In “Virtù e Fortuna”, the third episode of Season 2 of ‘’Westworld’’, the hit HBO series moves into uncharted territory.
In the 3rd episode of the 2nd Season of ‘’Westworld’’, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) is told by Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) that this world is just a tiny spot on the much bigger world’s surface.
While his claim was true – as the world is much bigger than the park in which both of them live – but the grandeur of the park was much more than anyone could have imagined. For, of the two parks which we were able to see in this episode – there are at least six that we know of – robot elephants were shown grazing in the fields.
On the whole, we think that “Virtù e Fortuna” was a solid advertisement of the drama’s second season, though, at the same time, we could argue that it was not as exciting as its immediate predecessors.
For one thing, the episode dragged the story of Bernard and Charlotte, though it was able to attract the attention of its audiences by moving some of the smaller stories along, like Hector’s and Maeve’s relationship and Teddy’s lack of trust in Dolores.
More importantly for the health of this show, the 2nd episode was able to carve up new mysteries, an important feat considering the fact that few of our big questions – which we had coming into this season – were already answered.
For instance, we don’t know the identity of the woman from the other park. Nor do we know how was Bernard able to survive, or the ‘’consciousness’’ of hosts apart from Maeve, Bernard, and Dolores.
Tiger’s Eye
The best scene in “Virtù e Fortuna” was when it gave us a peek outside the Westworld park, as we haven’t been out of it before that. We are taken to a nameless world – probably in Imperial India – where we meet two guests, a man, and a woman.
Both of them immediately fall in love with each other, and after spending some time in their room, the woman shot the man to make sure that he was real and not a host. While the man didn’t die that day, he was killed the next in a jungle when the pair decides to go on a tiger hunt near the edge of their park.
After killing the man, the tiger also chases the woman to the park’s edge. However, unlike her man, she proves to be industrious as she shoots the tiger near the edge of the cliff.
Finally, when the episode’s about to end, we are shown that the woman – despite falling off the cliff’s edge – was able to survive. However, her troubles were not yet over as, after crawling to the safety of the shore, she comes to know that she is under the jurisdiction of Ghost Nation.
Family Ties
The episode also takes us back to the ‘’present’’ where Bernard, Stubbs, and Karl find Charlotte. She’s surprised not only to see Bernard alive but also about him still finding Peter Abernathy. Afterward, Bernard comes back to the future where he, alongside Charlotte, is searching for Abernathy.
Both of them are then kidnapped, alongside a large number of gala guests, by the rapist hosts. With his usual trickery, Bernard is able to sway one of the hosts to release both of them, after which they are able to rescue Abernathy.
However, just before they are able to run away, both Bernard and Abernathy, are caught by the Confederados, while Charlotte gets away. Aiming to save Abernathy – whom she considers her father despite knowing that she wasn’t born, but made – Charlotte was able to lure QA forces to help her.
In the meantime, the Confederados take both Bernard and Abernathy to the fort. By a stroke of good fortune, Dolores happens to be at the same fort. She recruits the general of the fort to help her in exchange for the machine guns of QA forces.
Assault
In the final stages of the episode, the security guards of Delos attack the Confederado fort, with their attack getting the enemy by surprise. However, once Angela blows the nitro, things start to go wrong for the Delos employees as well as the Dolores’ allied Confederados.
After shutting down all of them on the gate’s outside, Dolores men shot the Confederados through the door. When few survivors are left, Dolores asks Teddy to do the noble deed and kill them. However, he is unable to do so. He grants the remaining survivors pardon and, as we see in the last few seconds of the episode, Dolores wasn’t too happy with that.
Then, in the last scene of the episode, a shaky Bernard was seen being dragged away from the battlefield by Clementine.
