Author: Josh Wigler

September 21, 2016 8:06pm PT by Josh Wigler

Michael Parmelee/USA Network

“I do love suspense [but] I’m never about withholding things arbitrarily,” Sam Esmail tells THR about answering Elliot’s fate before the finale’s conclusion.

[Warning: This story contains spoilers for Wednesday’s season two finale of USA Network’s Mr. Robot.]

“I love him.” And now we know.

If Mr. Robot season two was the Empire Strikes Back of the USA Network drama, it certainly ended on some similar notes. In addition to Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallström) confessing his unanswered love for Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), Elliot sustained a major wound — though no hands were severed in the filming of this finale — and Elliot finally unmasked the villain: his father figure, if not his actual father, Mr. Robot, who has indeed been driving toward a destructive plan without Elliot’s knowledge.

Robot, Tyrell and the Dark Army have joined forces to destroy the Evil Empire of sorts — E Corp, or “Evil Corp,” as Elliot always sees it — and they’re aiming to destroy the Death Star. But those fireworks will have to wait for season three. The Dark Army is in position to demolish the E Corp facility as soon as the company has consolidated all of its paper records in one location, the final nail in the corporation’s coffin. A good thing it didn’t happen in the finale, too, as both Darlene (Carly Chaikin) and Dom DiPierro (Grace Gummer) spent the episode on the E Corp building’s floor devoted to the FBI team investigating the hack.

The pieces are in place for E Corp’s final fall… but not if two rogue fsociety agents have anything to say about it. As was the case in season one, the second season ends with a post-credits scene, this time featuring on-the-run hackers Mobley (Azhar Khan) and Trenton (Sunita Mani) musing over the possibility of repairing the damage done from the 5/9 Hack. It’s a pie-in-the-sky possibility, but a possibility nonetheless — assuming Dark Army operative Leon (Joey Bada$$) doesn’t cut their time short, first.

For more intel on the finale, The Hollywood Reporter spoke with creator-writer-director Sam Esmail about the current state of Elliot, why he didn’t opt for a cliffhanger regarding Elliot’s continued survival, Tyrell’s season two arc, the ramifications of the post-credits scene, and how the show will continue to be inspired by the arc of Star Wars moving into season three.

The climax of the finale comes before the final scene: Tyrell shooting Elliot. It effectively ends the argument about whether Tyrell is still real or imagined by Elliot. How important was it to you to definitively answer that question by the end of season two?

That was, to me, the season’s arc. After Elliot’s head-trip, that he goes inside himself and inside this illusion that he uses to cope with the fact that he’s been in prison and inside all of this battle and all of the battles he’s had with Mr. Robot, it’s like the game is over. Elliot has to snap back to reality and literally, it happens with a gunshot, with a bang, by Tyrell.

It brings the season full circle, too, with Mr. Robot repeatedly shooting Elliot in the head in season one, and of course the gun in the popcorn at Coney Island. Chekov rules dictate that this gun had to go off at some point.

Exactly. And it was imperative that this was the defining real — and I kind of want to underline that (laughs) — moment for Elliot, because he’s actually been shot twice in the show now. He was shot in episode four of the first season in that fever dream hallucination, and was obviously continually shot in the beginning of this season. This one, we wanted to make it feel very different.

Mr. Robot tells Elliot that he’s willing to go “all the way.” Apparently, that means allowing himself to be shot. Throughout the series, Mr. Robot has always read as an entity very much interested in self-preservation. What does it say about Mr. Robot and his commitment to the cause that he’s willing to make a sacrifice play?

It redefines the stakes. Mr. Robot was all about self-preservation. Up until this point, that kind of included Elliot, because obviously self-preservation includes Elliot’s body, if you look at it that way. Now? All bets are off. In fact, everything to him is about the plan, and he’s willing to die for this cause. That’s how extreme his passion is for this whole project, for this whole revolution. It kind of realigns the stakes for us. Now Elliot cannot even trust his life with Mr. Robot, which happens to also be Mr. Robot’s life. It also raises the stakes in terms of the extremes Mr. Robot is willing to go through in order to pull off this plan. It’s two different levels that have been kick-started and raised a lot higher for next season.

Elliot survives the gunshot, at least for now, based on the phone call between Tyrell and Angela. Can you explain the choice to at least somewhat resolve Elliot’s fate and not leave it as a cliffhanger?

