Hey, to clarify - we're not doing a S2E09 video because we don't have time to make a full video next week. This isn't a dastardly plan to get Patrons. The Finale video will wrap everything up!
Finally, a well written character driven episode for Season 2. It really is amazing how this series is improved when it narrows down its wide scope and confines the story to a focused examination of the characters. The irony is that in doing so, Westworld ends up exploring its very ambitious themes on free will, determinism, and the contingent nature of reality with more care, nuance and depth than when the story jumps all over the place with unconventional narrative techniques or long-winded monologues about the human condition.
You didn't mention the important detail that's key to understanding this episode: Akecheta speaks Lakota when he's speaking to Maeve through her daughter, and changes to English when speaking to the daughter.
It was the best episode of season 2 so far for me. It was linear, no time jumps, no confusion, straight up emotion packed. Unravelled a bit of story. To the point, without any riddles. Unlike other episodes of season 2 which were tedious and hectic to watch. Season 1> season 2
"The maze is not meant for you." makes so much sense now. William just stumbled into some lore that the hosts pretty much made up by themselves and projected some meaning to it, that it was specifically made for him. Poor William. What a fool
This was probably my favorite episode yet. Gorgeous cinematography, fantastic acting, and a storyline that is deeply emotional, yet still full of information regarding the true nature and intentions of hosts (and their creator).
I watched a good portion of this episode without the centre channel (mostly the dialogue) on my 5.1 home theatre setup before I realised something was wrong. It was even eerier.
An exception episode. My wife who had never even seen a single episode was hooked and understood what West world was about after this episode. It was like a mini movie and stood completely on its own.
That whole scene drove me crazy trying to place the tune haha, I had to hum it to myself for two minutes just to remember enough lyrics to google. It *was* fucking beautiful though.
This episode was one of the best in a long time. A truly beautiful and heartbreaking story, and some light has finally been shed on the elusive Ghost Nation!
It's very brave of Westworld story writers/director to introduce a major character like this. Loved the way they played with him till now... Ake will be as important as Dolores by the end.
Yh but they did do that song from kid A Can’t remember what it’s called but it’s starts “ white wine and sleeping pills help me get where I belong , it’s not like the movies , they fed us on Little white lies, I think your crazy , maybe I will see you In the Next liiiiiiiiiiiiiiife ......... Amazing song and cover from WW, also radio head do a song called
I really don't understand why people are not ok with Alt doing a live stream on his Patreon. I wish he'd do a video since I am not on his Patreon but I completely understand why he's not. The man has given us super high-quality videos for every episode FOR FREE yet you can't handle him rewarding those who support him financially for 1 episode? That's sad, learn how to appreciate others for fuck's sake.
are you paying him in any way? no, you're just sitting back on your ass waiting for his videos that took days to complete to show up in your sub box for FREE. Yeah, he makes some money off ads but obviously it's not enough to sustain himself and the channel so he has a patreon and he has to reward those people.
The first time Akecheta had his character redone the head tech instructed the others to just "unaddress" a lot of his code / memories. This goes in line with the reveries we see in the first season. "The memories are still in there, waiting to be overridden." I think when he saw Kohana the for the first time after his rework it triggered a kind of reverie and "woke" him up.
The more I think about the maze scalping, the more I wonder--can hosts heal? If they get a minor abrasion, do they have to wait for a tech to fix it? If so, it seems like a lot of extra work for the techs. And how would Akecheta have fared for a decade? If hosts *can* heal, perhaps the intention is to survive the scalping without going below for a patch up.
If you have to make theories like this it shows how bad the writing is. In season 1 when ever a host went off of their loop the techs were quick to monitor them and fix them all of a sudden the entire ghost nation is able to scalp each other and put in hidden mazes? Not to mention they magically put the scalpes back on lol! Did they sew them back on because none of the ghost nation had scalp scars maybe Ake took another adventure in the facility and stole one of those flesh healing heat guns
Ford made it clear in his intentions at this point, as to what he intended. To allow the hosts to be free. Perhaps he hid it or commanded otherwise from his employees at the time. When Akecheta was restored back to Westworld, employees objected but according to the commands of their superior (I believe, whom Ford was in command of), they just updated him and let him be which I found suspicious. Update code only that I believe only Ford at the time, would have had to the ability the authorize his employees to perform instead of a full reset as per protocol instead of updating/replacing the host. Ford wasn't opposed to bloodshed of his own kind, humans, in order to achieve his goals. This to me, seems like a simple thing Ford would have done to achieve his ultimate goal. As he said himself, he'd been watching Akecheta for a long time before they actually met. I wouldn't call it bad writing by far but just requires a certain suspsention of disbelief and imagination.
