‘Mr. Robot’ Season 2 Premieres July 13th on USA

Mr. Robot season 2 premieres this Wednesday July 13^th on USA. This season has been expanded to 12 episodes. Season 1 only had 10. USA is also adding a live after-show, “Hacking Robot.” Mr. Robot stars Rami Malek who plays Elliot, a vigilante hacker and cybersecurity engineer at a firm called Allsafe. Last season he was recruited by a man known as Mr. Robot into fsociety, a group set out to change the lives of the other 99% by taking back from the 1 percenters. Inspired by events like the Occupy movement and groups like Anonymous, their goals included wiping out all debt and taking down E Corp, an Allsafe client that is the world’s largest corporation.

This season creator and director Sam Esmail explores the aftermath of the 5/9 hack. Viewers will also get to see Elliot’s on-going struggle with his mental health. According to the New York Times, Mr. Esmail sees the new episodes as the start of the second act of a story he expects to last four or five seasons. “The Mr. Robot reveal wasn’t the ending; it was the setup,” he said. The real story of the show is Elliot’s journey to resolve a convulsive identity crisis and make some sort of sense of himself.

Esmail will be directing every episode, using a block shooting schedule, commonly used in feature films. This means all the scenes in a given location are shot in a chunk, despite which episode they appear in. The New York Times also gave some insight into behind the scenes action of the USA drama. Off-camera technical advisers whisper keystrokes (“typing, typing, mousepad, click, click, click, return … ”) and a writer’s assistant wirelessly reads Elliot’s continuing internal struggle. In voice-overs Malek is coached through code used in the series line by line.