For me, it was never about… as weird as this may come, coming from me, because I do love suspense, I’m never about withholding things arbitrarily. If we’re not going to pay it off with something new that could be impactful, or if the way we’re going to pay it off isn’t going to be impactful, it doesn’t service me to withhold it just for the sake of surprising people. At the end of the day, I don’t think anyone would have been surprised that Elliot is going to return in season three. Honestly, the bigger cliffhanger for me, if you want to call it a cliffhanger, is Angela’s involvement, and her complicity in all of this. That’s the bigger question mark I wanted to leave for the audience.

Let’s follow that down the Robot hole a little bit further. Angela has been a mystifying character. She’s been in the belly of the E Corp beast and really committed to that role. Now after her test with Whiterose in the first part of the finale, she seems pretty committed to the Dark Army. How would you describe Angela’s journey this season, and where she’s heading from here?

Angela, to me, is one of the more fascinating characters. What’s great about her character is that there’s an elasticity to her motivations. You think she’s going one way, and then you realize she’s actually going another. Portia pulls it off brilliantly. Just in terms of life, I cannot read Portia Doubleday. That’s how good she is. I just thought it’s such an interesting way to play the character. You can’t quite read what side she’s on, and it always keeps me on my toes in an interesting way. This just doubles it down for us. Now she’s part of this group we never would have expected. She’s shifted once again. But is this an alliance with Elliot, or is it against Elliot, one of her oldest childhood friends? That’s something we’re going to play with in an interesting way next season. One of my favorite Tarantino films is Jackie Brown, and Jackie Brown does it so well, where I’m watching the back half of that movie, and I don’t know which side Jackie Brown is playing. I think it’s really ingenious for Tarantino to keep us in the dark on that. It gives us suspense and activates us and engages us, because it makes us want to figure it out, as opposed to giving us the information ahead of time. With Angela, we’re going to continue to do that, walk that line: What are her true alliances, and what are her true motivations?

The episode begins with the continuation of Elliot and Tyrell’s meeting at Coney Island from season one, with Rami Malek in full Robot mode. Tyrell talks about the Red Wheelbarrow poem, and how it’s the only English his father knew, and how he never wants to end up like his father. What is it about Tyrell’s vulnerability here that Elliot decides can be useful moving forward?

Now, remember, this is technically the Mr. Robot side of Elliot. But I think what happens in that moment is he connects with this person. What Tyrell says about his father is something he deeply connects with. And we’re talking about the Mr. Robot side of Elliot, and you have to remember, this personality really doesn’t even resemble Elliot’s real father, who was obviously a bit more mild-mannered and was not a revolutionary in any way…

In many ways, Elliot Prime is more like Edward Alderson.

Yeah, exactly. There’s this sort of rebellion against the dad for being weaker, for not standing up against Evil Corp, for essentially dying at the hands of Evil Corp and never fighting back. That’s kind of where this dissociation started with Elliot. Seeing Tyrell’s similar anguish about his father, I think there was a bond formed there that probably led to what happened on the night of 5/9 and how they became a team.

When we spoke last week, Martin Wallström reemphasized his view that there’s a love story between Tyrell and Elliot. In the finale, Tyrell outright says it to Angela: “I love him.” What does it mean to you, to have that information explicitly out there on the show now?

The interesting thing to me about Elliot and Tyrell’s relationship is that you can clear-cut have a good guy versus a bad guy. That’s the way we sort of set it up at the beginning of the whole show. What’s incredibly fascinating to me is, what if these two people actually have a connection? What if literally the guy we’re supposed to hate actually loves our hero? And there isn’t this sort of conventional antagonistic relationship that they have — that it’s out of love, as opposed to hate, that there’s this friction, that there’s this battle? I always thought that was interesting, that usually the hero and the villain of any story are deeply flawed characters. Well, what if these two have the same flaws and are two sides of the same coin, and they both see that and feel that and connect on that? I think there’s something a lot more complicated there. We can go into a lot of deeper levels into what that relationship and that conflict will look like going forward.

Do we know yet how far back Elliot and Tyrell go? Has that been established by now, or is there some more shared back story between them that we haven’t yet seen?

No, we have met Elliot and Tyrell… and I guess this is about to be a big spoiler, but I don’t mind saying it! (Laughs.) We have seen when Elliot and Tyrell first met, which was in the pilot.

It was a big decision to keep Tyrell away from the action for most of the season. Now that we know with certainty that he’s alive and working with the Dark Army, why was it so important to you and the show to have Tyrell’s whereabouts remain a mystery for so long?

