Month: March 2020

Warning: Spoilers for The Walking Dead episode “What We Become” follow…

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With tonight’s Walking Dead episode “What We Become” marking star Danai Gurira’s final appearance on the series as Michonne (as she and the character head off into the Rick Grimes movie trilogy), both Gurira and Walking Dead Chief Content Officer Scott M. Gimple appeared on AMC’s Talking Dead after show to discuss the episode and Michonne’s surreal “Sliding Doors”-style exit.

Despite her character not dying, and living on to exist in a different Walking Dead property, Gurira was still, understandably, emotional about this episode. “It’s overwhelming, in a sense, to have walked on this journey with this amazing character and this amazing family, the Walking Dead family out there in Georgia, for all these years.”

“[The episode] was an insane mind trip in so many ways,” Gurira said, though she was hesitant to give this alternate Michonne a label. “I don’t know if I’d call her evil, but she made a different choice at a pivotal moment. And there’s this crazy aspect of how this one choice can send you on entirely different path.”

Gimple then spoke about what he and the writers wanted to convey with Michonne’s final chapter on the show. “At the end of the day, we wanted to give an idea of what the point of the whole thing was,” he shared. “The whole journey. And she enters the story by helping someone. She chose to stop and turn and help a stranger. Over the course of seven seasons she changed. She became vulnerable. She opened up. Now, in this episode, she has a lead on Rick, which is earth-shaking. It changes everything. She has to go. And even as she does that she crosses people who need help. And we see that’s who she really is now. Even though she’s on the most important journey of her life.”

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Michonne as Negan’s Enforcer

Gurira was asked about recreating several moments from the show’s past, including the infamous Negan lineup. “[Michonne] could have chosen to let Andrea die. She was in this moment where she was very disconnected from her humanity. Just one little knock on her heart got through her armor and she saved Andrea and everything changed. But she could have done what we watched in this episode. I found that very chilling. One choice compounds upon itself. And the very idea that she ends up with Negan felt plausible.”

“Just the aspect of being aligned with Negan, I think that alone was freaky,” she said. “[Jeffrey Dean Morgan] and I had this bizarrely good time but you’re just still freaked out that you’re doing that as an actor. But it was all plausible. The idea that there was a part of her, if she’d gone a different way, that made their connection plausible. It was a chilling thing. We spent a lot of time shooting that lineup scene originally. That scene was deeply traumatic, you know, losing Glenn and losing Abraham, and so to recreate it and to be on the other side of it…we set it up in the exact same place, the RV was behind us, and there was Negan with the bat. Everything was very chillingly the same as that night except I was batting on the other side. It was deeply trippy.”

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What’s Next for Michonne

While Michonne’s move to the Rick movies hasn’t been made official, it’s one of the worst kept Walking Dead secrets at this point. And Gimple, while not being able to say anything outright, certainly teased as much.

“I can say this: Both Rick Grimes and Andy Lincoln would not give up those boots very easily,” he said. “There’s the etching. There’s a Japanese phrase there. There’s Michonne, and there looks to be a more current Judith than perhaps Rick…yeah, there you go. Is he alive? Is he dead? What’s the situation. Those are clues that there’s a whole story unfolding somewhere.”

When Michonne saw those boots, she confronted a part of herself that she had to bury long ago. “[Seeing Rick’s boots] feeds something inside of her that she’s tried to keep down for many years, that she put aside for the good of everyone around her,” Gurira said. “It was an awesome thing for me to see Michonne get back. To get connected to him again to have some of her hunches start to be validated.”

“[Rick leaving] was last year for us, as viewers of The Walking Dead, but for Michonne it’s been years,” Gimple added. “To see this, it just pulls her through time. It’s a whole other world.”

“Her story isn’t done,” Gimple concluded. “And the thing we were so happy to find, thematically, was we were able to conclude the character. Michonne is the person who would help those people at the end, even though she has no idea who they are. And they have this weird fashion sense. And she has a lead on Rick. And we see this group, this organized, nomadic, strong-looking group. And she’s going to them on behalf of these other people. Something’s going on here. It was great to see the character fulfill her arc in the story while also opening up a whole other story while on the road to a story we want to know more about, which is Rick.”

