Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Westworld" season two, episode three, "Virtù e Fortuna."
It's past time we talk about the Native and Ghost Nation Tribe hosts on HBO's "Westworld." This subset of hosts in the park have their important mythology and connection to Arnold's maze and the events of the rebellion, and we're here to gather everything we know about this set of characters.
On the latest episode, season two's "Virtù e Fortuna," Maeve once again encountered the formidable Ghost Nation hosts. She had a flash of traumatizing memories, which included a new look at the maze pattern we hadn't seen before.
This brings up a whole host of mysteries surround the Native hosts, Arnold's maze, Maeve, Hector, and how everything seems to be linked.
Let's take a closer look at everything we know about these important hosts on "Westworld," and how they connect to our major characters.
The first appearance of the maze and Kissy's importance
We were first introduced to Native hosts on the pilot episode. Kissy, one of the card dealers at the Mariposa, was the man William first attacked and scalped. The bartender called Kissy "half cornhusker," a slur that implied Kissy is a host who is part Native.
First reports on Kissy's character, played by Eddie Rouse, said his name was "short for Kisecawchuck" and described the role as a "laconic American-Indian card and contraband dealer from the town saloon [and] an expert in games both on and off the card table."
After William had drained blood out of Kissy and was getting ready to scalp him, he said: "A lot of wisdom in ancient cultures. Perhaps it's time to dig deeper into yours."
At the episode's end, we saw that Arnold's maze was imprinted on the inside of Kissy's scalp.
Kissy might have been destined for a larger role in "Westworld," but the actor Eddie Rouse died unexpectedly from liver disease shortly after filming the pilot episode in 2014.
"Westworld" co-creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy said they chose not to recast the role of Kissy after Rouse's death, and that they had "a very cool arc laid out for his character"which was instead abandoned.
Maeve's connection to the Native hosts
On season one, episode two, "Chestnut," Maeve has flashbacks of her homestead being attacked by the Ghost Nation hosts. These memory flashes begin after Dolores tells Maeve the "these violent delights have violent ends" code trigger.
The first memory Maeve re-experiences is her in the homestead narrative being attacked by a group of Native hosts. We see one attempting to scalp her head while she struggles.
Later in that same episode, Maeve goes to sleep and has an extended "dream." It starts with flashes of a peaceful life with her daughter, but transitions back into the attack. We see the same host trying to scalp Maeve — the one who came back on season two, episode three in the river scene.
The other Native hosts are killing people (likely other hosts) with bows and arrows, and as Maeve escapes and runs back to the house with her daughter, a host follows them.
Maeve scrambles to load her weapon, and sees the Native host coming. But as he moves past the window and opens the door, the host changes into William.
William recounted his attack on Maeve later in the first season
Later on the season, we learn why Maeve has this traumatic memory of William entering her home (though we aren't told why her memory switches a Ghost Nation host into William).
William confesses to Teddy that he had returned to the park after his wife's suicide in order to test his true nature.
"I didn't join one of Ford's stories, I created my own, a test," William said. "A very simple one: I found a woman, an ordinary homesteader and her daughter. I wanted to see if I had it in me to do something truly evil. To see what I was truly made of. I killed her and her daughter, just to see what I felt."
The scene flashes back to Maeve's dream again, but this time we saw the whole thing play out. William stabbed Maeve in the stomach, and shot and killed her daughter.
"Then, just when I thought it was done, the woman refused to die [...] and then something miraculous happened. In all my years coming here, I'd never seen anything like it," William said.
William saw Maeve stand up again, and carry her daughter out into the field.
"She was alive, truly alive, if only for a moment. And that was when the maze revealed itself to me."
The maze appeared in the dirt field where Maeve carried her daughter, and they both laid down to die.
Later we saw Maeve in the Mesa facility, and she has a core code malfunction. Bernard and Ford try to reset her and erase her memory, but she stands up and kills herself by driving a scalpel into her neck. We eventually learn that this is why she was reassigned to her role at the Mariposa saloon, approximately one year before the main events of season one take place.
Hector's connection to the Native hosts and the "Shades"
Maeve isn't the only character whose story is rooted in the maze and Native hosts' lore. On the fourth episode of season one, William helps Hector escape from a jail cell because he thinks Hector and his bandits know something that will help him find the maze.
"I'm just curious about your world view," William asks Hector. "Some kind of half-Native mumbo jumbo?"
This was one of our first clues that Hector is a host designed as part-Native. Later on the same episode, Clementine reminds Maeve of this fact.
"Is that the one they say lives out with the savages?" Clementine asks when Hector's name comes up.
