‘Mr. Robot’ Recap: "eps2.5_h4ndshake.sme" *SPOILERS AHEAD*

Wednesday marked the 7^th episode of Mr. Robot. “eps2.5_h4ndshake.sme” let us in on a huge bombshell that at least a few people, myself included, did not see coming. But before we get to that…

“Handshake” picked up on the much anticipated standoff between Angela and Dom. Angela plays it very cool with Dom but she isn’t buying her bull****. Luckily for Angela it is enough to get Dom off her back for now and complete the hack. However, this doesn’t get Angela off of Darlene’s back.

Speaking of Bull’s… Darlene has F-society make another move on E-Corp. The Bull testes sawed off the Bull statue on Wall Street in previous episodes were dropped through the skylight of the house. Adding more fuel to the fire.

Angela finally puts it all together and reveals that she knows Darlene and Elliot were behind the 5/9 hack. Angela also reveals another side of herself, an unsavory side to say the least. Angela pops into to her dad’s workplace and hopes to persuade him to settle with E-corp and drop the contingency that include individual inspections. We quickly see the mistrust in their relationship, which is just on her father’s part. It turns out Angela was only making a curtesy call as she had already received the 2/3rds vote to drop the lawsuit and take the payout, further damaging, possibly diminishing whatever relationship she has left with her father.

Angela then uses this leverage to get Price to move her to risk management. A huge mistake on her part, as her new manager in risk management puts her in her place after she speaks during a debriefing meeting she is sitting in on. Maybe she shouldn’t have turned down Price for a date.

In this episode Elliot finally learns the truth(?) or at least Mr. Robot’s version about what happened to Tyrell. According to Robot, Elliot killed Tyrell with the gun Darlene hid in the popcorn machine. Mr. Robot takes the blame for shooting Tyrell but Elliot accepts full responsibility.

Things get much more dangerous for Elliot in this episode. After making Ray’s site live again, he opens the site up to the FBI. Come to find out that Ray knew exactly what Elliot was going to do the minute he sat down in front of that computer again. Ray let it happen because of the guilt he had over what was being sold on the site his wife initially set up. The site is then quickly shutdown and that is when the real trouble starts.

Elliot is harassed and beaten by those who had bitcoin money on Ray’s site; they feel he owes them money. He is then cornered and about to be gang-raped when Leon, who’s a f****** ninja, comes to his aid, killing all 5 men by himself. We then learn Leon is a member of The Dark Army and requests that Elliot tells White Rose that he did him good. This is when s*** really starts to get weird.

The leader of the “church group” Elliot attends believes Elliot is talking to Jesus when in reality he is speaking to Mr. Robot. Although you could say Mr. Robot is Elliot’s God. Elliot turns to him for help and listens to what he has to say, especially when it comes to finishing what he started. Mr. Robot and Elliot now fully trust one another and help one another. Now that Elliot trusts him, he slowly begins to trust us, as an audience, again and drops the veil.

Elliot has been in prison this whole time! That’s right, it’s all been an encrypted mirage. Turns out there were clues to this in every episode of the season so far. We saw a lot of imagery of bars, confinement in a lot of shots, and lots of vertical lines. The fact that he is in jail means he hacked the FBI from prison, he hacked Ray’s site from prison and his “church group” is actually a prison group. Elliot has a routine because he is in jail. Ray is actually a person who works at the jail. Still can’t figure out whether or not his dog was real though.

Sidebar — the parallel shots of the prison and the places that represent freedom for Elliot (his mom’s house, NYC) are amazing in this episode; so artfully done. This is also why all the titles of every episode this season are encrypted. Although now that we have had a big reveal in the middle of the season, does this mean there is an even bigger reveal coming? Or do we just coast on the aftermath of this one?

The real question we want to know is why is Elliot in prison? Clearly it isn’t anything too serious or hacking related (he wouldn’t have been allowed access to a computer otherwise) as he is being released but we all still want to know why.

Next week:

The FBI moves in on Darlene, Mobley and Trenton

P.S. Looks like we will get to go on more adventures with Elliot and crew. Mr. Robot has been renewed for season 3!

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