'Westworld' recap: 'Kiksuya'

Anyone who tells you this episode is boring is so, so wrong.

Last week’s Westworld was an upbeat sixty-minute action scene that featured lots of blood and lots of death. This week’s Westworld — entitled “Kiksuya” — is, essentially, the polar opposite.

The awesome thing is that both episodes are still incredibly great, proving that Westworld’s writers might be some of the best working in television today.

Instead of continuing the drama on Bernard, Dolores or Evil Teddy, this episode of Westworld focuses almost entirely on one character who’s barely gotten any screen time — Ghost Nation leader Akecheta.

Everything that we’ve seen Akecheta, who’s played by Fargo’s Zahn McClarnon and deserves an Emmy nomination after this episode, has pointed to him being a villain. He doesn’t really ever say anything, he just comes into frame to kill a whole bunch of people every now and again.

Turns out, Akecheta is in more pain than anyone else in Westworld.

Telling his story primarily through flashbacks to Maeve’s daughter (who survived the gunshot and has been brought into the underground lab by Lee), Akecheta wasn’t always a member of Ghost Nation. There was once a time, way back when the park first opened, when he was a lot more peaceful.

More importantly, he was in love (they always are, aren’t they?) A woman named Kohana (Julia Jones) has stolen his heart — something they remind each other every day, as they repeat the phrase “Take my heart when you go” every morning.

Except, one morning, everything changes. Akecheta stumbles into down to find a large number of dead bodies cluttering the streets — one of them being Arnold/Bernard.

We, as viewers of the first season of Westworld, instantly recognize the town as the one that Dolores and Teddy shot up when operating under the name of Wyatt. That’s why it comes as no great surprise that when Akecheta goes poking around farther, he finds the infamous symbol of the Westworld maze.

Akecheta doesn’t know what this means at first, but he knows it’s important. So important, in fact, that it begins to haunt him. He starts drawing it everywhere he goes, to the point where his tribe is beginning to think he’s going crazy.

The park’s caretakers think he might be going crazy too. They bring him down underneath Westworld and decide to give him a few changes — ones that’ll make him more brutal and dehumanized, so that “guests feel better when they’re kicking his ass.”

That’s how Akecheta joined the Ghost Nation.

Due to the symbol of the maze now implanted in his head, Akecheta is, however, able to remember his past life and Kohana. Now that he’s seen the other world, he knows that this one is no longer for the two of them. He’s ready to get out of here.

So, he kidnaps Kohana (she doesn’t recognize him at first obviously because she didn’t have the same obsession with the maze) and begins bringing her to the outskirts of Westworld. He’s eventually able to make her remember everything, and the two, now in love once again, get ready to take off into a brighter tomorrow.

They don’t get very far. The park’s caretakers once again find out what’s going on and that they’re way outside of where they’re supposed to be. Kohana gets brought back into the lab, while Akecheta escapes.

Akecheta figures he can just go back to his old village the next night and do the whole thing over again, but not so — this time she isn’t there.

Panicking, he begins searching everywhere for her. He travels to far off villages — most of which he’s not welcome at, due to his heritage — and finds himself in dangerous situations in which he nearly escapes with his life more often than not.

One of these situations brings him face-to-face with Logan, naked and left for dead by the madly in love William from Season One.

Another one introduces him to Maeve’s daughter, who helps save him from a fatal bullet injury.

Eventually, he comes to the same realization Maeve did in season one: there’s a whole other world beneath him, and he might be able to find what he’s looking for down there.

So, he kills himself. The caretakers are astonished to see him because he’s one of the park’s earliest models — meaning he hasn’t been down here for an upgrade in nearly a decade. That’s right, Akecheta spent ten years searching for his long lost love, only to come up empty-handed. Pretty tragic.

The tragedy doesn’t end there, though. Akecheta finds Kohana inside a hidden laboratory, but she’s not herself. She’s part of Ford’s collection of retired robots, standing there with no life to her eyes. She is, in all matter of speaking, dead.

The heartbreak is almost too much to bear. Akecheta returns to Westworld, vowing to get even with those who did this to his life.

His revenge isn’t more bloodshed. No, Akecheta has become smarter than that during his time of being self-aware. His revenge comes in the form of knowledge.

He begins sharing the symbol of the maze to everyone he possibly can — first his tribe, then others. One of his fellow Ghost Nation members volunteers to have it implanted on his scalp, which finally explains what the symbol was doing there during the very first episode of season one when the Man in Black mercilessly killed that guy.

This goes on for some time, to the point where Ford eventually catches wind of it. In the best scene of the episode, Ford visits Akecheta one night and, much to Akecheta’s surprise, allows him to continue. “Gather your people and lead them to a new world,” he tells them.

Again, we’re not surprised, because we know that Ford’s plan was for his creations to become self-aware all along, but Akecheta’s response is what makes this scene.

Another key moment is Akecheta and Maeve, as we’ve seen the Ghost Nation attack on her homestead about 20 times from Maeve’s perspective. From Akecheta’s perspective, though, it’s completely different. He was just trying to share the symbol with the two of them so that they could be free — given that Maeve’s daughter “freed” him all those years ago.

That’s why, back in present time, when Akecheta sees Maeve and her daughter under attack from both the Man in Black and the park’s caretakers, he swoops in to intervene. It’s not so much a kidnapping, as it is a rescue.

As Akecheta is telling Maeve all this, the Man in Black — now a prisoner of Ghost Nation — is sitting beside a nearby river nearing his deathbed. Emily happens to show up at the last minute, declaring that she only wants to reclaim her father because she’ll make him suffer in a way that’s much, much worse than anything they have planned.

Akecheta, who now seems far more reasonable and even friendly, agrees. He returns to Maeve’s daughter, looking deep into her eyes. That’s when we see real Maeve, still clinging to life, looking back. Akecheta promises to take care of her and invites Maeve if she somehow survives her current situation, to come join them someday.

“Take my heart with you,” she replies.

Tears man. Freakin tears.

There are only two more episodes of Westworld left, and the next one is said to have some dark kind of twist that’s about to change everything. It better not be related to Akecheta is all I’m saying now because he’s just become my new favorite character of the whole show.

Tune in to HBO tonight to watch the new episode and check out some of our other Westworld recaps by clicking here.