The eighth installment of USA Network's Mr. Robot dropped several massive bombshells in an episode which I didn't enjoy as much as previous weeks, but which did exactly what an antepenultimate episode should.
"eps1.7_wh1ter0se.m4v" was written by Randolph Leon and directed by Christoph Schrewe. Proceedings began with Darlene on a balcony overlooking the city having just spent a night with an acquaintance. Upon his leaving, she lifted a handgun from a safe.
That was kind-of weird, but in reality this was merely the tip of the iceberg for what was to come later on.
The next scene saw Angela exchanging heated conversation over the phone to ex-boyfriend, Ollie, while she warmed up in ballet. Bizarrely, Darlene joined her, and the pair appeared to have been longtime friends. This has to have been a bit of a fantasy because Darlene is not the type to enjoy ballet, and the pair barely know each other, having met for the first time not long ago.
Angela sat very much on the sidelines in this hour, having been rather prominent through the last fortnight chasing leads on Terry Colby, also an absentier.
Elliot appeared for the first time staring at a painting, his mind narrating to us his short and simple feelings on how he dealt to Krista in last week's closing moments. Needless to say, Elliot moved on rapidly, as there were many more important matters to attend to. It was at that moment, Mr. Robot presented himself - much earlier in the episode than normal - where he confirmed with Elliot that the plan was still on.
Darlene was next up. She was riding the subway when she noticed she was being tailed. Turns out acquiring the firearm was a good idea, but why sleep with an old flame to get his from his safe? Surely, if you're a skilled hacker, finding a firearm to acquire would be as trivial as a Google search.
Back at the theme park headquarters, the crew were there finalizing further details. They were impressed with Elliot's work in maintaining access to the Raspberry Pi he installed inside the Steel Mountain some weeks earlier. The others had pulled their weight though, gaining access to the thermostats in the other five backup locations with the plan looking to involve heating all backup locations simultaneously. If only getting the other hackers on board was so easy.
With the Dark Army having already been introduced, it was White Rose's turn to have the veil of secrecy lifted somewhat. Rather bizarrely, it stemmed from an incident at Allsafe, when Ollie tried to get back on good terms with Elliot while simultaneously asking him to do him a big favor and deliver some corrupted hard drives to Blank's Disc Recovery for him. Understandably Elliot was reluctant, but Ollie pulled rank, effectively ordering Elliot to do the task.
Fortunately, Elliot smelled a rat, and the very next thing he did at his workstation was bring up Ollie's emails to see what he was hiding. It was then that he found out why Allsafe had been under attack all day, and also the role his friend Angela had in it. Shortly after, Elliot confronted her about the incident, to which Angela retorted that Elliot hadn't been around lately for her to talk to, hence the action she took which endangered Allsafe while preventing her public humiliation.
Elliot did take the corrupted drives to Blank's Disc Recovery, and that was where White Rose was introduced. The majority of the characters in Mr. Robot are far from ordinary and White Rose is definitely no exception. She is an almost robotic, emotionless, time-obsessed character. Elliot was allocated just three minutes of the woman's time. It took a few tries for Elliot to pry the information out of White Rose, which turned out to be highly critical of Elliot's actions because he had brought a lot of suspicion upon himself. Before White Rose would be on board with the plan to take down Evil Corp, Elliot would have to reassure Gideon that he wasn't involved in suspicious activity, but also get the honeypot Allsafe had created on the server that would be involved in the Evil Corp takedown.
You have 50 hours and 23 minutes. At that point, when all parties are ready, we will initiate the hack.
Finally, we have a deadline for when to expect some action, and presumably when the final two episodes of the season will be set around. Elliot took advantage of the increasing severity of the hack on Allsafe to log into Gideon's email and request the honeypot be removed. However, Gideon wasn't impressed that Elliot wasn't watching the videoed message beamed to Allsafe's conference room and live to its website and YouTube, with the rest of his colleagues. This was because it was initiated by Darlene as a way to separate Gideon from his phone so Elliot could get a two-factor authentication code from it. As Elliot narrated, the phone was on the charger in Gideon's office having had its battery drained having received 100 large MMS files. Elliot got the code and sent the email, but with Gideon now cottoning onto the trait that things happen when Elliot isn't there, both their futures look set to get much more difficult.
The wheels kept turning for Tyrell Wellick and wife Joanna, with the former fresh off murdering Sharon, the wife of the new Evil Corp CTO Scott Knowles, on the roof of a building during a heated, sexually charged exchange. We finally got a concrete motive for the actions of the Wellicks. The end goal is for Tyrell to become Evil Corp's CTO, but his motive for that became much clearer too when Mr. Robot and Tyrell met briefly, and appeared to be on the same side. Could it be that Tyrell, and his wife, are fsociety members with Tyrell tasked with becoming CTO in order to do further damage to Evil Corp? If that is so, then White Rose's time limit is probably significant to them too.
The couple's plans may have been derailed however. Detectives came knocking on the couple's door late in the evening, with the pregnant Joanna opting to induce her baby in order to prevent the detectives questioning her husband. But the theory still holds weight in my mind because of Tyrell's actions when Gideon stopped by his office to personally reassure him that everything was being done to ensure Evil Corp's data was safe and that plans were in place to rectify the situation.
However it was the ending to the episode which completely screwed with my mind, while putting several large puzzle pieces in their place. This stemmed from Darlene and Elliot celebrating on the pier, followed by Elliot attempting to kiss Darlene, which was immediately repelled.
Oh my God, Elliot. Did you forget again?
Talk about a "what the hell?" moment right there. Darlene, it turns out, is Elliot's sister. And somehow Elliot had forgotten that, but all this time Darlene hadn't even acted like the pair were related. The key word there is "again". This has obviously happened to Elliot before, and Darlene is far from thrilled. Maybe it's been a while. A few years, perhaps, since the last time this happened. But when you think back to the past interactions the pair have had over the course of the season, things just seem completely weird.
In the subway in the next scene, Elliot's mind was going crazy. There were numerous spastic pieces of dialog thrown together. Among other things too plentiful to discuss here, Elliot even questioned if he was real.
We have to hack. Me.
But the biggest bombshell was yet to come. Elliot determined that he had to hack himself to figure out whether he was real. An internet and database search turned up nothing, so he checked his DVD archive featuring all the information on those he's hacked before. He was shocked to see the man we know as Mr. Robot in every photo on the disk. M83's soundtrack, "Gone" made the moment even more spectacular, as Mr. Robot knocked on the door and said "I think we should talk."
It's so common in television these days for shows to have a substandard antepenultimate episode because the creative teams try and save the best for last, and put emphasis on the penultimate and finale episodes instead. What's incredible about this episode of Mr. Robot is that the stuff we learned in the final 5 minutes would have been about as good a season-ending cliffhanger as you would ever see. The fact that two more episodes are still to come is staggering.
For now, I'm done with forecasting what's coming up. There are a handful of shows on television where it's impossible to predict what's about to happen, and Mr. Robot is fast becoming one of them. Mr. Robot is truly a one-of-a-kind series, and with eight outstanding episodes gone, the final two are sure to be off the charts.
Thanks as always for reading! As always, do share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below, and if you're more fearless than me when it comes to predictions, stick those theories down there too! Check out next week's penultimate episode promo here, along with promotional photos here, and press release here.