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.

Warning: this review contains full spoilers for Batwoman: Season 1, Episode 16. If you need a refresher on where we left off, here’s our review for Season 1, Episode 15.

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They say a hero is only as compelling as their archenemy. That’s certainly been true for Batwoman in the Arrowverse. This series only really seems to thrive when Alice is handled with an appropriate amount of depth, which hasn’t always been the case. But potholes aside, the series has by and large seen dramatic improvement on the Alice front ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths. “Through the Looking-Glass” continues that trend, proving once again that Alice works best when she’s less an outright villain and more a distorted reflection of her twin sister.

The lines between the two are more blurred than ever, with this episode exploring the fallout of Kate’s little act of manslaughter. Initially, it doesn’t seem as though Episode 16 is really going to take advantage of that twist, with Alice playing the usual “betray her family and scamper off into the night” card once again. Thankfully, it’s not long before the plot kicks back into gear as Alice discovers her entire gang slaughtered and realizes Kate is her only hope. We can probably assume that’s the handiwork of Mabel Cartwright, but whatever the case, that killer is a problem for another day.

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Once the Kane sisters are reunited, this episode does take advantage of their evolving dynamic and Kate’s difficult emotional journey. Crisis: Part 2 continues to cast a long shadow over the series. Without ever having to overtly reference that episode’s Kate/Bruce reunion, we know exactly what’s going through Kate’s mind as she grapples with a line crossed and the fear she’s doomed to become the unrepentant killer Alice and Evil Bruce are. Maybe it’s just in the family genes?

Once again, the series proves that Alice works better as an agent of chaos whose goals occasionally align with those of her sister, rather than a straightforward villain. There’s plenty of good sibling drama to be found her, but also a welcome dose of humor and even a little low-key bonding time. This has been a common refrain in recent reviews, but Rachel Skarsten’s performance really benefits from the opportunities to play Alice as a multifaceted character who isn’t constantly putting on a scenery-chewing persona.

All of this culminates nicely in the raid on Arkham Asylum. The fight scenes are entertaining, if a bit hindered by the same lighting and visibility problem that’s plagued so many Arrow episodes. Through it all, there’s the nagging question of why Kate is willing to go so far to help her sister when it means turning two hardened, mentally unstable criminals out in the world. The answer is very satisfying. Alice winds up being hoisted on her own petard for a change, and the result is another deeply heartfelt, traumatic moment between the two sisters. They seem forever doomed to be driven apart whenever there’s a hope of reconciliation.

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Thankfully, the Luke-centric B-plot is able to hold up its end surprisingly well. The series has been slow to flesh out Luke and transform him into something more than just another snarky Arrowverse tech dude. But with this week delving much deeper into the mystery of Lucius Fox’s death and Luke’s conflicted emotions, the character is finally getting the attention he deserves. That this comes at the same time Julia Pennyworth returns to town is just icing on the cake. This episode successfully builds an intriguing conspiracy out of Lucius’ murder and makes Luke a more critical piece of the Season 1 puzzle. Even Sophie seems to benefit from being drawn into this tangled web. In general, Batwoman is just a more interesting series thanks to these most recent two episodes.

The developers of Halo Infinite have shared another behind-the-scenes look at how they are capturing sounds for the game, and, like the ones before it, this latest video is a delight.

The team at 343 Industries visited the Powerland Heritage Park in Oregon to record steam engines that will serve as the inspiration for some of the sounds you’ll hear in Halo Infinite. Specifically, the steam engines will bring to life some “mechanical sounds” for Halo Infinite.

Check out the video below and try to guess what these sounds may be used for in Halo Infinite. It’s always a special treat to see these types of videos.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Mortal Kombat, also known as Mortal Kombat 9, is no longer available for purchase digitally on Steam. As VG247 has reported, the game’s Steam page states that the Komplete Edition–the only edition available for sale digitally–was removed from sale “at the request of the publisher.”

