Finally, The Plot Starts Becoming Clearer
One of the main unexplained plot points over the first two seasons is what exactly was up at the Washington Township Facility (WTF).
As you might recall, both Angela Moss’s mother and Elliot Alderson’s father died as the result of cancer acquired while working at the WTF (and, in a sense, neither Angela or Elliot have ever recovered).
Last season, one of the most contentious debates I had during the entire season on Reddit was over the nature of the WTF and if it was a nuclear or chemical facility (For a long time, I had a running theory that the WTF is a nuclear plant that ‘whiterose’ will use to build cobalt bombs…I appear to have been wrong about the theory).
To make a long story short, the accident that caused the deaths was a toxic waste accident, so nobody was 100% sure what kind of plant the WTF was. Well, now we know that it is a nuclear power plant (as I suggested last season) and that inside that nuclear power plant is a particle accelerator (if you go back and watch the title sequence again, what they are showing behind the Mr. Robot logo is a particle accelerator).
So, if there is ONE all encompassing debate that divides serious Mr. Robot fans it is about if the show is a “Science Fiction” show (involving fictional and fantastical elements) or if it is a “Science” show (grounded in scientific reality). Most of these debates revolve around references to Elliot’s love of the classic time-travel movie “Back To The Future” and to ‘whiterose’s’ obsession with time.
Apparently, Sam Esmail and crew split the difference and have decided to explore Science Fiction grounded in Science Reality. In other words, most likely, whiterose is trying to use a particle accelerator and a reactor to generate enough fusion power (or Dark Matter) to allow humans to go “back in time.” If you want a deeper explanation of how all of this might work, I spelled it all out in detail in my recap this week:
It may seem crazy, but it has long been considered theoretically possible for humans to go forward in time and recently physicists have considered it increasingly possible that humans could arguably go “back in time” too.
You don’t have to take my word for it, here is what Sam Esmail said in an interview after the show:
“I can neither confirm nor deny, because I don’t want to say anything that’s too spoilery,” he says. “But I will say we try to be as rooted and grounded with the real world as possible. Even though we’re in an alternate timeline, we still see a lot of parallels, given the fucked up nature of the world that parallel story is in “our” real world. We think it’s important to keep that credibility to the world we know. I’ll leave it at that. I’ll say this: in the real world, we do have a lot of people with wealth and power who have some lofty designs on the nature of reality and how technology can manipulate that reality. It’s in that realm that I think we keep the show in.”
There is also Esmail’s continued insistence (in like 100 interviews) on using the word “Disintegration” to describe Season 3 of Mr. Robot. This is one of the definitions of Disintegration:
“In PHYSICS a process in which a nucleus or other subatomic particle emits a smaller particle or divides into smaller particles.”
And finally, Angela also semi-confirmed that this was the direction that the show was heading in when she said:
“What if I told you we could make it like none of this ever happened? I mean everything. Including what happened to our parents. If we could take it all back from the beginning what would you be willing to sacrifice for that?”
There is one other small and very subtle clue in Season 2. When Dom visits Minister Zhang’s house, he has a ton of different clocks on the walls. Scientists used multiple clocks as part of the experiments to prove that time travel was possible.
Most of the experiments used in this area use clocks to show that time slows under certain conditions while it stays the same in others. Multiple clocks, especially if they registered different times, could also be a signal of whiterose’s intentions.
Of course we still have no idea why whiterose wants to travel through time or if the fusion/particle accelerator experiment will be a success, but it promises to be a really crazy journey no matter what happens (get out your Doc Brown costume this Halloween).
The game is finally afoot!
Also, if you are curious as to why I refuse to capitalize ‘whiterose’ and often put that “Name” in single-quotes, you can learn more in this recent post:
And, as always, check out my recaps on my blog:
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