Mr Robot - Season 1
And it's not like the plot vanishes. We see some of the impact of fsociety's successful hack, particularly in the chaos in and around Evil Corp. I don't know that the series properly sold us on Angela taking a job there, but it's useful to have her as our eyes and ears in the place, and to so quickly have her catching the attention of Phillip Price, who seems much more confident in front of her than he does in the ominous post-credits scene at the Lodge of Evil where we find out he's in business with Whiterose(*). Wiping out $400 billion of Evil Corp's wealth has hurt the company, but fsociety can only do so much to the 1 percent of the 1 percent like Price, and this unexpected alliance sets us up nicely for whatever's happening next season.
Mr Robot - Season 1
But despite memorable moments for Michael Cristofer, Stephanie Corneliussen, all the members of fsociety, and even the actor playing the suicidal Evil Corp exec, this episode, like the season, belonged to Rami Malek. You just can't get away with building an hour around a character demanding many answers and only getting a few without an actor this compelling, and this sympathetic even playing a guy who willfully (sort of) plunged the world into such a big mess (even if it's one that's beneficial to the people who just got their debts erased). Watching Elliot rage at the absent Mr. Robot, and then suffer the physical consequences of letting Robot take the driver's seat in his body(**), was just riveting. A lot of that was just clarifying things we already knew, like the camcorder footage of Elliot falling off the boardwalk railing, or even how Elliot and Mr. Robot switched places at the cyber cafe once Elliot got punched in the face, but it was important for Elliot to fully grasp how this works so he can understand that he is the one doing all of this, even if he's only sometimes in control of what he's doing.
* In the Esmail interview, he talks about not wanting people to default to assuming everything is imaginary, or that every weird character is just another personality of Elliot's. I'd seen some speculation about Tyrell somehow also being an alter, but that doesn't fit anything we've seen previously, nor the reactions of Tyrell's assistant and Joanna to meeting Elliot. Two different people. Whether both are still alive when next season begins remains to be seen.
Mr. Robot Season 1 Episode 9 was a refreshingly clear hour with a ton of interesting plot developments and clarifications after the last "Wait, what?" installment. It set up several new movements nicely as we careen into the season finale.
Speaking of: can you even believe the Mr. Robot Season 1 is over? I certainly can't. I'm always conflicted about whether I love or hate the concise episode count usually found in more high-brow network TV, but in this case the answer is clear: 10 episodes allowed for a perfect amount of time to establish memorable characters, execute a few excellent twists, and set up the universe of the show for future seasons.
That's just one example that comes to mind. On a re-watch of the entire first season, we can certainly find more and more specific examples of Mr. Robot's inclination to do the wrong thing for the right reason, a bad thing for the greater good.
Obviously, the show can't do everything: there is just not enough time in a given episode, or a given season. I do feel like they've dropped the ball a bit with Angela and Elliot's friendship. I hope the ways that Angela has saved him in the past, and the ways that Elliot has saved her (and Darlene) are discussed in greater detail later, at some point.
And if you're like me, you'll want to watch Mr. Robot online here on TV Fanatic to look out for any clues about Darlene's and Mr. Robot's identities that you may have missed prior this season, before the season closer, Mr. Robot Season 1 Episode 10.
Meanwhile, Angela's storyline this season plants the seeds of wanting revenge for her mother's murder (a corporate oversight in safety by E Corp) as well as demonstrating her ability to do whatever is necessary to protect her and those she cares about.
It's a confusing and fitting way to end a season. This is a show that's constantly staying one step ahead of its audience. Where another show would telegraph a character death for weeks and meditate on a major revelation for an entire episode, "Mr. Robot" barrels forward through its story, stopping for no one. In that way, it was kind of perfect that the show moved right past the hack itself and instead focused on the new reality that the hack created for the world of the show.
The next time we see her is in the post-credits scene at the end of the season finale. This time she's dressed as a man. The actor, BD Wong, did an interview with Vulture where he confirmed that Whiterose, a transgender person, is the one who has the episode-ending conversation with E-Corp CEO Phillip Price. It's also clear that it's Whiterose when her watch beeps right before the episode ends (it also beeped in the scene in Episode 8).
