Getting Ready For Wednesday’s Finale
There were a TON of unresolved angles at the end of the penultimate Eps3.8stage3.torrent episode of Mr. Robot so let’s go back through and explore all of the possibilities.
The Allsafe Flashback
Most likely, the flashback served a couple of purposes:
- Establishing that Phillip Price did not consider Tyrell Wellick a worthy peer (something he used later in the episode when he visited Tyrell at home).
- Reestablishing that something is going on with Price’s relationship with Angela Moss
There are really only two possibilities here (one much more disturbing than the other)
- The most widely believed theory is that Angela is Phillip Price’s daughter. Angela’s Mom Emily worked for Price at E-Corp (and, along with Elliot’s father Edward Alderson, died of cancer after working at the Washington Township Facility). There was a scene earlier in the season where Donald and Emily Moss seemed to have issues over an “anonymous benefactor” who was trying to pay for Emily’s cancer treatments (the assumption is that Price is the benefactor and that Donald is mad because Emily had an affair with Price).
- The book Lolita keeps turning up around Angela (S2 and S3) and there have been many intimations that Angela has a very particular, relationship with Phillip Price. It is possible that the reason Price seems indebted (guilty) about Angela and that Angela is so determined to bring E-Corp (and Price) down is that he did something terrible when she was a kid (this could also explain why Donald and Emily wanted nothing to do with his money).
I hope the second option is not true but Sam Esmail doesn’t continuously leave clues if there wasn’t a reason and when Mr, Robot and the young Angela met earlier in the season there were no negative vibes between them at all and he is the only other main adult character who would have been around Angela when she was young.
Angela explicitly had her copy of Lolita in her shopping cart when she took off for her jaunt around NYC but, in fairness, she also had several of the other things that were present in her S2 meeting with ‘whiterose’ (the cat poster etc.).
The Elliot & Mr. Robot Handoff
Sam loves using sleight of hand to distract us from what is really going on. For most of the previous two seasons, his show has been based on the apparent disagreements between Mr. Robot and Elliot.
So, In order to preserve the illusion that Elliot and Mr. Robot continue to be at odds with each other Sam made their stories seem simultaneous this week. The real timeline would put all of the Mr, Robot scenes in sequence before the Elliot scenes:
- Elliot finds out about Trenton’s theory that Romero left encrypted keys that would allow Fsociety to un-encrypt E-Corps data and functionally undo the 5/9 hack.
- Mr. Robot takes over, finding out about Trenton’s email and about Wellick being cleared from responsibility for 5/9
- Mr. Robot visits Tyrell Wellick who, after being provoked, proceeds to beat Mr. Robot up.
- Phillip Price arrives just in the nick of time to deliver an inspirational speech to Mr. Robot
- Mr. Robot returns home and starts to construct a new plan, leaving plenty of clues for Elliot. Right before the handoff happens Mr, Robot leaves Elliot a message on the mirror.
- Elliot takes over and starts to put the pieces together. In order to convince the Dark Army that they to know what he is up to (so they feel the need to install Malware on his laptop under the pretense that they are imaging his hard drive) he sends Darlene to the FBI so the Dark Army will learn he is trying to undo 5/9 at the same time he tries to meet with ‘whiterose’ so he can discuss Stage 3 (blowing up E-Corp by hacking their E-Coin play).
- Elliot sends a harmless looking E-Coin Trojan Horse and gains access to the Dark Army network
So, Stage 3, in a sense, was gaining access to and control of the Dark Army Network.
The real question, in my mind, is if Elliot/Mr. Robot intentionally sacrificed Darlene in the process. Yes, she insisted on getting access to Sentinel herself but Elliot never seemed to really want to be too concerned with undoing 5/9, with if Darlene was okay, or if the plan made any sense.
In addition, Elliot 100% knew that the Dark Army would know what happened at the FBI.
The nice version is to assume that Darlene would succeed and get the encryption keys or fail and be safer in custody. The not so nice version would assume that Elliot/Mr. Robot purposely sacrificed Darlene to get access to the Dark Army network.
Yes, I am also fully suggesting that Mr. Robot and Elliot are working together. It is still unofficial and they haven’t reintegrated (that would really screw the whole show up), but they are both working towards the same goal now (attacking or destroying the Dark Army).
