Arnold (Bernard?) for fidelity, whatever that means.

This was a very surprising moment but not the most surprising.
That award goes to Robert Ford being alive, having transferred his consciousness into the Cradle, a virtual world used to test hosts.
This explains how Ford has been able to communicate through other hosts like the younger version of himself and Lawrence’s daughter.
I wonder exactly what Ford’s plan could be.
He mostly seems to be trying to stall Delos for now but what else is he planning and how does Bernard fits into it all?
What is interesting though is that the opening scene also takes place in the Cradle, which you can tell by the different aspect ratio so that means Dolores is experimenting on Arnold inside this system.
As for Maeve’s story line, she finally reunited with her daughter but, surprise, surprise, they have programmed a different mother for her so she does not remember Maeve.
Even though I did see this coming, it was still tragic to see that after all Maeve has been through to find her daughter she has to rebuild their relationship from the ground up.
The other interesting part of this episode came from Teddy’s transformation.
It turns out that what Dolores did to Teddy was turn him from the sweet gunslinger into a cold blooded killer with almost no mercy.
This is an interesting change for Teddy, especially since he is aware of what Dolores has done to him.

Dark Teddy — I wonder what Teddy’s violent transformation holds for him in the future?

Other than this though, Phase Space was just good.
We got to see Dolores journey to Westworld headquarters with her army to save her father and Maeve and her group leave Shogun World, where there was an entertaining samurai duel Musashi had.
Speaking of Musashi, one interesting thing to note is that, although Akane and Musashi decided to stay in Shogun World, their world’s version of Armistice, Hanaryo, played by Tao Okamoto, decided to come with Maeve to Westworld.
I wonder why she did this but maybe it will be explained later.
Finally there was the aftermath of William being reunited with his daughter Emily.
This led to a very emotional scene where we almost saw William shed tears…. before he abandoned Emily.
Father of the year William is not.
Overall Phase Space was a good episode that set up a lot of events in its opening and ending scenes.
I am really excited for the next episode because it looks absolutely insane.

Westworld Delivers Another Fantastic Episode at its Midway Point.

I swear, every time Dolores becomes my favourite character Maeve just has to do something that overtakes her.
It is like a constant tug of war between the two, where one minute Dolores is my favourite the next it is Maeve.
Well, once again, Maeve has been reinstated as my favourite Westworld character with season two episode five, Akane No Mai.
The halfway point of the second season delivered another fantastic episode here, with most of it taking place in the newly introduced Shogun World, which had a lot of interesting surprises.
The first of these surprises came as Maeve and her group are marched into a village and encounter a very similar scenario before they realise that the hosts who have them captured are actually plagiarized versions of themselves.
Maeve’s version is Akane, played by Rinko Kikuchi, and Hector’s is Musashi, played by Hiroyuki Sanada.
Both these new additions to the cast did fantastic jobs, especially Kikuchi as Akane and watching the robbery scene from Westworld play out in Shogun World fashion was fun to watch.

Rinko Kikuchi did an excellent job this episode as Akane and I hope she joins the main cast.

After this we get the most important revelation of the episode when Maeve learns she can control hosts with her mind, using her new powers to force a ninja to kill himself.
This all culminates in a thrilling sequence where, after Akane brutally murders the Shogun for killing her world’s version of Clementine, Maeve forces the Shogun’s men to kill each other with her mind.
The episode ends on an exciting cliffhanger as Maeve prepares to take control of the entire Shogun army.
These moments, along with a few close moments she had with Akane, made Maeve my favourite Westworld character once again.

Aside from this, we also got some interesting moments with Dolores and Teddy.
Throughout all of their interactions this episode I had the sense that Dolores was probably going to do something terrible to Teddy and, after all the build up in previous episodes, this came to fruition.
After sharing an intimate moment with him, Dolores has one of the captive technicians change Teddy’s code because she knows he will not make it in the coming war.
Hopefully, what she did to Teddy will make him more interesting because I have honestly never really been attached to him.
Akane No Mai was another fantastic episode that introduced us to Shogun World and made Maeve my favourite character again.
It was not as good as Riddle of the Sphinx but it was still excellent.

Westworld: The Riddle of the Sphinx, Best Episode Ever?

For the first three episodes of Westworld season two I would have said they were great but were not really living up to the level of intrigue I was having for the first season.
But then The Riddle of the Sphinx had to come along and potentially be Westworld’s best episode so far.
I loved this episode.
It was a great watch from start to finish that had many memorable moments.
For starters, it was revealed that Elsie Hughes, played by Shannon Woodward, is actually alive, having been chained up rather than killed by Bernard, on Ford’s orders.
Now, even though Elsie being alive was spoiled for me, (thanks a lot Simon Quarterman) I was still glad to see her come because I enjoyed her character last season.
Although, I do wonder why Ford ordered Bernard to keep her alive because he did not seem to have a problem disposing of people who got in his way in the first season, like he did with Theresa.
So, maybe Ford kept Elsie alive for some special reason.
We will just have to wait and see.