Still catching up on my Westworld episodes, thanks for these amazing recap/analysis videos! When i finished watching this episode i was like "Huh, a fully contained story, with nothing moving forward in the overall narrative of the series, almost like it was a "filler" episode". But as i unpacked it, I realized it was such an important part of the story, this episode felt a lot like what season 1 felt like - seeing Westworld (the theme park) through the eyes of the hosts.
Im a simple man. I wake up log onto my macbook, click on alt shift x channel, check for latest westworld video. Nothing there, let off a big sigh become very sad....repeat
The maeve akecheta thing flew over me, also i didnt care about dolores this season, she seems to run on her crazy ideas but the evolution of maeve have been amazing. Thanks for the whole biblical and mythological references.. Keep up the good work alt.
Alt Shift X, I am a huge fan and I am so grateful for the shout-out! I will do right by your subscribers and won't let you down boss! You're an inspiration of mine and I hope we cross paths at some nerdy convention one day! haha
HaxDogma I'm a recent subscriber to you because of a previous shout-out by this channel. Your content has been wonderful, and your theory videos are the absolute best!
I thought The riddle of the Sphinx would be the best episode but...nope, Kiksuya was. The way the writer and the director have used Orpheo's myth, the native americans culture to guide Akecheta in his awakening, and the acting is in one word majestic.
There's a William/Emily sort of theory thing I've heard about, and I wanted to share it here to hopefully get further input. In their campfire scene from I think, 2 eps ago, was it? When William recounts the memory of the fear of elephants from when Emily was little, that when he gets the memory wrong. Now, I've seen others suggest this is a clue to the fact that William, as we're currently seeing him now, is a host himself. But I don't think that's correct. In fact, that hadn't even remotely occurred to me until I saw another bring it up, and I HOPE it's not going to be case. Rather, the way I perceived that moment, it was William running one more check on the validity of it really being Emily. Because remember when William and Emily finally saw each other face to face? William didn't think it was really her, he'd thought that Ford had "stooped so low" to have created a host version of his daughter just to fuck with him. Thus, cut to later when they're having that conversation at the campfire, I think that William described that memory incorrectly ON PURPOSE, that the whole point was to see if Emily would correct him. I mean you see this basic same thing done in con man stories all the time. Say a family has a kid disappear, someone shows back up decades later and (especially if there's money involved) the family worries about it being an imposter trying to scam them, so you talk about something from the kid's childhood but you get a detail wrong on purpose, cause if it's the real person, they would know what the truth is.
Kevin W From what I've read and how I took it, I think the idea that MIB was in fact checking Emily's "fidelity"/memory IS the most accepted idea. It's only a few outliers who want to believe MIB/William is a host, not the majority of people. So you're most likely right.
The whole thing with Akecheta not being updated for years is unbelievable, literally. I mean how does nobody have an excel spreadsheet with every host's unique ID number and the date they were last updated on it? If the updates matter at all, and they clearly do otherwise why would they be worried about him not having been updated, they would have people keeping an eye on things.
Why is it that nobody at Westworld Corp. knows that this employee Bermard is physically identical to one of its founders, who , you know, died decades ago?
He died before Delos took over. Considering the financial shit storm that happened after he died, they wouldn't have been able to employ all their old staff that worked there, which was a small group to begin with After Delos invested, the park rapidly expanded, both in hosts and other worlds, and in staff
If you're a WW Corp employee, you need not have known Arnold personally to be able recognize Bernard as his twin. All you need to know is what the founders of *the company you are working for* look like. Even if WW Corp isn't advertising Arnold prominently, all you need is 1 person to have done some research about the history of the company they're joining. This is not unusual, folks.