Ultimately, this show is a mystery. It’s about people who are in the dark trying to find out what the answers are. Every time they shine a light, there are more questions and more darkness. The big question mark from the first season was Tyrell. What is that? Where is he? What happened? Ultimately, I think it all fed into Elliot and Mr. Robot’s conflict. That was very important to me. When Elliot makes that big realization [that he is Mr. Robot] at the end of the first season, he needed to reconcile that in this season before he could do anything else. There was a temptation to do away with that within the first episode, and have him return to the plot. I always thought that would be disingenuous. To go inside the mind of a person who is realizing this about himself, this is a pretty dramatic thing that’s occurring. He’s going to struggle with that. He’s not going to be able to engage with life as is. I felt that anything to avoid that would be really disingenuous to his emotional journey. The fact that Tyrell went missing only fed further into the struggle between Elliot and Mr. Robot because Elliot started feeling this tremendous guilt about what he could have possibly done, and his imagination and feelings around that were run amok. That caused a lot of the friction and conflict between Elliot and Mr. Robot. That was the real key ingredient for why we kept him out of the season. We felt we needed to hunker down on the Elliot and Robot dynamic before we really re-engaged Tyrell in the plot.

Safe to say we’ll see more of Tyrell next year?

We’ll definitely see more of him in season three.

There’s another post-credits scene this season. In season one, you focused on the illuminati of sorts, Phillip Price (Michael Cristofer) and Whiterose (BD Wong). This season, it’s the foot soldiers: Mobley, Trenton and Leon. Why was this the right note to end the season on?

We’re doing two things. Obviously, we’re answering the mystery about where Mobley and Trenton went off to. We’re also setting up another dynamic in this whole web we’ve created, which is, there may be a solution all of this. There may be a solution to reverting the hack. Whether or not that’s even relevant to anyone anymore, and whether or not anyone even wants that at this point, is up for debate. But to add that into the mix — what if you can fix the thing that we started — is something we felt would be an interesting dynamic for season three. The other side of this is that this whole show has been about these guys who really wanted to change society, to revolution society, and of course they didn’t think everything through. They acted more on impulse and were a little bit naive in that decision-making. We saw in the second season that this isn’t exactly what they were expecting, that we were in the hangover of this. Now we have those same two revolutionaries saying, “Let’s put this all back together.” It brings up this very interesting question: Once you break something, is there a way to go back? Or have you done something too drastic that it’s irrevocably changed? That there is no turning back? That’s a question we were interested in exploring moving forward.

Speaking about the original fsociety members, we learn in this episode how Romero died: He was struck by a stray bullet in his backyard. Should we take that at face value?

I think it’s safe to say yes. There’s a little nugget of information in the first season where Romero complains about the kids in his neighborhood. He doesn’t live in the best neighborhood.

How much pushback if any did you receive on the Burn Notice joke?

(Laughs.) I was surprised! USA was totally game for it. They loved it. They had no notes on it at all.

Looking ahead at season three, given where we leave Elliot — with a gunshot wound, with the realization that Tyrell is alive, and now knowing that he himself has put all of this into motion — what can you say about Elliot’s journey moving forward from here?

I’ve said this from the beginning: This is really about Elliot’s journey. The first season being the realization and awareness of who Mr. Robot is and how he pertains to Elliot. The second season was the battle: “Can I get rid of him? Can I solve this by essentially destroying him?” By the end, we find out that it’s not possible. The third season is really that next stage. The word I would use is “disintegration.” What does it look like now that these two are completely not on the same page, that they are completely split and truly split apart? What does that look like? That’s the next chapter of Elliot’s journey.

How about in terms of tone? You and the Mr. Robot team made it clear that season two was going to be darker than season one. How would you describe season three’s tone?

I’m going to keep going with this Star Wars thing. Maybe it’s subconscious; I don’t know. I’ve looked back on the second season and I’ve seen a lot of similarities with The Empire Strikes Back, in terms of Luke/Elliot going away and isolating themselves, while their sister is out there and battling the evil empire. I think this is the return of Elliot. Season three, and the way I’ve been thinking about it, is sort of the return to Elliot — but not the naive Elliot we saw at the beginning of the season. It’s the Elliot we’ve seen go through this horrific experience from the first and second seasons, and with all of that in mind, that’s going to make this new Elliot come into fruition in the next season.

Follow THR‘s Mr. Robot coverage all season long for interviews, news and theories.