Dom and Darlene
Some were suggesting that it made no sense for Dom to hook up with Darlene but I thought it made perfect sense.
Dom is very talented and very socially awkward but they have done a great job over the last two seasons demonstrating how lonely she is and how much she craves human contact. Darlene, on the other hand, is a force of nature who would likely be irresistible to someone like Dom (Darlene hides her panic disorder very well).
It is also not surprising that Dom caught Darlene trying to clone her badge.
As Darlene has intimated several times, Elliot is much better at seeing the big picture and putting together plans than she is (I guess it is not her fault that he badge cloner failed but Dom is pretty good at figuring things out).
There is one thing that continues to confuse me this season.
How could Dom crack any puzzle during Season 2 but somehow (despite a full season of Santiago doing everything that he can to sabotage her investigation) she still does not seem to be able to figure out that Santiago is corrupt?
WTF?
My guess is that Santiago is going to get tripped up by his use of his cell phone to text back and forth with the Dark Army (why else would they have shown him using it to call his Mom twice and to text with the DA?).
How that will happen, or if it will happen before S4 I have no idea (but it would only be just if Dom figures it out and catches him).
One last comment, there has been a long-running theory on Reddit that Darlene is going to die in a plane crash (soon). I have mixed feelings about this because I also believe that Darlene is doomed but don’t fully agree with some of the reasoning and symbolism that provides backing for that theory.
Obviously, I hope Darlene survives (I am still getting over the deaths of Joanna, Trenton, and Mobley…RIP all).
In a recent interview, Carly Chaikin feigned total surprise but who knows what that means? Why would anyone in the cast ever tell the truth about this show?
Does “Die Hard” Qualify as a Christmas Movie?
Has Angela Moss become the John McClane of Mr. Robot?
It is interesting to me that Angela got picked up by unidentified “agents” near the end of a second consecutive season.
Is she lucky or cursed?
<And yes, Die Hard is a Christmas Movie and Batman is a superhero>.
But who were the gentlemen talking Angela into custody?
Immediately prior to the two gentlemen asking Angela to come with them, a young man tries to sell her a mixed-tape. This was a throwback to Cisco in Season 1 (Cisco sold Angela and Ollie a mixed-tape CD on the street containing malware and ended up being critical to 5/9).
Cisco may be dead (RIP) but I have to assume that the callback implies that the gentlemen in the van are working with the Dark Army too (maybe they are Irving’s henchmen since they didn’t seem like Dark Army soldiers?).
I am going to throw out another possibility, what if we are about to be introduced to another player entirely?
What if this season’s post-credits cliffhanger involves Angela being introduced to an entirely new power-player or character?
When Sam was recently asked on Twitter if there would be a post-credits cliffhanger scene this year, this was his answer:
Just a gut-feeling but I am not entirely sure we will get a resolution of Angela’s current dilemma this season.
“US Cyber Attack on Iran is Imminent”
- A few episodes ago ‘whiterose’ suggested that global warfare was great for business
- We know that ‘whiterose’ won China control after the annexation of the DR Congo
- We know that the Dark Army has blamed the 5/9 hack and Stage 2 on Iran
- We now know that the US is responding with electronic counterattacks (during a cut-away from a scene, a crawler on CNN (or some other network) said “US Cyber Attack On Iran Imminent:)
In other words, part of ‘whiterose’ plan involves instigating escalating tensions and maybe even sparking a global conflagration by starting a war between Iran and the United States.
Just to review, there are the main theories of what ‘whiterose’ is up to:
- Time Travel (also known as the ‘Back to the Future’ theory. In this theory ‘whiterose’ uses her particle accelerator and dark matter to go forward and/or backward in time). There is also the possibility, left open by a carefully worded interview with Sam at the beginning of the year, that time-travel has happened or been happening prior to Season 3.
- Parallel universes (‘whiterose’ uses the particle accelerator to open a path to parallel universes or to some combination of opening a path to parallel universes and time travel…or as a means to time travel)
- Simulation (Elliot et al are living in a simulation and ‘whiterose’ holds the key). While many people have put incredible time into this theory, I feel like people would see it as a betrayal of the actual timeline (more trickery than connected storytelling).
