In Westworld, Dolores questions what to do with Teddy. She concludes that he is a decent person but his decency makes him a liability and has him reprogrammed against his will.
At the edge of the park, Maeve's party is captured and escorted into a shogunate-themed park designed to be more extreme than Westworld called Shogun World. They are taken to a nearby town where they meet Akane, a geisha who plays a similar role to Maeve. Akane is negotiating with a local shogun, but when she kills the shogun's emissary, he retaliates by sending ninjas to kidnap her daughter Sakura and samurai to subjugate the town. During the attack, Maeve forces a ninja to kill himself without voicing a command. Maeve, Akane and Lee infiltrate the shogun's camp to rescue Sakura and find the shogun is damaged and unstable. Akane kills the shogun after he kills Sakura, and Maeve wordlessly forces his samurai to turn on one another. She, Akane and Lee regroup as the shogun's army attacks the camp.
Tropes:
- Are You Sure You Want to Do That?: An assistant asks Dolores if she really wants to change Teddy's settings as the procedure doesn't come without risks.
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: According to Lee, the wholesale copying of narratives from Westworld to Shogun World isn't plagiarism, it's "supply and demand."
- Call-Back: Dolores repeats the view of Robert Ford that suffering is what causes the hosts to experience sentience, as she mind rapes Teddy into submission.Dolores: "To grow, we all need to suffer."
- Cerebus Callback: To the altering of personality settings. When Maeve had it consensually done to herself, it was treated as liberating as she gained in autonomy. When Charlotte and Bernard performed it on Rebus, it was played for laughs. When Dolores forcibly performs it on Teddy, it's treated as if she just raped and murdered him.
- Composite Character: In-Universe, it seems Sizemore merged Maeve's daughter and the modern Hooker with a Heart of Gold iteration of Clementine to write Akane's relationship to Sakura.
- Darker and Edgier: Shogun World was designed to be even more violent than Westworld. Swords and spears are more visceral than bullets, after all.
- Death of Personality: Teddy is forcibly rewritten by Dolores to better suit her needs. She dials his Coordination, Cruelty, Self-Preservation, Decisiveness, Aggression, Tenacity, Courage, and Bulk Apperception to MAX, and doubles his Candor. She leaves his Charm and Loyalty in place. Finally, she dials his Vivacity, Meekness, Humility, Patience, and Sensuality to ZERO. By the end, Theodore Flood's personality is unrecognizable as the man she loved.
- Dissonant Serenity: Maeve and Akane's calm demeanor during the massacre at the Shogun's camp.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Dolores forcibly overwriting Teddy is shot in such a way as to suggest both his rape and murder. It's especially evident because it is shot to callback to The Man in Black's rape and murder of Dolores in Season 1.
- The Dragon: Musashi used to be one for the Shogun as his captain of the guard, according to his backstory. Now his former lieutenant Tanaka fills this role.
- Electronic Telepathy: When she's being a choked by a ninja, Maeve discovers that she can think commands at other hosts and they'll carry them out without question. Previous episodes established that the hosts have a limited Hive Mind designed to keep them on their narratives and away from narratives they aren't involved in, so it's likely Maeve has subconsciously tapped into the network.
- Exact Words: The Shogun makes a deal with Akane: dance for him and he'll return Sakura. When they're about to dance, he kills Sakura. He never specified she'd be returned alive.
- Expy: Thanks to Sizemore's Self-Plagiarism, many Hosts in Shogun World are similar to the Hosts of Westworld. Akane and Sakura are this for Maeve and Clementine. Musashi is one for Hector, and, as Hanaryo is quick to find out, she's one for Armistice.
- Famous-Named Foreigner: The ronin Musashi shares his name with Miyamoto Musashi
, the legendary historical ronin. Justified, in that the character was written and most likely named by Sizemore, who's shown to be a mediocre writer and not above such clichés. - Glasgow Grin: The Shogun gets one, courtesy of Akane, while she's sawing his head off.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: While it is still not clear how much of this is actually true for Dolores and Maeve, it's made explicit to eagle-eyed viewers in a Freeze-Frame Bonus that Teddy has, as his core personality settings don't actually reflect his true personality. For example, his aggression, tenacity, and courage are all relatively low, from the man who went apeshit on William and the Confederados in Season 1, without a hint of hesitation when necessary. His charm is also relatively low, despite literally being a charming good ol'boy cowboy. Finally, his sensuality is at zero, except that in his previous scene, he was involved in the most stylized/intimate sex scene on the show to date.
- Human Shield: Sylvester asks if they are functioning as these for Hanaryo and Musashi.
- Idiot Ball: Some Hosts from Shogun World easily take Maeve, Hector and Armistice captive in spite of Armistice and Hector being nigh-unkillable badasses and Maeve having her attributes maxed out to superhuman levels. All three just stand passively without firing while they're attacked by sword and lasso. The reason for all of this is simply that the plot requires them to go to Shogun World.
- Interchangeable Asian Cultures: Sylvester suggests Felix talk to the Shogun World hosts since he's Asian. Felix snaps back that he's from Hong Kong. Fortunately, Sizemore does speak the language, as does Maeve.