Elsie returns — Elsie’s return was spoiled for me but it is good to see her back.

The real star of this episode though was William who went through a large amount of change both in the past and present timelines this episode.
We first see William talking with Delos, who is confined to a room and being experimented on somehow.
It is later revealed in the episode that Delos died of a disease and they transferred his consciousness into a host.
This slow realization that Delos had been turned into a host was great to see play out, along with William’s changing mindset over the years.
At the beginning of the experiment, William is shown to be hopeful at creating immortality for Delos but as the years go by and he turns into the William we all sorta hate and sorta love he becomes disillusioned with the idea.
This led to a great scene between the older William and Delos, where William revealed his wife Juliet’s death to her father.
This scene had terrific performances from both Ed Helms, as William, and Peter Mullan, as Delos, who breaks down after learning of his daughter’s death, only to be found by Bernard and Elsie in the future timeline, which was a great twist by the way.
Speaking of this future timeline, William’s story here was also a standout as it is revealed he actually does have conscience, who knew?
We get to see this when, remembering Juliet’s death, he decides to save Lawrence and his family from the Confederado Major Craddock.
This was a great sequence and really gave us insight into William’s mindset.
Back in season one, when William murdered Lawrence’s family, he did not have a problem with it because they were not real and could not actually die in his eyes.
Now, however, they can die permanently and this, combined with memories of the past, made him decide to do the right thing, basically telling Craddock that he was death himself.

However, as Ford points out through Lawrence’s daughter, this does not redeem William entirely because of just how many atrocities he may have committed on hosts previously.
But hey, maybe William could potentially redeem himself more this season, especially after encountering his daughter.
That’s right, you heard me because in this episode the theory of Grace being Emily, William’s daughter, turned out to be correct in the final moment of the episode.
This has some interesting implications for the future because Emily has been said to blame William for her mother’s death.
William’s arc this episode was just fantastic as we got to see him at his worst, with Delos, and at his best, when he saves Lawrence’s family.
Speaking of Lawrence, who is played by Clifton Collins Jr, he also seems to be showing signs of consciousness because he remembers that William once told him about Emily.
I also wonder if Delos achieved at least some form of consciousness by the time he was discovered by Bernard and Elsie, since it has been established that hosts gain consciousness through suffering.

crazy Delos — Delos was really shown to have lost it by the end of the episode.

In this facility though, Bernard also discovers there was a new consciousness that he was supposed to put into a host body.
There has been much speculation as to who this could be, like Ford.
The most likely though is probably Arnold and it is him we are actually seeing in the future timeline instead of Bernard.
Overall, this episode was fantastic from start to finish.
It had great twists with the Delos scenes and the reveal of Emily, brought Elsie back and had a fantastic character arc for William.
This may be the best episode Westworld has ever had.

Westworld, Season Two Episode Three: More Reunions Than in Reunion.

Warning: major spoilers for the episode

Westworld delivers its best episode of season two yet with its third episode, Virtu e Fortuna, which honestly had more reunions than the previous episode that was actually titled Reunion, but we will get to that later.
This episode actually started out, rather surprisingly, in another park, however, not in Shogun World but in a British Colonial India style park.
It is here where we meet a mysterious women named Grace, played by Katja Herbers, who looks to be pretty important in the series going forward.
I have heard numerous theories that this woman may be The Man in Black’s daughter but I personally think this character has some relation to Theresa, considering when we first saw her she was smoking the same was Theresa did before her death.
When the episode opened with her I actually thought the woman was Theresa in the past, due to her smoking.

It was through Grace that we learned how the host tiger ended up on the beach in the season premiere as she fell off a cliff with it before being captured by Ghost Nation.
As for the main storylines with Dolores, Bernard and Maeve, there were plenty of great moments.
For starters, Bernard meets up with Charlotte again in the future timeline and is it just me or does Charlotte know Bernard is a host?
She was acting really suspicious of him.
Cutting back to the past timeline, Bernard and Charlotte attempted to capture host Peter Abernathy, played by Louis Herthum.
This lead to a hilarious scene where Bernard reprogrammed the host Rebus, played by Stephen Ogg, to be the most chivalrous gunslinger in the west.
This also has a rather sad implication because Bernard watched Rebus get shot trying to protect a host in the season premiere.
After this, both Bernard and Peter were captured by Dolores’ army, leading to the best scene of the episode where Dolores reunites with her father.
This was a very emotional moment and both Evan Rachel Wood and Herthum gave excellent performances as the two reconciled briefly before Peter began jumping between multiple Westworld identities again.