While it’s not entirely clear why this has happened, VG247 speculates that its removal may have something to do with the rights to Freddy Krueger, who appears as a fighter in the Komplete Edition. As reported by Bloody Disgusting, the rights to the character reverted back to Wes Craven’s estate in 2019, and thus his appearance in the game might need to be re-negotiated.

As of right now, the game is still available for digital purchase on PlayStation 3, but not on Xbox 360. It’s unclear whether this is set to change, or whether there are plans to return the game to Steam or other digital stores in the future.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Warning: The following contains full spoilers for The Walking Dead episode “What We Become”…

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Season 10’s “What We Become” wound up being Walking Dead star Danai Gurira’s final appearance as Michonne on the series, as the character now heads off to become part of the Rick Grimes movie trilogy.

So how did it all play out? What happened after Michonne overpowered Kevin Carroll’s Virgil and fought through the hallucinogenic effects of the drug he dosed her with? This was The Walking Dead’s chance to set Michonne up for her next adventure, while also cluing us in a little bit as to Rick Grimes’ fate after the mystery helicopter stole him away during the first half of Season 9.

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Before we get into that, let’s quickly break down what we know about the group that took Rick in the first place.

What The “Three Rings” or “Three Circles” Symbol Means

Six years back, in The Walking Dead’s timeline, Anne (formerly Jadis) had a deal going with a clandestine, well-armed group that had access to a helicopter. In exchange for supplies, she and her trash goblins would provide the group, which used three interlocking rings (or circles) for its symbol, with live human specimens, which she was told to classify as “A”s or “B”s (we can still only guess at their meaning). After Rick didn’t die in the bridge explosion back in Season 9’s “What Comes After,” Anne saved him by handing him over to the group, which took them both away in a chopper. Unfortunately, no one in Rick’s life knew this happened and everyone assumed he died (though Daryl spent quite a while in the woods looking for a body). Then the show jumped forward six years.

The Three Rings group appeared on Fear the Walking Dead as well, which back in its fifth season was taking place at the same time as The Walking Dead’s Season 9 before six-year time jump. So operatives depicted in FTWD’s “The End of Everything” (which was the first time we saw soldiers from the group) were the same kind that were around when Rick got stolen. Fear’s Althea, played by Maggie Grace, had a run-in – and romantic interlude – with a Three Rings soldier named Isabelle. She learned that the group saw themselves as “the future” and that everything they were doing was to rebuild society – they were not living for themselves now; the big, lofty goal of saving humanity was all that mattered. Isabelle was part of Ground 17, a recon squad that acquired supplies and tech. The “Reclamation Group” were sent in when things went south, and they more than likely just wiped everything out with brute force.

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In the upcoming two-season limited series The Walking Dead: World Beyond, which will now air later this year instead of April, the main characters live inside one of the “circles.” That’s right, the Three Rings represent three massive communities and the young heroes in World Beyond, who’ve grown up behind walls and barely interacted with walkers, live in one of those communities. Their adventure now lines up, time-wise, with where The Walking Dead’s timeline is now, which is about a decade into the zombocalypse. So the Three Rings group is also a bit older than when they took Rick. And actress Julia Ormond is one of the Three Ring leaders.

How Michonne’s Exit Connects to Rick

After her struggles with Virgil, who locked her up and drugged her, we see Michonne rifling through the Navy Research Facility’s supplies. There she’s stunned to find Rick’s boots. How could this be? Where did they come from? After threatening Virgil, he tells her about a ship that had washed up during the “big storm.”

Side Quest: Which “big storm” is he talking about? It could be the giant blizzard from Season 9’s finale, “The Storm,” which would make the shipwreck recent. Or it could be from the hurricane that blasted through Fear the Walking Dead in the back half of Season 4. Of course, that storm was happening in Texas and not Virginia. But… it also happened six years ago. So it’s all about what makes more sense. Was Rick on this doomed ship recently or years ago?

Anyhow, Michonne discovers a ship’s log that tracks the vessel from Virginia to a port in New Jersey. Was the boat headed there when it got jacked up? Or had it already arrived there and then got lost afterward? Either way, Michonne’s best chance of tracking Rick would be to head to that port in New Jersey.