Tyrell's absence from the episode is a masterstroke in terms of delivering the unexpected. Questions will continue as to whether or not he is also a construct of Elliot's psyche, but given the conversations other people have with Elliot about Tyrell's whereabouts that seems unlikely. It's a safer bet to assume Esmail has something better cooked up for Tyrell than a repeat of the season's biggest twist.
The season two premiere of USA's addicting hacker drama Mr. Robot isn't until Wednesday (unless you caught Sunday's sneak peek!), but we're already too excited to contain ourselves. We've rounded up everything we know about Mr. Robot's second season, but before you dive into what's about to happen, you should make sure you know about what has already happened. Chances are, you watched the first season finale months ago, and you may have forgotten exactly what goes down with Elliot and company. Here's what you need to remember! Obvious spoiler alert: major plot twists from season one lie ahead.
Meanwhile, the government pressure over the 5/9 hack byfsociety that essentially toppled the banking system is increasing. Everyone isstill looking for Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallström), one of the fall guys forthe hack, while the writers cleverly use real footage of people like LeonPanetta talking about hacks to enhance the reality of their story. Those of youwondering where Tyrell went at the end of last season will get some immediateanswers, but his long-term role in the season is still a bit hazy. Instead, wecatch up with a still-determined Darlene (Carly Chaikin), an Angela (PortiaDoubleday) who has retreated to the warm arms of Evil Corp., and are introduced to new characters played by Grace Gummer and Craig Robinson, two welcomeadditions to the cast.
In the first season, the show revealed that Mr. Robot, the leader of a powerful hacker group called Fsociety, was actually part of Elliot's psyche. A mysterious force that could talk with the hero privately or, more alarmingly, send him into a memory-blocking stupor and take control of his body. The puzzling entity looked like Edward Alderson, Elliot's deceased father and the former owner of a computer store called Mr. Robot. In another shocking twist, Elliot discovered -- or rather, remembered -- that fellow Fsociety member Darlene was his sister.
The middle two seasons explored an internal power struggle and eventual truce between Elliot and Mr. Robot. Through it all, the audience was led to believe that Elliot -- not Mr. Robot or anybody else -- was the one 'true' personality that deserved full control, or at least the deciding vote, in everything his body did day-to-day.
Esmail kept some mind-melting revelations for the fourth and final season, though. Elliot, for instance, wasn't pushed out of his bedroom window as a child. "He kept shoving me away," Elliot told Mr. Robot in season one. "He shoved me so hard that I fell backwards out the window." During an impromptu therapy session, though, Elliot recalled that he jumped to escape a father who had sexually molested him growing up. He then created Mr. Robot as an imaginary 'protector' against this abuse and other "intolerable situations" he faced after his death.
Whiterose, the villainous leader of the Dark Army hacker group, offered Elliot an alternate reality to escape to. For the last couple of seasons, the show has teased -- worryingly, for many fans that didn't want the story to veer into hard sci-fi -- that Whiterose was on the verge of developing a time machine or some kind of portal between worlds. And for a moment, it looked like Esmail was following The Man in the High Castle's reality-hopping lead. Elliot, after all, seemingly died in Whiterose's secret facility and awoke in a vastly superior dimension where his father was still alive -- and more importantly, not a monster. He was also the CEO of a cybersecurity firm, sociable, and on the verge of marrying his best friend.
The fourth season had some spectacular and imaginative hacking sequences that portrayed Elliot and Darlene as Robin Hood figures. But it was telling that you didn't see a single line of code in the final episode. There was no 'race against the clock' to find a world-saving loophole or vulnerability. No final chase to steal someone's phone or destroy a server cabinet. Instead, the show spent its final hours unpacking Elliot, his life, and the relationships he forged with, well, the various parts of himself.
Mr. Robot is coming back to USA Network on Wednesday, July 13th at 9/10 pm Central (tonight!) for its second season and I cannot wait (especially since I missed Sunday's sneak preview)! Season one was full of complex hacks that were, for the most part, accurately portrayed. By speaking to various Avast experts, I learned a lot about the hacks on the show last summer and how they could affect consumers like you and I.
Micah: Man, in season 1 they were all like, "Let's get the Dark Army to help us with the China data center backups," and by season 4 I think they're understanding that was probably a bad call. 041b061a72