“You only see what’s in front of you, not what’s above you.” The season finale of Mr. Robot was utter chaos, but the good kind. A slow start but once that freight train took off there was no stopping the crazy. At every commercial break I found myself asking what the f*** just happened? The show has its way of answering a few questions and throwing ten thousand new ones at us. However, we did finally learn the truth about Tyrell and stage 2.

Tyrell is really alive and well. He is not a figment of Elliot’s imagination. Sadly Elliot had to learn that the hard way.

Elliot discovered that Tyrell, Mr. Robot and The Dark Army are all in cahoots. He also learned that Stage 2 is a malware program and a very dangerous one. Tyrell shows Elliot a blueprint for a building and a disassembled firmware for an uninterrupted power supply. Come to find out that blueprint is for the E-Corp building where they are stashing all the paper records in order to rebuild their business. It just so happens that building is directly across the street from Tyrell’s safe house. Tyrell begins to execute the malware which is designed to override the safety limits of the UPS recharge battery, release hydrogen and use the brown outs to create a transformer spark causing an explosion that will level the building. HOLY S***!!!!!

Elliot immediately wants to shut down the malware and erase the backdoor to the program but is warned by Mr. Robot and Tyrell to step away from the computer. Mr. Robot pleads with Elliot to stop what he is doing as Tyrell grabs a gun and points it at Elliot. Thinking Mr. Robot is playing a trick on him, Elliot challenges Tyrell believing he is only an illusion. Unfortunately for Elliot, Tyrell calls his bluff and shoots him in the gut. Robot then flickers and glitches away, for now. Guess that is what happens when Elliot wanders outside his realm.

Luckily Elliot is not dead. He may be in a coma though. Tyrell immediately calls Angela after he shoots Elliot. Yes I said ANGELA. He tells her that he loves Elliot and she reassures him that he did what had to be done. She then heads to their location as she wants to be the first person he see when he wakes up. What the hell is going on? How long has Angela been involved? To what extent is she involved in this? How much does she know? What happened between Elliot and Tyrell during those 3 days?

The freight train just keeps on trucking down the tracks, full speed ahead. Surprise! Darlene is alive but Cisco is dead and no sooner does Dom snag Darlene and bring her in for questioning. Can’t the woman grieve?!

Apparently not. Especially if you are an enemy of the state. After many attempts to invoke the Fifth Amendment, Darlene is shut down and the evidence against her and F-Society is unloaded. Dom shows her a casing she found at the former F-Society headquarters. A casing from the gun she stole from Xander, her former lover. Darlene shrugs it off but Dom isn’t finished with her yet. She takes Darlene to a back room and throws down the hammer showing Darlene exactly what the FBI knows. And boy do they know a lot.

Darlene is bewildered and responds with an ever so appropriate “you’ve got to be f****** kidding me.” We then see the board and Elliot and Tyrell are at the center of it. No Whiterose or The Dark Army though. The question remains, was Darlene shocked by the FBI’s knowledge or the fact that Tyrell is involved? She wouldn’t have had any idea about his involvement as Elliot couldn’t even remember whether he was alive or dead. Dom then proceeds to tell Darlene that they only had one shot at the middle man; they had to lie in wait like a python. Which middle man is she talking about? Elliot or Tyrell? Who do they think the ring leader is and how are they going to get them?

Mobley and Trenton were also on the board. After the credits play Sam Esmail treats us to an additional scene. One where Mobley and Trenton are alive out West. Trenton divulges to Mobley that she has found something that can undue everything they have done. Unfortunately she most likely won’t get the chance as the two are greeted by Leon moments later. The Dark Army has sent him to do their bidding. Their time seems to be coming to an end. The Dark Army is always one step ahead of everyone, including Elliot and the FBI so it’s easy to see that they figured out what Trenton knows. Hence, Leon is there to tie up loose ends. May their death be swift and painless.

One of the less exciting twists of the night was the fact that Scott Knowles was the one sending gifts and calling Joanna. It wasn’t Tyrell at all. The last gift Joanna received from Scott was his deceased wife Sharon’s sonogram. Just when you thought Joanna was starting to feel bad for Scott she goes right back into her degrading and wicked ways. Saying she was glad Sharon was dead and that his fetus didn’t have to grow up with such a p**** of a father. Scott then proceeded to beat her to a pulp, which she kind of deserved. At least he was nice enough to call 911 after he realized what he had done.

This must have enraged Joanna even more. As she then goes on to devise a plan to have Scott framed for the murder of his wife. She uses her boyfriend Derek, who was working that night at the party where Sharon was murdered, as a pawn in her game of revenge. She wants to punish him and after a little pushing and prodding Derek is willing to tell police a new story about that night.

The finale closes out with a complete blackout and the crashing of cars. Did Tyrell initiate Stage 2? We’ll have to wait until next season to find out. However we do have some clues as to what’s to come.

Season 3 will be about “Disintegration” as Elliot and Mr. Robot split further apart against the nation’s recession. Will there also be a literal disintegration of the E-Corp building?

According to Deadline.com, Season 3 will involve a lot of 2016’s political events i.e. Donald Trump gaining the Republican nomination, terrorist attacks, etc.

“The sentiment and the outrage and the support of Donald Trump; the groundswell by which he rose to become the Republican nominee, that sort of atmosphere is going to be used in the Mr. Robot universe and amplified by this great economic collapse which is happening like a slow car accident. What you’re seeing is the events that stoked those (Trump-like) sentiments,” says Esmail who is heading back to the writers room soon and will continue to direct all of season 3’s episodes, just like he did in season 2. There will be a lot of overlap,” Esmail says about melding current events into Mr. Robot season 3, “the increased terrorism and domestic violence that has gone on, a lot of that will play into the Mr. Robot universe.”

There is definitely a lot to look forward to in Season 3 of Mr. Robot. I for one cannot wait!

Suggested Articles:

‘Mr. Robot’ Recap: “Python Part 1” *SPOILERS AHEAD*

‘Mr. Robot’ Recap: “Hidden Process” *SPOILERS AHEAD*

‘Mr. Robot’ Recap: “eps2.7_init_5.fve” *SPOILERS AHEAD*

The post ‘Mr. Robot’ Season 2 Finale: Recap *SPOILERS AHEAD* appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

“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!

Suggested Articles:

‘Mr. Robot’ Recap: “eps2.4_m4ster-s1ave.aes” *SPOILERS AHEAD*

‘Mr. Robot’ Recap: “eps2.3_logic_b0mb.hc” *SPOILERS AHEAD*

The post ‘Mr. Robot’ Recap: “eps2.5_h4ndshake.sme” *SPOILERS AHEAD* appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.