Then there’s the final piece of the puzzle – the phone with the doodles of Rick and…Carl? Judith? It has to be Carl, right? The height makes you think of Judith, but she and Carl basically had the same hair. And Rick wouldn’t/shouldn’t know what Judith looks like now.

But wait. What if it is Judith? What would that mean? Was someone taking pictures of them for Rick? Because the names written out next to them, in Japanese hiragana, seem to be Michonne and Judith, if we’re sounding them out phonetically. That would change A LOT. It would mean this was a recent boat trip and that Rick has been nearby for years. The biggest challenge the Rick movies will face is explaining why Rick never went back home. If he was taken overseas, then it makes sense why he’d be stuck. Hopefully, he hasn’t been kept prisoner this whole time. But if he was nearby, and had a choice, then they’ll have to come up with a huge reason why he didn’t go back.

Anyhow, there are a lot of questions. Whoever did this seemed to trace a cellphone image onto the phone itself. Perhaps in order to preserve it once the battery died. Does the three-rings group have working cellphones? Not in an online sense, of course, but in a “taking pictures” sense.  There’s a lot we don’t know here and perhaps too much to speculate about.

In the end, Michonne winds up somewhere else. We don’t know where (might be Jersey) and we don’t know when (a month?), but we see her briefly crawl back into her early Michonne mindset as she de-jaws a couple chained walkers. But when she’s asked for help, from two strangers, she extends a hand. What do they want? Well, they want to catch up to a massive procession of people moving with horses and wagons.

The strangers, one of whom is injured, note that these fools won’t wait for them. Yup, stragglers get left behind. That sure sounds like the three-rings harshness, doesn’t it? Whoever they are, they also have each block surrounded by, presumably, soldiers, in a square, to protect the supplies and civilians in the middle. It’s a very big and organized convoy. One that Michonne hopes to join. We’ll have to see where it takes her next…

Where do you think Michonne is heading, and what do you make of the clues about Rick’s current location? Share your theories in the comments!

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow…

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Walking Dead star Danai Gurira’s final episode, “What We Become,” turned out to be an exceptional and moving chapter that acted as both an alternate timeline retrospective and a nice push forward into the realm of…whatever the Rick movies are going to be about.

Which is a relief not only because Michonne is such an important legacy character on the series, who deserves a proper send off, but also because the way the story shuffled Michonne off the board in the midseason finale felt rushed and clunky.

For the show to rebound from this — from Michonne’s oddball choice to head off with a suspicious (to say the least) stranger across water, leaving Judith behind — is a wonderful thing. Firstly, it involved giving Michonne an entire episode to herself, which is challenging to do when fans probably wanted to see an immediate follow up to Alpha’s death. Secondly, the writers discovered a creative way to take us back through Michonne’s history without anyone around for her to talk to. Meaning, she had no one, like Daryl or Carol, to reflect with or recollect the long road they’d all been on together. Michonne’s trip here was all in her head, and it was a Jonathan Crane-style blast.

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Michonne Will Remember That

Curiously, the episode opened with a “WTF?” scenario in which Michonne doesn’t save Andrea at the end of Season 2. We’d have to wait a little while before that multiverse version of Michonne was explained.

As it turned out, all of our instincts were right about Virgil (The Leftovers’ Kevin Carroll). Not that he was an evil person, per se, but that he was “off.” He’d snapped. His family was dead and his claims of a weapons cache was a soft lie. Michonne was led into a Navy Research Facility because Virgil want her to put down the undead versions of his wife and kids, whom he’d accidentally trapped inside a building with walkers. He wanted to bury them properly and he needed her sword skills. Though this crucible, Virgil got to briefly become a Scarecrow-type villain, capturing Michonne in a Saw bathroom and dosing her with some type of psychotropic drug that put her through the mental wringer.

Now…there’s really only one big theme The Walking Dead ever tackles, and it’s been doing it for a decade straight. Do humans become the real monsters in times of panic and peril? The show is all about the choices we make and how we need to cooperate and what happens when a single strand of that blanket starts to unravel. We’ve pretty much gone through every scenario for this. We’ve also witnessed enough show exits that also deal with the power of hope and good will. So the fact that we got a whole new take on the same tune was kind of thrilling.