Mr. Robot

September 21, 2016 8:00am PT by Josh Wigler

Ben Mark/ABC

Before he became the leader of the free world on the new ABC drama, he was saving that leader’s life … and, occasionally, threatening it.

Even with the real-time thriller days of 24 behind him, the clock’s still ticking, counting down toward Kiefer Sutherland’s next brush with the White House.

As Jack Bauer on 24, Sutherland routinely saved the President of the United States’ life (or at least tried) over the course of nine seasons on Fox. For his next act on television, though, Sutherland will abandon the days of protecting the president, and will instead become the president, as the protagonist of ABC’s Designated Survivor. The new thriller focuses on Tom Kirkman (Sutherland), a low-level cabinet member who is all but fired from his job one morning, only to become the next president later that evening, after a massive explosion wipes out everyone else in the line of succession. 

Longtime 24 viewers aren’t used to seeing the erstwhile Bauer in a sharp suit and thick-rimmed glasses (except for when he pretended to be a German arms dealer back in season eight; another story for another time), but they’re certainly used to seeing him operate alongside the highest office in the United States. Here are seven of Sutherland’s most memorable presidential encounters over the course of his 24 career:

1. The First Worst Day Ever

In the show’s inaugural season, Bauer is tasked with thwarting an assassination attempt against David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), a senator on his way toward becoming the nation’s first African-American president. Saving Palmer’s life requires Bauer to jeopardize Palmer’s life on two different occasions during the show’s first day: once when Bauer is being set up as the patsy for the assassination, and again when Bauer inadvertently brings an explosive device to Palmer’s Los Angeles headquarters. Both times, Bauer beats the bad guys, saves the future president, and earns himself one of the most powerful people in the world as a new confidant and friend.

2. My Sherry Amour

Bauer and Palmer never appear in the same room again after season one (except for one grim final occasion), but season two sees Jack teaming up with the woman who would have been First Lady, if not for her Lady Macbethian machinations: Sherry Palmer (Penny Johnson), David’s ex-wife, and a co-conspirator in a plot to destroy her former husband’s presidency. Despite her untrustworthiness, Jack has no choice but to work with Sherry in order to defeat the conspirators and save Palmer’s presidency. They succeed, only for President Palmer to get gravely injured in a subsequent attack.

3. Palmer Saves the Day

There’s no greater testament to Bauer and Palmer’s years of mutual admiration and friendship than the end of season four, which saw Jack faking his own death in order to evade the real thing. He’s helped along by several trusted colleagues, including Palmer — now a former president, thanks to his disillusionment with the office in season three. Even without full access to the presidency, Palmer’s reach is vast enough that he’s able to bend every rule in the book in order to save Jack’s life. That’s what years of sacrifice in the name of one noble leader will get you.

4. The Rise and Fall of Charles Logan

Saving Jack was Palmer’s last great act on 24. In the opening minutes of the season five premiere, the historic character is assassinated by a sniper, luring Jack out of hiding and back onto the field. Over the course of the harrowing day, he finds out that the person responsible for David’s death is none other than Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin), the new President of the United States, and a total snake. As soon as Bauer finds out about Logan’s role in his old friend’s death, he stops at nothing to topple the corrupt politician. Jack succeeds, effectively getting Logan removed from power — but it’s certainly not the last time the two enemies will meet.

5. White House Down

The seventh season of 24 sets the action in Washington, D.C., and at one point during the day, terrorists invade the White House. They’re inches away from the new president, Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones), until Jack saves the day once again — with a clutch sacrifice play from his old friend Bill Buchanan (James Morrison). With that, Jack solidifies another close personal connection to the leader of the free world, albeit not nearly as strong a bond as he enjoyed with the late, great David Palmer. 

6. The Iron Man Cometh

In the eighth and then final season of the show, Bauer and Logan once again cross paths, and it does not go well for the former president. In what just might be his finest act in 24 history, Bauer suits up in head-to-toe armor, becoming a veritable Iron Man, in order to abduct Logan and interrogate him for crucial information about some Russian enemies. It also yields Logan’s greatest moment of cowardice in the entire series: “That’s Jack Bauer! That’s gotta be!” It must be seen to be believed.

7. Heller on Earth

As if he wasn’t already close enough to the presidency, the most recent iteration of the show, 24: Live Another Day, sees former Secretary of Defense James Heller (William Devane) as the new President of the United States. Heller is not only Jack’s boss during season four, but also the father of Jack’s great love, Audrey (Kim Raver). There’s no universe in which Jack Bauer becomes President of the United States — save for Designated Survivor, of course — but he was this close to becoming the POTUS’ son-in-law… if not for all the ways Jack jeopardized both Heller and Audrey’s lives over the years, that is.