- Kick the Dog: The Shogun offers to give Sakura back to Akane if they both dance for him, only to kill Sakura before the dance starts.
- Legacy Team: Mushashi's gang is lampshaded by Sizemore to be a Shogun replica of Hector's.
- Logical Weakness: Maeve's Compelling Voice fails against the residents of Shogun World because they only speak Japanese and the mechanism which would allow them to understand multiple languages is malfunctioning. Once Maeve accesses her own knowledge of Japanese, she's able to command them. When she does the same to the ninjas, they quickly resort to choking or gagging her to prevent her from speaking, which if not for her newly-found Electronic Telepathy would have resulted in her death.
- Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: Lampshaded by Maeve early on when Musashi threatens them with his sword while they are armed with guns. Cue them getting trapped by lassoes from behind.Maeve: You know the old saying about knives and gunfights?
[gets trapped by a lasso thrown from behind]
Sizemore: Does the saying have a footnote about fucking lassos, then? - Never the Selves Shall Meet: Sizemore notes how meeting what is essentially oneself might throw their programming for a loop. And indeed, Armistice and Hanaryo are staring at each other like they've dropped acid and are watching the pretty lights.
- Off the Rails: Shogun World's narrative slowly goes off-script. The geisha Akane kills the Shogun's emissary to protect Sakura when she's not programmed to be violent, ninjas assault the town to kidnap Sakura when they're not supposed to show up, and the Shogun's army marches into town when they're normally forbidden from doing so. Sizemore even mentions the trope by name. The Shogun doing so is because he is malfunctioning due to a cortical fluid leak, while Akane's behavior is evidently because of Ford.
- Off with His Head!: After the Shogun kills Sakura, Akane uses her dance to get close to him then saw his head off, from his mouth upwards.
- Omniglot:
- All Hosts have the ability to speak multiple languages, presumably for guests that don't speak English (or, in Shogun World, for guests who don't speak Japanese). Normally, this would work like Translator Microbes, take effect as soon as the guests spoke in their own language in the Hosts' presence, and be unnoticeable to the Hosts in question. Unfortunately, this programming is malfunctioning in the Shogun World residents, causing them to only speak and understand Japanese, which means Maeve can't influence them until she switches languages.
- Maeve is consciously fluent in many languages, including Japanese, because it's realistic in her job as town madam.
- Sizemore speaks Japanese, and possibly other languages, since he conceived most of the narratives at the different parks.
- Other Me Annoys Me: Hector has a great dislike of Musashi, as they're in essence the same character. Maeve and Akane initially distrust each other, though they get better.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: As Sizemore points out, crafting 300 original story lines in just three weeks is an impossible task so obviously, he had to basically cut-and-paste the Westworld motifs onto Shogun World.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Maeve takes this to new levels when she learns she can command hosts by thought alone. She discovers the power when she makes a ninja choking her kill himself, then causes the Shogun's entire camp to kill each other.
- Recurring Riff: You might get an early inkling of what was about to go down at Shogun World's equivalent of Sweetwater if you caught the Japanese-styled version of "Paint It Black" starting up on the soundtrack.
- The Reveal: Shogun World, possibly along with the other parks, are more or less copies of Westworld, including its narratives and characters, only changed to reflect the setting of each specific park.
- Robotic Psychopath: The Shogun is suffering from cognitive damage as a result of a cortical fluid leak, making him even more violent than he typically is.
- Rōnin: Musashi is one.
- Secret Test of Character: Two this episode, both by Dolores:
- Dolores tells Teddy a story of when her father's herd of cattle were blighted by flies, and asks what his solution would be. Teddy responds that it would be most humane to quarantine the infected cows and take care of them as best as possible. Dolores responds that her father elected to burn the infected cows alive in order to drive away the flies. Turns out she was testing Teddy's level of empathy, and does not like it that he has any at all.
- Dolores sleeps with Teddy in order to determine if their love is real. She decides that yes, despite the programming, it is real. Then promptly performs a Mind Rape on him to bring him to heel.
- Self-Plagiarism: In-universe, Sizemore cribbed some elements of the main Westworld narrative to set up Shogun World. He freely admits to it, as he had to write hundreds of narratives in just a few weeks.
- Shoot the Messenger: Akane pierces the eye of the Shogun's messenger with her hairpin. He dies instantly.
- Shout-Out: Musashi is apparently named after the legendary ronin Miyamoto Musashi, who pioneered the Dual Wielding technique. He also greatly resembles the actor Toshiro Mifune, who played Musashi in a trio of films.
- Similar Squad: Armistice is surprised when seeing her and Hector's counterparts Hanaryo and Musashi terrorizing Shogun Town.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Dolores deems Teddy too soft for what needs to be done, so she has him reprogrammed to better suit her needs, effectively killing who he once was.
- Villain Protagonist: Dolores is more and more becoming this as she declares her love for Teddy before overwriting his personality to better act as a soldier in her war.
- You Shall Not Pass!: Musashi agrees to buy Maeve's group time by facing the Shogun's forces on his own while the group sneaks out the back.
