This review contains spoilers.
2.8 Kiksuya
We’ve seen the situation in Westworld build slowly, from a single host being awakened to multiple hosts coming online, to the entire park system turning on the human guests who ride, reave, rape, and ruin the synthetic inhabitants of Sweetwater. It hasn’t been pretty, for either side. The behaviour of the humans was bad, and the behaviour of the hosts might be even worse now that they’re taking the power back. But the process of seeing the hosts awaken has been limited. We’ve seen one or two hosts do it at a time, until there was suddenly a critical mass and insurrection, but Maeve and Dolores might be latecomers to the consciousness game.
From the very beginning of Westworld, we’ve seen that the Ghost Nation has been a little different, from a narrative perspective. They’re not the most popular group in the park, and while they’re a functional antagonist, they don’t seem to draw as much attention as bounty hunting for criminals or chasing after the Confederados. They’re mostly there to show up at inopportune times, and to occasionally terrorise Maeve in flashback form, but as it turns out, Akecheta and his group may be the first hosts to come online, and the first hosts to realise that they need to defend themselves, either from the guests or from Wyatt and her band of murderers.
The journey of Akecheta is a familiar one. He’s a peaceful, happy host with a wife and a family, and then that’s all taken away from him because someone rewrites his story and they need something a little more vicious. He’s shifted from a noble man on the plains to something that appeals more to the baser sensibilities of the people who use Westworld. They want a Western, and every Western needs some kind of antagonist, be it a bandit or an evil scalp-slashing band of Indian warriors in spooky paint. That Akecheta doesn’t want to be this, and that he remembers who he used to be despite the tinkering of incompetent techs, doesn’t really matter to anyone other than himself.
However, like Maeve’s drive to protect her daughter matters to her enough that she’s willing to ride into the Hell that is Westworld to save her, getting his wife back matters enough to Akecheta that he’s willing to literally die and go to “the place underground,” AKA the Mesa, to look for her, and in the process, he discovers the world beyond the world, and one of the reasons behind why he feels so trapped in an artificial world not of his making. He’s seen freedom, and he wants it for himself, and for all of his Lakota people (and presumably for all the hosts).
Throughout the series, all we’ve seen of Zahn McClarnon is a serious, intimidating face covered in black and white paint, usually skulking around dangerously or clutching a knife while threatening others. He’s been colour, an interesting looking character in a world full of them, a spooky dangerous “other” for the heroic guests to chase down or watch, laughing, while he kills for their amusement. However, Akecheta isn’t killing for fun, or because that’s part of his story, but he’s spreading the word, one host at a time, one tattooed scalp at a time, one host at a time, and trying not to get discovered by the Delos techs and sent to cold storage.
It’s really a beautiful performance from McClarnon, who is something of a hidden gem. The initial idea, the tattooed scalp and the Maze, started back in the first season of Westworld and has driven both William and Akechta to extremes in the process, one as a villain and the other as an unlikely hero. It’s a lot of heavy lifting for a single actor, and he carries the entire episode beautifully when given the incredible opportunity. Akecheta’s interactions with Kohana (Julia Jones) are beautiful, and with every loop he walks through, seeking out Kohana and freedom, the anguish and sadness and sheer drive on Akechta’s face registers as honest, earned emotion, as deep as anything we’ve seen thus far on the series.
It’s one of the most limited stories Westworld has told, and despite that, it looks and feels like one of the most expansive. The focus is on one character, but that character’s journey is an epic in the hands of director Uta Briesewitz. The shots of Akechta in Sweetwater emphasize just how suspicious the hosts are of other hosts who don’t fit their narrative worlds. He’s an outsider among his own people. He’s an outsider among his literal people as well, as the people keep changing with every decision made by Narrative until there are very few of the original Lakota family remaining. The shots of him riding across sand dunes or walking slowly through the decaying remains of Ford’s new narrative launch party are stunningly beautiful, and Briesewitz really plays with the park and its surroundings to create beautiful, emotionally-resonant images out of simply positioning a character in a frame by himself.
Akecheta has travelled across the park in search of his wife, having dug into every nook and cranny of the park that he’s had access to. He’s stretched the bounds of Westworld in the process, and suffered immensely in the process. Even if he hasn’t been killed, he’s been suffering that loss for a decade, and that consuming drive guided him not just to his missing love—trapped in cold storage and tragically unresponsive—but to the awakening that Maeve, Dolores, and others have been spreading throughout the park via the neural network the hosts all share
That element in Carly Wray and Dan Dietz’s script ties back to something Ford said previously. The loops are there for the hosts as much as they are for the guests, and for studying the guests. What drives Akecheta into full awakening isn’t what he’s doing, or what hosts are doing to him, but the simple act of remembering what he once was, and what was taken away from him for narrative convenience. Fittingly, Kiksuya is the Lakota word for remember, and that remembering guides him and his people into enlightenment.
Neglect, more than abuse, is the catalyst for awakening a whole tribe of hosts. Still, as Akecheta proves in this episode, suffering is suffering, whether it’s external or internal. Enlightenment, no matter how you find it, is still enlightenment. And Kiksuya, by any metric of writing, performance, directing, or cinematography, is a singular thing of beauty.
Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, Les Ecorches, here.
US Correspondent Ron Hogan was amazed by the visual beauty of Westworld this week. No show currently airing makes as much use of its surroundings as Westworld. Find more by Ron daily at PopFi.