Sam Esmail brings her in for a landing! After what I consider a rocky penultimate episode last week, the season finale was a lot of fun and the end is just ripe to pick for next year. Let’s dive in, quite a bit went down.
As we saw, it has been confirmed. Cisco was killed in the diner. Dom knows Darlene is her only chance at closing this case. After some back in forth, Dom decides to go all in and show Darlene her hand. By being more forward with Darlene (whom Dom relates to), she figures she can break through. We all get some new info here. First, Romero wasn’t killed by The Dark Army. It was a dumb stray bullet from his neighbor. The initial panic was over nothing. Dom has quite a bit on Darlene, but it’s mostly circumstantial. It is some concerning stuff, though. Then we get to see the spider web Dom has been working on. At the center: Elliot and Tyrell. Darlene gets a shock from that one.
We find out who’s been calling and tormenting Joanne, who’s at that address Elliot found in episode 10. It’s Scott, the husband of the wife that Tyrell killed last year. He’s been stirring the pot for some semblance of revenge and Joanne goads him into attacking her. Without a husband, but now with a new mission, she takes a whooping to finish off Scott. The last we see, Joanne is convincing her boyfriend to retaliate. She is a delicious level of twisted.
Tyrell (is it?) brings Elliot to the hideout The Dark Army set up. It has all the gear they need to go ahead with Stage 2. At this point, Elliot still doesn’t know what that is. He looks at what’s on their computer for some more puzzle pieces when Tyrell points out a building that’s just down the block. E Corp is bringing all their physical records to this location to rebuild the database. They don’t have to attack a bunch of remote locations to shutter E Corp for good. It’s just one and it’s next door. It all rushes to Elliot. Mr. Robot has been in control of this plan from the start with The Dark Army and working with Tyrell. He’s kept Elliot on a need to know basis to keep him from “overreacting.” Mr. Robot is a complete split personality from Elliot that can and does work autonomously. fsociety was never Elliot’s. With brownouts rolling through the city, the building is stuffed with UPSs to keep the database from shutting down while it’s rebuilt. With the backdoor and malware that Elliot wrote, they have full access inside the building and the means to level it.
Elliot panics and says no, this isn’t going to happen. He’s been completely blindsided and betrayed by his other half. No matter what he’s done he can’t get an advantage. He got himself lockup, Mr. Robot got them out. He tried ODing to get rid of him and that didn’t work.There was no truce, just a shell game to keep him in the dark while Mr. Robot worked. Elliot puts his foot down and sits down to work on removing the backdoor and delete the malware. Convinced that Tyrell is another construct of his mind that Mr. Robot uses to control him, he doesn’t back down when Tyrell pulls a gun on him. He rolls the dice that he’s right, Tyrell is really gone. Much to his surprise (and Joanne next season I assume), Tyrell shoots him in the stomach. On the ground, bleeding and slowly losing conscience, Tyrell says it’s weird that Elliot told him to stop anyone, even himself, who may try to stop them at all costs but now he understands. Mr. Robot’s last words of the season are that this plan had to go all the way. Once started, that was the commitment to change the world.
Whiterose’s talk with Angela worked. She’s got another pawn at her disposal. In Angela’s only scene in the finale, Tyrell calls her after he shot Elliot. She’s been filled in with what’s going on and calmly tells Tyrell what to do. She’s on her way to be by Elliot’s side when he wakes up.
And the stinger of the season: Trenton and Mobley are together somewhere in California. They work at a Fry’s Electronics store and while on break, Trenton is trying to convince Mobley to take a look at something she found. She thinks they can undo what they’ve done. And then Leon walks up to them and asks what time it is…
The blocks of the show are all in interesting spaces. The Dark Army found Trenton and Mobley, what are they facing now? Elliot isn’t dead as alluded to by Angela’s dialog, so our unreliable narrator isn’t done. What’s Darlene going to do? She’s completely on her own and faced with some rather startling revelations by Dom (I didn’t see Whiterose on that board). She’s in a really weird position. Are we going to see brother’s evil side vs sister next season? When is Joanne going to find out about Tyrell and is she going to continue to burn everything alive around her (Scott who is already broken is screwed and her boyfriend is about to step into a bear trap set and sharpened by her). The clock is ticking on E Corp. Tyrell said that all of the material will be moved into that new building in about a month and then it’s duck and cover time.
Quality season, the show is just as interesting to watch as it ever was. Everything came together really well and left me on a high note. I expect season 3 to be another animal entirely now that the whole plan is out in the open. We gotta wait a year for more, but in Esmail we trust.