Michonne’s vision/journey took her through a timeline of alternate Telltale Games choices in which: She didn’t save Andrea, she got abandoned by Daryl, wound up joining the Saviors, rose up to become Negan’s right hand, and then got killed by Rick in the big war. It was crazy. Also, the flashbacks were a stark reminder that — oh yeah! — Rick, Glenn, and others totally went into a Savior compound and murdered people in their sleep. Well, except in this world, Michonne survived the ambush and killed Glenn. And with him gone, she was the one who swung Lucille down on the head of…herself. Okay, that part was more trippy than timeline tweaking.

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When Michonne came out of this left turn timeline, she was able to curb her anger and spare Virgil’s life (while convincing the other scientists he’d imprisoned to do the same). It was yet another way for the show to remind people to be merciful in times of strife and sourness. And as a fortuitous reward, Virgil took her to an abandoned ship that just so happened to be a vessel Rick was once on. Yup, it had his boots and it had a log of ports that it had used in its travels. All in all, this escort side quest turned into a very compelling look into Michonne as a character who had to be coaxed back from the brink of wrath and isolation by love and camaraderie. Sadly, she couldn’t convince Virgil to leave behind his anguish.

Hey Jude(ith)

The final part of Michonne’s journey on this series involved saying goodbye to Judith who, basically, gave Michonne permission to go. Looking back at how the final conflict with the Whisperers quickly played out — over the course of four or five days, really — it made a lot more sense that by the time Michonne ran through her Virgil mission (where he decided to stay back on the island and slip even further into madness) Alpha was dead and there was no need for her to have return to give them guns or protect her children. Everything needed to be safe back at home or else there’s no way she’d be able to head off in search of Rick.

In fact, the show teased us a tiny bit by not letting us in on what situation Judith was in. Was she locked down with the other kids during the assault on Hilltop? If so, Michonne would have had to come rushing back. After a few minutes, we were let in on what was happening in Judith’s world. Alpha was defeated and things were, presumedly, calming down.

Sure, it would have been better for Michonne to have a face to face with someone before leaving the series, but her walkie chat with Judith still managed to tug on all the heartstrings. The fact that, after six plus years, the two of them now have a breadcrumb that definitely suggests Rick was alive at some point in those six years, that he didn’t go down with the bridge, is huge. And once Judith heard the news, she new her dad needed her mom to save him. “What if he needs you more?” was a great line.

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Inspired by the actions of Ryan Reynolds and Jimmy Fallon, who have both made big donations to charities helping people affected by COVID-19 (coronavirus), Ninja and his wife-slash-manager Jessica Blevins have pledged $150,000 to Feeding America.

In a video, the Mixer streamer announced his own donation, as well as encouraging those who still have spare cash to donate as well. They’re also using Ninja’s social influence to promote measures to flatten the curve, reiterating how important it is to take coronavirus seriously and practice social distancing.

The charity they’ve chosen, Feeding America, is currently working to help the huge number of people who’ve been affected by coronavirus in America, with a dedicated COVID-19 response fund. The work Feeding America is doing includes making sure the 22 million children who rely on school lunches are still able to access good meals while schools are closed. It’s also working to distribute other essential supplies such as cleaning supplies, diapers and personal care products to those in need.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Full spoilers for Westworld Season 3, Episode 2 follow.

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No, your eyes were not deceiving you. Based on the latest episode of Westworld, it looks like there’s a Game of Thrones park in the Westworld universe!

Let’s just call it Westeros World.

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Was that Drogon the Dragon in Westworld?

O.K., maybe it’s not specifically a Game of Thrones World, but at the very least there’s some kind of fantasy-based park which Bernard describes as Park 4. And this place has a dragon which looks exactly like Drogon. We see the dragon chained up in one of the high-tech Delos labs that keeps the parks like Westworld and Shogunworld running. And Westeros World as it turns out.

Oh, and it’s also got Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss working as techs behind the scenes. And they’re talking about Jurassic Park… or a start-up in Costa Rica, at least. But you know what that means… Jurassic Park’s Isla Nublar is off the west coast of Costa Rica, after all.

