Kill Process

The hits just keep coming. It’s been one riveting episode after the next and I’m still buzzing from how intense this one was.

The show opens with a flashback. Young Angela is watching a Back to the Future cartoon while guests to her home mingle about. Her mother has decided to forgo any more cancer treatment so this is more like a goodbye party. Angela is understandably not happy and Elliot’s father sits down to talk to her. Going over to Angela’s mother (which I think is the first time we’ve seen her) she’s talking to her lawyer, Antara (who we’ve met before through Angela continuing the fight with E Corp at the beginning of the show). Antara asks if she’s really sure she wants to stop, as an anonymous benefactor would pay for her continued treatments. She’s so far gone that she’d rather enjoy what time she has with her family than drag out the pain more. Upon mention of the benefactor, Angela’s father leaves the room and Antara pauses, asking if she said something. Angela’s mother waves it off but there’s something hidden in that moment that I think we’ll see revealed soon. Angela talks to her mother about how upset she is and her mother reassures her that she’ll always be with her, they won’t be apart forever. It’s hard to tell if young Angela really believes her.

Back to the present, we’re back to where episode 4 left off. Elliot is staring down Angela, confronting her about working with The Dark Army. She’s all in with The Dark Army and it stuns Elliot. He’s shocked when she says she met Whiterose and that this is all for the revolution they wanted to start, they just need to see this to the end. Elliot calls Whiterose a terrorist, a lot of people are going to die from this. Angela has taken Irving’s word as gospel, assured that the building is being evacuated. She’s straight up cold blooded corporate mouthpiece. When she tells Elliot no one will be hurt, she says it with this:

including your father and my mother.

After weeks of watching Angela breakdown, she’s gone off the deep end and she even digs into Elliot with this line telling him how involved she’s been:

I heard you were let go this morning.

And the race is on! Elliot is frantic to stop Stage 2 and rushes to the building to stop The Dark Army’s plan at the source. This caper is cut back and forth with Dom working her end of trying to stop The Dark Army. Darlene manages to pass her info of where Tyrell is but her superior, Santiago, isn’t so sure about its credibility and doesn’t act on it. Dom takes matters into her own hands and goes out with her partner to scope out the Red Wheelbarrow restaurant.

After Elliot gets into the building, he manages to get his laptop onto the network and gets to typing. Mr. Robot fights back by taking over. Elliot regains consciousness 15 minutes later in a cab leaving the area. Elliot runs back in and it’s an all out war between the personalities. Mr. Robot resorts to physically throwing Elliot around to stop him while Dom sniffs around the Red Wheelbarrow and Darlene confronts Angela about exploiting Elliot’s condition in Angela’s apartment.

Cue insanity. Angela is defiant and cold to Darlene’s anger. Santiago is The Dark Army’s mole. Tyrell gets the truth about his family (about his wife at least, I think) from Irving. He’s furious he’s been lied to again and in a surprise move to I think everyone, Irving doesn’t kill him. Instead, he gives Tyrell what looks like instructions and leaves him in the basement of the Red Wheelbarrow. Tyrell starts drinking like a maniac, handcuffs himself to a cot and starts a fire. The smoke tips off Dom upstairs and she tries to get through the locked back door but can’t.

Elliot makes it into the room with all of the power supplies that will explode when the area floods with hydrogen. But he can’t get to the emergency fire suppression system (that will suck all of the oxygen out of the room) because of a locked door. Then he notices it: none of the records are here. They’ve “both” been played. He pleads with Mr. Robot to help him get in there by typing messages into Notepad on a computer terminal and blinks back and forth into conciousness. After 4 or 5 desperate messages, Elliot comes too with the electric lock on the door broken and the door swinging shut. He races into the room and pulls the emergency alarm, saving the building.

Tyrell freed himself and ran hysterically out through the door Irving used to get to the street. He’s screaming about stopping the attack where he’s apprehended by the NYPD and Dom, who’s in shock that she found the guy she’s been looking for for months and he’s a mess and can’t figure out what he’s babbling about.

Angela and Darlene’s argument is halted by an emergency alert on their phones.

Elliot emerges from the building happy he stopped the attack when he notices everyone around him is solemn and distracted. He joins a group of people on the street looking at TVs in a store window and sees it: 71 E Corp buildings “exploded or caught fire.” Thousands thought dead.

A slap in the face of gargantuan proportions. The ultimate chess move by Whiterose to subvert Elliot and use Mr. Robot and Tyrell’s work.  Fine, if we can’t destroy the physical records in one fell swoop with a single fault line, we’ll just exploit 71 fault lines. Elliot never saw it coming. He had tunnel vision on the initial plan he discovered (came up with, really) and never considered the plans would be altered.

Absolutely nuts. Stage 2 happened and Tyrell is caught. What was on the paper Tyrell was given? Is the final play by Whiterose to ultimately to pin this all on Elliot? The full frame up that he started and executed this whole thing? Angela just got body slammed back to Earth, I don’t know how she’s going to function knowing she aided in the death of thousands.

*This is my 1,000th post!