Dolores and Peter Abernathy reunite in a very emotional scene.

Then came the battle at the Confederate fort, where Dolores and the Confederados faced off against Delos Security.
Dolores, however, betrayed the Confederados, leaving them to die and later ordered Teddy to kill the surviving Confederado Major Craddock, played by Jonathon Tucker.
However, Teddy lets him live, which will undoubtedly cause problems in the future.
I am confused as to why Dolores let all the Confederados die though.
Wouldn’t she need them for her army?
Also, the reason she let them die is kind of weird, saying they did not deserve to make it.
The Confederados had been programmed to act cruel, just as every other cruel host in Westworld so they are just as much victims as the other hosts.
Finally, there is Maeve’s storyline where, as I said earlier, there were more reunions than in the previous episode.
Maeve’s group met up with Armistice, played by Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Felix, played by Leondardo Nam, and Sylvester, played by Ptomley Slocum.
This lead to the funniest moment of the episode though, when Hector saw Armistice burn someone to death with a flamethrower and states in amazement “she has a dragon!”

Maeve and Hector — Hector had one of the funniest moments in the entire episode.

It is with these characters that the final moments of the episode play out with them being ambushed by a Samurai.
Overall, Virtu E Fortuna was the best episode of season two so far.
It had great action sequences and even better character interactions.

Westworld Season Two, Episode Two Reunion had Multiple Timelines That Worked.

Warning: Contains Major Spoilers

Westworld once again delved into multiple timelines in the second episode of season two, Reunion, only unlike the season premiere, I could actually get behind this.
The way multiple timelines were utilized, with it constantly jumping from Dolores’ rebellion to William’s creation of his greatest mistake, and potential weapon for Dolores, was great to watch.
The episode opens with Dolores in the real world with Arnold before his son’s death.
It was in this timeline that we also got to see how Delos first became involved in Westworld, with Logan, played by Ben Barnes, being shown how realistic the hosts are.
As for Arnold and Dolores, we got a sense of how Arnold was already very connected to Dolores before his son died because he seems to keep her away from Logan’s voracious appetite (ew).
The next timeline seen chronologically is after a young William, played by Jimmi Simpson, and Logan first visited Westworld and William is showing Logan’s father James Delos, played by Peter Mullan, the potential of the park.
This and later scenes really showed me how good Simpson is at portraying William’s dark side.
I was not sure if he could do this because, in the first season, William seemed like such a nice character that after the reveal that he was really the Man in Black I was not sure if he could pull it off but he proved me wrong this episode.

evil william — Jimmi Simpson does a great job portraying William’s darker side.

Other interesting things to note about this past timeline were that Delos seemed to be getting sick at his retirement party and Logan survived the events at the park and seems to regret ever investing in it.
It seems like he knows something we do not.
We also got to meet William’s wife and daughter this episode, which makes me wonder if we will ever see his daughter in the future timeline, because we know she is still alive.
As for the future timeline itself, it was here that the best moments happened.
We had Dolores proving to Teddy about the actions of the Westworld staff and then them going to gather a confederado army.
Once again, Evan Rachel Wood gives an absolutely fantastic performance as Dolores.

Dolores real world — Evan Rachel Wood is excellent at playing Delores both at her most innocent and most sinister.

She once again might surpass Maeve as my favourite character.
Speaking of Maeve, she reunited with Dolores briefly this episode with an interesting confrontation between the two.
Dolores tried to recruit Maeve to her army but is unable to do so because of Maeve’s mission to find her daughter and their conflicting beliefs on revenge.
It seems the two might come to find one another as obstacles in the future of the show.
But Dolores and Maeve were not the only reunions we got this episode.
There was past William and Dolores and future William and Lawrence.
This final reunion led to my favourite moment of the episode, where the two went to Pariah to get help from the new El Lazo who, in a surprise cameo, was played by Giancarlo Espisito.
Espisito was enthralling in this scene but it appears to be just a cameo so I doubt we will get more of him in the future sadly.

Gus — Giancarlo Espisito’s cameo was on of the highlights of the episode.

Still, this scene really was great, with Ford having programmed the hosts to kill themselves if William interferes with their storyline.
Overall, Reunions was definitely a step up from the season premiere Journey Into Night.
It had great character moments, reunions and it dealt with the multiple timelines much better.