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Holy f'n shit. What a fucking episode of television. What a season. What a series. 

That ending was truly crazy. I loved the race against the clock so much, only for Elliot to realize he fell victim to a very tragic long con. 

So many questions!

1) What the f even is the Dark Army? It first appeared to be a group of hackers-for-hire. But now it's something else, with well-established tentacles throughout US society and in power structures like the FBI. A religious cult? Mao-ist communists? 

2) The young version of Angela in the beginning of tonight's episode was the same young girl from last season. WR has hinted at some sort of parallel universe thing. But is she just using some form of trickery to pull Angela's strings to get to ECorp? 

 

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So, I really think the Dark Army is...

Spoiler

Something akin to the army of the 12 Monkeys. There's a couple parallels between Mr. Robot and 12 Monkeys and Mr. Robot feels like what leads up to all of the time travel hijinks in 12 Monkeys.

 

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Great episode.  This season is really making up for all the bullshit from last season.  Just excellent.

One nitpick, and I'm sorry, but this show really does do dumb things in service of plot from time to time, but why didn't Mr. Robot take away Eliot's key card?  He kept taking Eliot over and running him off.  Wouldn't it have been easier to throw the key card in a toilet one of the times he lead Eliot out of the building?

Also, if the Dark Army's long con has always been to use Eliot and Fsociety to pull off phases one and two, why did they make it so difficult for them in phase one?

I hope the time travel thing is a red herring or, at worst, it turns out White Rose is insane and his time travel plan fails because time travel is impossible.

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On 17/11/2017 at 11:24 AM, Technico Support said:

I hope the time travel thing is a red herring or, at worst, it turns out White Rose is insane and his time travel plan fails because time travel is impossible.

Oh yeah -- totally. I think for a show that sort of prides itself on how devastating actual technology can be to society in the wrong hands, it makes 0 sense to veer off into a wonderland of nonsense. I'd also wager time travel/dimension travel etc. comes to nothing. Can see a scenario whereby nations are at war next series though ..

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So the last episode was a come down episode from the previous week, dealing with the fallout of the actual phase 2 attack. But man, what a fucking bummer. In fact, while this season has been much better than last season (and I still liked last season quite a bit), this is almost too much of a downer. I'm worried that they're running into an issue that other TV series have where the villain or antagonist is almost TOO huge and too unstoppable. If things continue at this rate, any downfall to the Dark Army is going to be incredibly implausible and unrealistic.

And if there is no taking them down, then you really begin to wonder if time travel does play a part. Although given Angela's mental break, I'm guessing maybe all of the time travel stuff is just an easter egg for everyone. Then again, she was absolutely talking to her younger self when she took the Turing test last season, so how the fuck did that happen?

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11 hours ago, username said:

I could live with Angela also being an insane unreliable narrator.  If there is an episode with time travel or alternate dimensions it'll be the last episode of the show I ever watch.

Same.  That's not the show I signed up for.

And if that was young Angela interrogating older Angela in what was the worst, most masturbatory scene last season, then that's fucking dumb.  If 7-10 year old me showed up and had a conversation with me when I was in my 20s, I think I would have realized, "hey, that's me right there."  "

I like this season so much more than last season but it's still showing its seams in places.  Last season ended with Trenton and Mobley discussing how they had a way to roll back the hack.  It felt like that might be a real plot point this season.  Then, 6 episodes in, they finally revisit them to just kill them off.  It feels like Esmail and the writers, when formulating this season, realized they'd left that thread hanging and just said, "yeah, fuck it."  They might as well have just put up a title card that said "Note: Trenton and Mobley died on their way back to their home planet."

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Yeah, that was a big bummer to delay two characters I like from showing up until now just to kill them off. Why even do a post-credits scene with them? You could easily insert that same scene as part of this episode. And I get why they were killed off. If they know of a way to roll back the hack then the Dark Army needs to ensure that doesn't happen.

Again, Sam Esmail has made the Dark Army into too big and too unstoppable of a juggernaut. They need to be vulnerable and they aren't. Look at other great dramas like Breaking Bad where the Nazis or even Walt had obvious vulnerabilities, or the Shield where again no one was unstoppable because that makes everything very hard to swallow. 

I know you guys are very anti-sci-fi and anti-time travel or parallel dimensions, but I love that shit. It just needs to be done well.

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And how did the Dark Army even know that Trenton and Mobley knew how to roll back the hack?  They literally had just realized they could do it and started discussing it in a Fry's parking lot mere seconds before Joey Bada$$ (no idea what his character's name is, might as well be Deus Ex Machina) showed up to put the kibosh on those plans.  Like you say, just another thing that makes The Dark Army way too powerful -- they know your plans before you can even start to formulate them :ph34r:

I know I mentioned it upthread at the end of last season, but wasn't the original hack simply Eliot encrypting all of E-Corp's data?  If so, wouldn't Eliot have kept the keys he used to encrypt it?  Couldn't he roll it back himself any time he wanted by just handing over the key to Evil Corp Guy Whose Name I Can't Recall?

Speaking of, I really love the subtle digs at Trump, like showing very briefly that E Corp Dude and Whiterose are actually meeting at Mar A Lago.  "This place is a dump."  "I ran into the owner outside.  What a buffoon."  "Are you really going yachting with him tomorrow?  Does he still wear those short shorts?"  Just amazing.

I don't mind sci-fi and time travel at all.  But this was never sold as that kind of show.  I don't turn on Bugs Bunny and suddenly get snuff porn.  Gotta stay in your lane.

