Season 3 brings us to 1986. Mutiny has left Texas for California to try to make it big (again). At the show open, Mutiny has put its roots down. Cameron is living with Donna and Gordon. Mutiny is now in it’s largest space ever, with their own servers. Gordon is in charge of getting it up and running to serve their 100,000+ users while Cameron and Donna focus on expanding the business.

Mutiny is pretty much a chat BBS, now with graphics for avatars. With Mutiny doing well, they’ve added more coders. One of them, Ryan, seems to be a cut above the rest. He’s got ideas that challenge Cameron. He’s found out that Mutiny has security holes allowing hackers easy access to user’s private chats (Cam wrote that code). He wants to change it all and Donna and Cam shoot him down. This plants the seed for Ryan to look elsewhere to better use his talents.

With a print out of private chat logs that she can see many users set up meetings to trade goods, Cameron eventually comes around to an idea: an electronic trade hub. This sets Donna and Cam on the hunt for VC funding ($1.4 million) to make it happen.

Gordon is still sick but seems to be coping well. He’s listless, though. With the server up he runs out of use and works his way into managing the coders. He befriends Ryan over new software ideas, but unbeknownst to him, has been chasing after a job with Joe.

Joe’s doing gangbusters. After stealing the code from Gordon last season, his new company is cyber security for big businesses. We first see him as he presents his product to get into homes. Gordon knows that Joe’s business is based entirely on his code and is suing Joe. At a disposition, Joe shows up and rattles Gordon’s cage by asking him to work together again. A little while later, Ryan tells Gordon he’s leaving Mutiny to work for Joe (which Joe told him to go do).

We have quite the set up for season 3. Joe is basically giving Gordon brain aneurysms he’s screwed him over so many times. He gets physically ill when Joe shows up. Donna and Cam are a great team but they’re novices in this ever expanding tech world. They aren’t working in a bubble and don’t do their research. It takes  a morally questionable move by Cam to get Mutiny traction after being denied by every investor.

There’s a lot of material for season 3 to explore, I’m eager to see where it goes. Gordon might not be standing by the end.