- Dr. Strangelove (‘whiterose’ wants to watch the world burn and is going to use the coltan and cobalt he gets from the DR Congo to create a dirty bomb or dirty bombs and spark a war). This is the theory I started and is based on all the references to the movie Dr. Strangelove sprinkled throughout the different seasons and my belief in Occam’s razor.
None of these are mutually exclusive, it is certainly possible ‘whiterose’ might want to destroy this world and escape to a parallel universe or to a more acceptable past or future timeline.
Perhaps the most important unanswered question is WHY?
We don’t only need to understand what motivates ‘whiterose’ but we also need to know why so many members of the Dark Army are willing to die to make “it” (whatever “it” is) a reality.
Why would the Dark Army be so committed to the cause? What is it that they are committed to and what is the outcome that would make so many people commit their lives to so much badness?
This is maybe the biggest unresolved Mr. Robot mystery of all.
Anyway, I have argued all season that it is likely that ‘whiterose’ will come close to succeeding only to be foiled at the last minute and hopefully, we will finally get to see what happens (when you start the season teasing a particle accelerator in the first credit sequence there should be a payout by the end of the season IMHO).
I have also been suggesting, in my recaps over the last several weeks, that Phillip Price will be centrally involved in destroying or confounding the plans of ‘whiterose.’
I have to agree with Grant’s comment last week suggesting that it makes no sense for Elliot to still be alive <my pp>. It makes almost zero sense from the strategic perspective of the Dark Army why Elliot is still alive (much less why Darlene or Price are still alive).
All these people can do now is hurt the Dark Army, so why are they alive?
For this to make sense, it either suggests that Elliot is still central to ‘whiterose’ plan or that she is losing her grip and making real mistakes (seeing ‘whiterose’ appearing to be irrationally angry over the Washington Township Facility move gives some credence to a ‘crackup’ theory…I think I saw someone asking in the Mr. Robot Subreddit if ‘whiterose’ might be sick or dying — which would certainly be one possible explanation for why ‘whiterose’ is being less patient and more careless).
Oh, we also learned that Grant and ‘whiterose’ are romantically involved (that was new)…Mazel Tov.
Elliot and Edward
Mr. Robot, the entire series, has two instigating moments:
- Whatever happened to Angela (see above)
- Elliot being pushed out of the window by his father
It is almost impossible to explain how central to the plot Elliot’s relationship to this one event is to the series. It was what precipitated his dissociative break (and hence what created Mr. Robot) and set all of Elliot’s anger in motion.
Elliot’s entire unresolved love/anger towards his father is the engine that drove his desire for revenge against E-Corp and set the events of 5/9 in motion.
Or did it?
One of the ongoing theories for years on Reddit has been that it never happened, that Edward never pushed Elliot out of his second-story window
And a few weeks ago, Kor Adana (writer and technical consultant) promised we would get some more details before S3 ended:
Josh Wigler: Expecting a non-answer here, but I have to ask because I feel like it’s happening it’s happening it’s happening…Mr. Robot pushed Elliot out of the window on that formative day long ago, didn’t he? It wasn’t Elliot’s father who pushed him, was it?
Kor Adana: I’ll say this…you’ll get some more information about that formative day before this season ends.
Nothing could upset the logic of the show more than finding out that Edward did not push Elliot out of that window. It opens the possibility that the core Elliot has always been more Mr. Robot than Elliot, more dark than light, and more destructive than self-destructive.
In addition, the teaser for this week’s interview with Kor promises that the finale will:
Return to “Where it All Started”
I will be more than a little bummed if it turns out Elliot did not get pushed out of that window. Not because of my ego, because it would involve undermining the core premise of three seasons of the show (and one book). Just like I would be frustrated if time travel is newly introduced to disrupt the plot, I would be frustrated if the core logic that helped make sense of the protagonist was erased or changed.
We will have to wait and see what happens.
Hopefully, you are as excited as I am to see the final episode!
Josh is a blogger and freelance writer. Please consider following him on Twitter, throwing a tip into his hat on Patreon, or adding his blog OnPirateSatellite to your feeds.