The Jurassic Park/Westworld Connection

Of course, the late author and filmmaker Michael Crichton created both Jurassic Park and Westworld.

Westworld showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy explained to IGN that these Easter eggs came about because they just wanted to have a little fun with their friends Benioff and Weiss.

“Especially the Jurassic Park part of it, which we couldn’t resist,” laughed Nolan. “The argument there was all between whether or not one of the parks should be Westeros World, which George RR Martin has been pitching for years, and Dan and David — who are friends of ours and who we have joked about over the years [about] Jurassic Park, of course Crichton’s other theme park gone-wrong classic. And so we found a way to bring both of those great flavors together. We pitched to our friends Dan and Dave, whose show we dearly loved and really sort of blazed the trail for ambitious filmmaking on television. We pitched them this dumb idea, and they were kind enough to show up and play with us for a night. We bought them a beer afterwards, and it was an absolute pleasure having them on our set.”

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When we asked whether or not the Drogon seen in Westworld was created by the same effects house or from the same project files that were used on Game of Thrones, Nolan and Joy had no idea what we meant…

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Nolan straight-faced. “They brought Drogon with them.”

Added Joy: “With a very large leash and a muzzle that’s fire-resistant.”

Anyway, for those who are keeping count, we now know what four of the six Delos parks are on Westworld:

• Park 1 is the Old West-themed Westworld.
• Park 2 is Shogunworld, with a focus on feudal Japan.
• Park 3 is the World War II-era Warworld.
• Park 4 is an unnamed Westeros-type world.
• Park 5 remains unidentified.
• Park 6 is the Colonial India park The Raj.

What could Park 5 be? Maybe it’s based on another HBO show? Sopranos World? The Wire World? Big Little Lies World? Let us know what you think in the comments, and for more on Westworld be sure to check out a couple of the most popular fan theories about Westworld Season 3, hear what the showrunners had to say about the new season’s big changes, or catch up on the first two seasons with our recap in six minutes!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has tracked the best ever launch numbers in physical sales for a Switch game in the UK. The initial sales for Nintendo’s latest big game are the system’s best ever, unless you count Pokemon Sword/Shield as a single game and combine their sales.

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that the launch sales numbers for the latest Animal Crossing in the UK are higher than the launch sales of every previous Animal Crossing game–including spin-offs like Happy Home Designer–combined. Although exact numbers are not given for individual games, New Horizons led in a week where 475,000 physical games were sold.

It’s worth noting that these figures do not include digital sales at all, which likely drive New Horizons’ total sales much, much higher.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

This review contains spoilers for Westworld Season 3, episode 2, “The Winter Line.” To refresh your memory of where we left off, check out our Westworld Season 3 premiere review.

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Westworld’s third season commenced so boldly that seeing it lapse into familiar rhythms only one week later is a major disappointment. The characters, locations, and fascinating developments that were introduced over the course of the premiere have been temporarily abandoned, in favor of some necessary but tedious exposition and the hurried rearrangement of the show’s component parts. Leaving behind the near-future Los Angeles that was the first episode’s vivid new backdrop, we return instead to the Delos parks and their sleek chrome laboratories, populated by anonymous-looking technicians, submachine gun-toting security guards, and statuesque host bodies hanging around in the nude — the customary fixtures of Westworld circa Seasons 1 and 2. Perhaps this digression is needed to orchestrate the action to come. But in light of the changes heralded by the premiere, this episode mainly seems dull in comparison.

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The episode begins in War World, where we glimpsed Maeve in last week’s post-credits scene. A remote rural village under Nazi occupation, War World is a corollary park to Westworld and Shogun World, replete with its own iteration of Hector Escaton. It soon transpires that War World is not simply another Delos theme park in which robots think they’re human. It’s an elaborate simulation — one manufactured to deceive Maeve into leading its creators to the Forge. Even Hector has been shuttled into the programming in order to play on Maeve’s well-documented affection for the guy, and as she starts to clue in to the fact that things aren’t right, she once again refuses to be duped into being a pawn.