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10 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I don't mind sci-fi and time travel at all.  But this was never sold as that kind of show.  I don't turn on Bugs Bunny and suddenly get snuff porn.  Gotta stay in your lane.

This, basically.  Time travel and sci-fi can be swell, but to add them to this show at this point would basically mess up the stakes in a way that would be impossible to fix.  I remember reading an iffy article some years back about how Boardwalk Empire was only gonna have one more season, so why not just introduce a vampire character during it (I don't think they were serious FWIW).  On one hand it would be funny, but it would basically scrap every bit of world building and narrative set up in all the previous seasons.  The same thing would happen to Mr. Robot if they went "ha, parallel dimensions!" after three seasons.  If you don't like the show that is already there then sure why not, but it would in essence cancel Mr Robot and replace it with a spin-off that has the same name.

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13 hours ago, Technico Support said:

And how did the Dark Army even know that Trenton and Mobley knew how to roll back the hack?  They literally had just realized they could do it and started discussing it in a Fry's parking lot mere seconds before Joey Bada$$ (no idea what his character's name is, might as well be Deus Ex Machina) showed up to put the kibosh on those plans.  Like you say, just another thing that makes The Dark Army way too powerful -- they know your plans before you can even start to formulate them :ph34r:

Did they say anything about Dark Army knowing about their plans? I don't recall that. I thought they took them then because of their plans to use them as patsies.

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DA I believe  has no idea i) T/M know how to roll back the hack; ii) Have distributed that knowledge (probably to Darlene??). They will be revenged. I completely expect the show to end on a downer however; whoever reigns at close of curtains, they will be your standard predatory or compromised rich/powerful we’ve seen at every turn so far.

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9 hours ago, Eivion said:

Did they say anything about Dark Army knowing about their plans? I don't recall that. I thought they took them then because of their plans to use them as patsies.

 

25 minutes ago, A_K said:

DA I believe  has no idea i) T/M know how to roll back the hack; ii) Have distributed that knowledge (probably to Darlene??). They will be revenged. I completely expect the show to end on a downer however; whoever reigns at close of curtains, they will be your standard predatory or compromised rich/powerful we’ve seen at every turn so far.

Very good point, guys.  Trenton and Mobley could very well have been just convenient patsies and not killed for their knowledge of the rollback.  I just assumed it because they were discussing undoing 5/9 when whatshisface showed up.

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David Lynch of our times. Exceptional storytelling; poignant and under-stated, and a far better reflection of the hazards of our times than any hysterical reactions to Twitter timelines. some real epic Paulo Coelho vibes there. That was quite arguably one of the best episodes yet.

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Ah, you're misunderstanding the concepts at play. Mr. Robot plays on the Mandela Effect to tease that there is some sort of time travel present and what we're seeing in Mr. Robot is an unchanged timeline, where there's a genie move with Sinbad, Berenstain Bears is spelled Berenstein, etc.

Eric Stoltz in Back to the Future isn't a part of the Mandela Effect.

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2 hours ago, Craig H said:

Ah, you're misunderstanding the concepts at play. Mr. Robot plays on the Mandela Effect to tease that there is some sort of time travel present and what we're seeing in Mr. Robot is an unchanged timeline, where there's a genie move with Sinbad, Berenstain Bears is spelled Berenstein, etc.

Eric Stoltz in Back to the Future isn't a part of the Mandela Effect.

Oh I get it.  But I'm not one to let the specifics of alternate reality theories get in the way of making a goofy reference. 

And who's to say there isn't another universe where people are saying, "I could have sworn that kid from Family Ties was in that movie but it wasn't!  Crazy, man, crazy!"

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Really good episode.  Some fun in-jokes:

Mr. Robot tells Wellick that he's going to be Whiterose's puppet and Wellick's response, word for word, is:

The song playing when Darlene meets Dom at the bar is a Joey Bada$$ song.

Darlene pretty much thinks she's a time traveler now, right?  She mentions Tyrell becoming CTO as an example of things being put right, then mistakes the guy selling CDs for Cisco and tells him, "I'm not buying your CD this time" in a tremendous callback to season 1. 

Just when we think Whiterose is too powerful...she's stymied by...local mayors and border security, I guess?  And god damn.  Darlene tells the FBI everything, so now Whiterose knows about the keys.  I'm really enjoying this season after the missteps of last season. 

EDIT: oooops.  I meant Angela, not Darlene.  Thanks @Craig H

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You mean Angela. Yes, Angela has lost her mind and thinks she's a time travel or is in the middle of the timeline changing. This season is way better than last and I really enjoyed last season. I'm going to binge re-watch this season just to see if it makes it even better because I liked season 2 way more than most because this series is meant to be binge watched.

I'm sad that we're already at the season finale.

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1 hour ago, Craig H said:

You mean Angela. Yes, Angela has lost her mind and thinks she's a time travel or is in the middle of the timeline changing. This season is way better than last and I really enjoyed last season. I'm going to binge re-watch this season just to see if it makes it even better because I liked season 2 way more than most because this series is meant to be binge watched.

I'm sad that we're already at the season finale.

Angela.  Yep.  Sorry...I wrote that wayyy too early this morning. 

I can't believe we're at the finale already.  As much as I've loved this season, I don't feel like it's built to anything that's coming to a head in the next episode.  As much as they've done place-setting, what's the big thing coming in a week?  The way the show has been laid out, it feels like we should still be a few eps away from the finale.

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