Designated Survivor premieres on Sept. 21 on ABC. Will you watch? Bookmark THR’s The Live Feed for more Designated Survivor coverage after the premeire.

September 15, 2016 9:29am PT by Josh Wigler

Michael Parmelee/USA Network

Technology producer and writer Kor Adana digs into theories stemming from season two’s penultimate installment.

[Warning: This story contains spoilers through season two, episode eleven of Mr. Robot.]

It says a lot about the current state of Mr. Robot that long lost psychopath Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallström) is finally back in the mix, and that’s not even the biggest twist of the moment.

Sure, the return of Tyrell sounds a few alarms, and raises more questions than answers. But those questions will be addressed as soon as the upcoming season finale, at least to a certain extent. Less clear: Angela (Portia Doubleday) adventuring through the wonderland created by Whiterose (BD Wong), which manifests in the form of a series of confusing questions, eerie children, and leaking fish. Then there’s Elliot (Rami Malek), who not only reunites with Tyrell by episode’s end, but also exhibits newfound control over his split-personality existence.

For more clarity on both Angela and Elliot’s storylines, as well as the bleak moment of loneliness for federal agent Dom DiPierro, The Hollywood Reporter turned to technology producer and writer Kor Adana to crack the code on some of season two’s penultimate installment’s more surreal moments. 

Before we begin… red or purple? 

Red.

On a serious note, Angela’s story this week takes a turn for the Lost when she participates in Whiterose’s… game? Test? Interrogation? How are we classifying this crucible?

I think Whiterose would classify it as a test of worthiness.

The scene is very specific, from the memorably intrusive questions (“Have you ever cried during sex?” certainly sets a tone) to the room’s deliberate design: the leaking fish tank, the Commodore 64, what have you. How much should we be reading into every individual element of this scene, versus wallowing in the scene’s sense of unease? Ultimately, is this a scene that should be analyzed in granular detail, or is it more about feeling the sensations of discomfort and dread?

I have a feeling that regardless of how I answer this question, every detail will be analyzed. There are a couple of things going on here. The questionnaire in the game is designed to gauge how malleable Angela is. I actually love how the game’s questions and the content of the phone call are reminiscent of those old C64 adventure games. The little girl showing Angela her bruises could be perceived as a test of Angela’s empathy. While the rest of the house has a contemporary décor, that room feels like it’s from a different time. This scene always makes me think of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where Dave Bowman finds himself in that neoclassical style bedroom where time is completely warped. The room is full of references to time or of how time is fleeting. This includes the old rotary phone, the Commodore 64, the leaking fish tank, and the “hang in there” poster. There is also this notion of games here. The little girl loads a game from a disk, which has some other fun games stored on it. The reference to Lolita is not only connected to the location of the key, but many of the characters in Lolita consistently engage in games and puzzles.

When Angela first arrives at the house, we can hear the Mr. Softee theme song in the background on a loop. What’s happening here? Are you trying to torture Larry David, or is there deeper significance?

I wasn’t with Sam when he chose to include this song, so I can only speculate… but I wouldn’t be surprised if he threw in another indirect Seinfeld reference. That’s a great Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.

In the room, Angela sees a “Hang in There” poster with a cute kitten. Is this poster hanging somewhere around the Robot production offices? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time… looking at you, Cocktail.

Unfortunately, this one didn’t make its way into our production offices. I did ask to keep one of these, but I never ended up getting one. There was an audio easter egg that we planted in our fifth episode this season that translated to this image. It’s also in line with the positive affirmations that Angela was focusing on earlier this season.

The computer featured in this scene is a Commodore 64. For those who weren’t poking around the digital realm in the early ’80s, can you set up what the Commodore 64 is, and how it’s significant to Mr. Robot?

The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit computer that was released in the ’80s. It had 64 kilobytes of RAM, hence the name. That amount of memory was actually really good for its time. It’s considered the best selling machine in history, with over 30 million units sold. I think there are a couple of reasons Whiterose uses it here. It’s a reference to a specific moment in time with regard to technology. It’s also a physically isolated machine that isn’t connected to any network. It can only read/write data to that 5 1/4” floppy disk.

The Commodore contains some games, including Maniac Mansion, one of the very first point-and-click LucasArts adventure games. Is this anything more than an Easter egg, or do you see commonalities between Maniac Mansion and Mr. Robot — both of them featuring narratives entirely dependent on the protagonists’ subjective actions?