That may be true, but Bernard was a MUCH later installation. Didn't he say in season one that he only work there for less then a decade when the park itself has been decades old itself ? It was also explained in season 1 that Ford did not want anyone to know about Arnold. Bernard didn't even know Ford had a partner until Ford mentioned it to him in his office
This episode was sublime. It's always nice to get into details and break the thing down, but that's not what it was about this time. This time it was poetry. Akecheta is actually you and me - on the ever mysterious path to understand the meaning of life. There were notes of Nietzsche's eternal return in this episode - how many times do you come back to this place, asking the same questions? The desert was the mystical story of the Prince who contemplated his soul. And the deep love for Kohana ultimately expanded into love of all beings proving that hosts are as humans - even more. Real real beauty in this episode.
This whole 'death is an escape from life' concept kinda reminds me of Buddism. Nirvana basically means no more reincarnation because life is full of pain. Anyway this was THE best episode and the actor who plays Ake deserves an Emmy or five.
It's strange for me that Arnold planed to kill all hosts, but Akecheta's tribe was spared. Like Ford said once: "...Arnold was very, very carefull.". This makes me wonder if it's just a small scrip mistake or there is more behind this fact.....Anyway Westworld is one of the best TV show I've ever watched, the plot and episodes like this (one of my fav if not my fav at all), gets bisides with Breaking Bad, GOT (well GOIT isnt that good latly but I still enjoy it), .... Also, Also thank you Alt Shift for the vid analisys. Cheers!!
Well, they has some king of religion centered around real humans. Something was clearly going on. And I'm glad this was it, because this episode has been great.
My theory was that Maeve's consciousness or program was based on Kohana... when they took Kohana out of commission, they used her program as a basis for the new story featuring a character called Maeve. That is why she repeats that line... it's the same person. I am ready for you guys to soot holes in my theory.
It appears The Maze works as some sort of QR code that triggers awakening on hosts. Also Damn, Akecheta played for years in hardcore more without dying.
This was probably my favourite episode so far. Akecheta's story was interesting enough, but nothing mind blowing. What did it for me was Lee's redemption and cry for Maeve (and hosts, in general). Just that one frame of him crying over her was something that made this episode the best one so far.
Everyone saying the episode was boring is probably a little kid and just likes the action lol. Westworld has a much deeper story than that and this episode had alot of important details that further the plot.
Hell ya! When that notification pops up my day is made knowing a giant wet knowledge bomb of Truth is about to be dropped on my simple mind! Thank you for your articulated explanation of this show, is the best around!
How did Westworld not realize that Akecheta was off his loop for a decade ? And continued to regularly go off it ? And why didn't the techs get him when they came to get Kohana ? They knew she was way off her loop, and lobotomized her for it. I love this show, and really enjoyed this episode, but so many things don't seem to make sense. The problem is, it's hard to know what actually doesn't make sense, and what hasn't been explained yet, or what you as a viewer simply didn't get.
Akecheta's loop allowed him to roam more than Kohana's loop, so the techs probably just thought it was normal for a violent savage host to be roaming around
Older hosts aren’t tracked properly because they didn’t get round to updating them. They only updated hosts when they died but he didn’t die for years and years.
Ford knew and we know he basically had full control of the park one way or another. It's not a big stretch to think that he was able to hide Akechta's actions for the better part of 30 years
The Ghost Nation storylines were also not commonly accessed by most of the guests(which were as we now know the main focus of park management)so it's not too much of a stretch that they were largely overlooked.
“True love and a little Stockholm syndrome conquer all” 😂 I love the subtle sarcastic remarks you throw in the videos. Great breakdowns btw. I come here after every episode 👌
My take on this wonderful episode. Maeve doesn't listen to Akecheta’s story, she tells it. As she is lying, tends to die, she uses Akecheta’s basic story and modify it (the story and Akecheta) to create her farewell speech from her daughter. Maeve gives her daughter her romantic interpretation of the world, and adds new (English words) to create Akecheta’s commitment to protect her daughter while she is gone. Maeve's Japanese twin implemented physically the romantic gesture of "take my hurt" of her love, giving a hint that Akecheta’s story is not totally authentic. This also explain why we enjoyed this episode so much while so many things don't seem to make sense.
