After a quick trip across Shogun World to the Shogun’s encampment, where they found the park’s QA reinforcements dead and strung-up (and Lee managed to procure a walkie-talkie without Maeve noticing), they arrive at the camp and meet the Shogun, who they learn Maeve cannot control because the man’s cerebral unit is damaged (similar to Bernard), and he is leaking brain-fluid. To make matters worse, he has been warned about Maeve being a “witch” and burned the ears off all of his Daimyo’s (and some of his men) so Maeve cannot control them with her words. Their only way out is for Akane to make a deal with the man, and all he wants, apparently, is for Akane and Sakura to dance for him that evening, which clearly seems too easy.
And it is.
First off, they have branded Sakura with an intricate and beautiful tattoo scar on her back of a cherry blossom tree, the pain of which she is still suffering through as she and Akane prep for the dance. Maeve offers to set Akane free of this whole story (which, even though it has “gone off the rails” in Lee’s words, is still a story), but Akane does not want to be free in that way, as she is worried it will separate her from Sakura, which Maeve understands. 
However, she does invite both of them to join her on her quest to save her own daughter and escape the park. Sadly, for Sakura at least, it was not meant to be.
As the night begins and Sakura and Akane are about to begin their dance on stage, the Shogun approaches and says one thing is missing, and promptly pulls out his sword and stabs Sakura, killing her on the spot. He then sits back down and waits for Akane to begin her dance. And shockingly, the woman maintains her composure and does her dance for the Shogun, though as we all suspected, she ends it by pulling out a knife and stabbing the demented man in the head. 
She then proceeds to slice said head in half, around nose level, meaning she was cutting through bone and skull, proving this place really is violent as hell as Lee stated earlier.
The daimyo’s scream that Akane and Maeve are assassins and pull them to the ground for beheadings but at that moment, Maeve finds her voice-less control power once more and orders every Samurai in the Shogun’s camp to attack and kill one another, leaving no one left alive but her group, though an alarm does go out. The episode ends with the rest of the Shogun’s army running toward the camp as reinforcements and Maeve grabbing a sword, preparing to fight them off with the rest of her people.
WORLD OF THEORIES:
Could Dolores have wiped the minds of every Host in the flooded Valley? Or even more troubling, could she have CREATED all of those Hosts just to be literally dummies/decoys for Delos, while the real Hosts lie in wait to ambush and kill the Delos army?- Will Maeve simply use her new ability to kill the rest of the Shogun army? Or is there a chance she will take control of them and not kill them, but take them as her own? How much control of this ability does she have at the moment?
- What exactly does Dolores want to do with Teddy? And could any part of the original Teddy somehow be saved/ stored somewhere either in the network or in his mind hard drive?
- Does Akane have the potential to do what Maeve can because she is Maeve’s doppelgänger?
- Was the episode foreshadowing what might happen to Maeve’s daughter in what happened to Akane’s daughter Sakura?
- NEW THOUGHT FOR THE SEASON – with all the child imagery in the opening credits, and the shot of the HAT, (most closely associated with the MIB/ William), I had the thought during the opening credits this week that maybe William is not a Host, but perhaps his DAUGHTER, Emily, is. It would be a great way for Ford to mess with William, would explain a lot of the imagery in the opening credits, and would explain why they never had the other guest test HER when she was first introduced, even after she was obsessed with making sure he was not a Host.
Great episode. While some friends of mine complained that some of the Dolores and Teddy bits were a little slow (so much so that they fell asleep…) I enjoyed every minute of it, especially since I had a feeling she was going to turn on him. I am so excited to see them use more of Shogun World on the series now and find out more about all of the characters, especially Musashi, one of my new favorites, as he clearly has more backstory that I want to find out about, and is the most highly skilled warrior we have seen in Shogun World so far. See you back here next week for episode 6!