There are actually some other fun references in the listing of that disk. The games motif is something I touched on earlier. I actually do see some commonalities between Mr. Robot and the old Lucasfilm adventure games… like Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Loom, The Secret of Monkey Island. Those are some of my favorite games, by the way. However, in those narratives, you probably had some more reliable narrators than Elliot.

Angela fields questions through a game called Land of Ecodelia. It doesn’t seem to be an actual game. Is there an elaborate back story and set of rules for Land of Ecodelia in the Mr. Robot writers room?

I’m not at liberty to speak about this. Let’s just forget you asked me.

Interesting! Okay, forgotten. The girl asking the questions looks like a young Angela. Coincidental, or deliberate?

I think it’s safe to say that most things we do on this show are deliberate. The notion of “doubles” is prevalent in both Mr. Robot and Lolita. In our show, we have Elliot and Mr. Robot, who are two sides of the same coin. I think it was part of Whiterose’s plan to have Angela confront a young girl who looked very much like her. Even in Lolita, you have the characters of Humbert and Quilty who function as doubles in throughout the story.

Whiterose allots 28 minutes for Angela, which really is a lot of time as far as she’s concerned. Angela has been a core person of interest for Phillip Price. What does it say about her that Whiterose has taken such a keen interest in Angela as well? 

I think Whiterose gets into this a little bit during her scene with Angela. She’s curious about why Angela has been so important to Price, which makes her important to Whiterose. So during this scene, Whiterose gives Angela a chance to see things from her perspective.

Turning away from Angela, and focusing on a different Jersey girl, we see a very lonely Dom DiPierro conversing with Alexa, her friend and Amazon app, as she tries to fall asleep. Curious to know more about how Dom’s scenes with Alexa came to life throughout the season. Are Alexa’s responses authentic to the app, or is the Alexa dialogue invented for the show? 

I’ve been waiting for this scene all season. It’s probably my favorite Dom moment so far. All of those responses are authentic to the app. Sam came to the room with this idea one day and we all loved it. I’m pretty sure he tested out all of these questions/answers on his own Amazon Echo before writing the scene. It builds on our theme of loneliness and connection in a very fresh way. After everything she’s been through, there’s something sad, intriguing, and a bit cathartic about watching her relationship with Alexa come to this point.

What do you have to say about the “condiment conspiracy,” which posits that some of the blood we saw in last week’s shootout was actually ketchup? In slowing down the scene, there does appear to be an explosion of mustardy mist…

There was definitely some bloody ketchup. British slang or spoiler? You decide.

Turning toward Elliot’s story, he uses a technique to initiate lucid dreaming — repeating the mantra “mind awake, body asleep” over and over — as taught to him by his middle school friend “Sam.” Maybe this is a better question for Sam Esmail, but is this a real story of Sam’s, do you know? Or purely invented for the show?

This is actually a story from my past. I used to be obsessed with lucid dreaming and I went through this phase where I did an ungodly amount of research on the subject. The “mind awake/body asleep” method came from that research. Sam wanted Elliot to go through some kind of internal mantra that allow for the silent observer ability. He and the rest of the room liked the lucid dreaming technique and thought it was a great fit for what we were trying to accomplish.

Using this technique for the first time ever, Elliot becomes the silent observer, with apparently undetected access to Robot’s actions and thoughts. Can you talk through the development of this new ability? What were the conversations that led to Elliot finally being able to spy on his alter-ego’s private actions?

Well, we know that Mr. Robot has always had this ability. Mr. Robot has always been able to observe what Elliot does/says while in control of their body. For the last couple of episodes, Elliot has become increasingly aware of how this puts him at a disadvantage. Why can’t he silently observe? Why does he lose time when Mr. Robot takes over? Is there a way to stay lucid during the takeover? He’s tried so many things to get rid of Mr. Robot, but he’s never actually accepted the takeover and tried to be the silent observer.

There’s only one episode left before Mr. Robot wraps its twisting-and-turning second season, and there are still so many unanswered questions in the air. What’s Stage Two? Where has Tyrell been? Who killed Romero? Are Mobley and Trenton dead as well? What about Darlene and Cisco? With only the finale remaining, how much closure will we receive by the season’s end?

You will receive a fair amount of closure. I promise.

Follow THR‘s Mr. Robot coverage all season long for interviews, news and theories.

Mr. Robot