Before “is this a simulation or the real world” threatens to eclipse “is this person a human or a host” as the season’s prevailing mystery, any potential ambiguity is clarified by a small but crucial device: the simulation is presented in a different aspect ratio, making it instantly obvious which is which, and presumably neutralizing theories about whether other locations and plotlines are real or simulated as well. Westworld has a tendency to court this kind of wild speculation, and there are already Reddit theories that the Los Angeles we saw in Westworld’s premiere is fake. It’s something of a relief to find this simulation clearly delineated, if only because it defines the stakes concretely and does not distract from the action. We know what’s real, we know what isn’t, and we know that Maeve needs to escape this place.

If Maeve’s escape plan seems familiar, that’s because it’s virtually identical to the scheme Rick Sanchez devises to escape a similar simulation in an episode of Rick and Morty. Much like Rick, Maeve quickly determines that the simulation in which she’s trapped must have limited processing power, and reasons that she may be able to break the program if she can overwhelm the system. And while she doesn’t perform her new song “The Recipe for Concentrated Dark Matter” to a crowd of simulated concertogers, she does stump some lab techs by posing complicated math problems and overloads the mainframe by orchestrating a massive Nazi shoot-out. This is the Westworld equivalent of instructing everyone whose first name begins with an “l” who isn’t Hispanic to walk in a circle the same number of times as the square root of your age times ten.

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Program frozen and system crashed, Maeve swiftly concocts a way to actually leave the simulation proper — by commandeering a maintenance drone and steering it toward freedom in the real world. This maneuver occasions another action set piece featuring armed guards and first-person carnage, and like the action sequences in the premiere, it’s a spectacular showcase of bravura blockbuster filmmaking — a taut chase made with flair. And while it doesn’t amount to much, leaving the robot destroyed on the front lawn of a computer lab and Maeve in the hands of another would-be master, it at least affords a respite from exposition.

The respite is brief. In the aftermath of these exploits, Maeve finds herself in the company of the mysterious Serac, played by the great French actor Vincent Cassel. You may recall that Serac is the other co-founder of Incite, alongside Liam Dempsey, and is the creator of the strategy engine, Rehoboam, that is gradually emerging as the center of the season. Dolores revealed toward the end of the last episode that it’s really Serac, not Dempsey, that she is after — and we now discover, in a convenient bit of symmetry, that Serac is after Dolores, too. Maeve’s episode-long adventure in a simulated world ultimately amounts to this exchange with Serac and the mission he commissions her to execute: find Dolores and destroy her. Which of course sets up the central drama of the season to come very nicely. It’s Maeve vs Dolores: host against host, free will against free will.

Meanwhile, as Maeve conducts her escape, there’s Bernard, who has reunited with Ashley Stubbs, recently repaired after a botched suicide attempt. Seeking the “pure” technical analysis only a Delos tablet can provide, Bernard and Stubbs make their way to the labs of “Park 4,” a medieval-themed park where to-scale host dragons are being tinkered with by lab techs played by Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. (The much-anticipated cameo is one of the episode’s few moments of real surprise and delight – watch the video below to see how it came together.)

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As for Bernard, what’s he after? He tells Stubbs that he wants to locate Maeve, because he needs her help to find Dolores, who we know he fears might have messed with his programming — and who he wants to prevent from eradicating the entire human race. But these motivations are inexplicable. Dolores, Bernard tries to explain, saved him because she apparently “needs a check on herself,” but why she needs that, and what that entails, remains unclear. Is she conflicted? Does she like the challenge? It doesn’t seem like an intriguing mystery so much as a vague bit of screenwriting, and it makes the Bernard material in the episode feel aimless and dull.

The episode culminates in new directions for old protagonists. Over in Westworld, Bernard has reprogrammed Stubbs to be his private Terminator buddy, duty-bound to protect him as they embark on the still-confusing quest to conscript Maeve and thwart Dolores. While Maeve herself, currently a guest of Serac in his lavish villa, will no doubt be meeting up with her imminently. It took some time to move us away from the detritus of former seasons and toward the frontier of the developing action, but the good news is that the players are all in position, poised to coincide in Los Angeles. If this narrative detour is what it takes to follow through on the promise of the premiere, so be it — may it be justified by the much-anticipated collision.