Also on this episode, Maeve watches as a group of Native hosts are being escorted out of Sweetwater by soldiers. She notices one young girl drop a doll that looks just like the technician workers who fix the hosts' bodies in the Delos facility.
Maeve had been drawing a similar looking image over and over as she had flashbacks to her awake experience inside the Delos facility.
Maeve runs after the girl to ask her what it was, but a soldier tells her it was no use.
"That thing is part of their so-called religion," he said. "Ain't none of thems gonna tell you nothing about that."
But she realized that Hector might know, and ropes him into explaining what they are.
"This is a Shade — sacred Native lore," Hector said when Maeve showed him the drawing. "They make figures of them."
"And what does this Shade do? What is it?" Maeve asked.
"The man who walks between worlds," Hector says. "They were sent from hell to oversee our world. The Dreamwalker said there were some who could see them. That it's a blessing from God, to see the masters who pull your strings."
This "Dreamwalker" Hector mentions (which is capitalized in the HBO subtitles) isn't mentioned elsewhere on the show that we know of.
Teddy revealed a similar mythology about the Natives and their "maze"
"The maze is an old Native myth," he tells William on the sixth episode of the first season. "The maze itself is the sum of a man's life: The choices he makes, the dreams he hangs onto. And there at the center there's a legendary man who'd been killed over and over again countless times. He always clawed his way back to life."
This legendary man sounds like a host — one who is aware that they are killed and "brought back."
"The man returned for the last time and vanquished all his oppressors in a tireless fury," Teddy continued. "Built a house, and around that house he built a maze so complicated only he could navigate through it. I reckon he'd seen enough of fighting."
But what this doesn't explain is how or why the Native hosts would know about the maze, since Arnold is the one who built it. We've only seen evidence that Arnold showed Dolores the maze — but no other hosts or even humans, since William stumbled upon it by accident.
The Ghost Nation hosts' role in the rebellion
Towards the end of the first season, we hear more about the Ghost Nation tribe. Lawrence tells young William and Dolores that they're "the most savage tribe there is."
Then on the eighth episode, Stubbs goes out to follow a signal from one of Elsie's devices (and remember we still don't kno who sent that signal or why), and is ambushed by a group of Ghost Nation hosts.
The voice commands didn't work on them, even though this took place well before Ford's death and the Wyatt narrative's completion with Dolores. It's possible Ford was already messing with their core programming, but so far it's unclear why they were off their loops.
What we've seen of the Native hosts on season two so far
The premiere episode of the second season included an intriguing scene with a Native host. When the Delos paramilitary team is first scouring the beach with Bernard, Karl Strand orders a tech to cut open the head of a Native host.
They find the maze pattern printed inside his scalp.
"What's that about?" Strand asks.
"I have no f------ clue," Costa replies.
We already knew the maze was kept secret from the Delos staff, since presumably the secret died with Arnold 34 years ago. But it's interesting that the second season started off with yet another Native host getting scalped, just like Kissy on the first season. Why is the maze on their scalps, and not on other hosts?
Akecheta was listed in the credits for this latest episode
Another new Native host introduced was Akecheta. We saw him helping Angela pitch the Westworld park to Logan on the second episode of this season.
Akecheta is played by actor Zahn McClarnon, whose social media presence indicates that Akecheta also appears as a Ghost Nation host on this season.
He retweeted two GIFs showing himself as a Ghost Nation host with makeup covering the top half of his head in black (which is the same makeup design seen on the host who Maeve saw looking through her window back on the first season).
He's listed on the end credits for episode three, which means his host character was on the episode somewhere.
Looking carefully at Maeve's memory flashbacks of her homestead under attack by Ghost Nation hosts, it looks like they have McClarnon's Akecheta replacing the version of this host we saw on the first season.
Below you can see the Ghost Nation host Maeve remembers on her season two flashback, which appears to be McClarnon's Akecheta and not the same host (seen earlier in this article) she remembers on the first season.
Now on the third episode of the second season, we see the Ghost Nation hosts surrounding Maeve and seemingly wanting to take Lee Sizemore. This triggers her to experience new flashbacks we hadn't seen before, including of her holding a rock with a bloody maze pattern on it.
And Maeve's usual voice command over all hosts doesn't work on the Ghost Nation tribe, just as Stubbs' commands didn't work on them last season.
Then at the end of the episode, the mysterious woman from the other park with Bengal tigers is found by more Native hosts.
Though right now we have more questions than answers, "Westworld" watchers should keep this subset of hosts in mind. Clearly they're an important aspect of the lore in the parks, and are also connected back to Arnold's maze and the achievement of consciousness in hosts.
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