‘Mr. Robot’ finale review: Elliot’s door, White Rose, and realizations
Throughout the entirety of its first season, “Mr. Robot” has done an exemplary job of making us feel completely bonkers. How have they done that? It is really more or less the result of a myriad of things, from an unreliable narrator to a character who is not really there to being placed so much within Elliot’s head. It’s a trippy show, but one with so much to say about what it means to feel physically and emotionally alone.
The real question that we could see some people being concerned with after the finale is whether or not we got to see enough of the actual hacking process; to us, we’re somewhat fine with getting what we did. The show doesn’t need to show fingers typing for us to get the point of what is going on … which is by and large A LOT. Evil Corp has been decimated and fsociety’s reach is expanding; the world is on the cusp of huge changes. Yet, we somehow saw much of this coming. The sweeping story elements on this show are perhaps its most predictable.
Tonight’s finale brought us frequent switches in Angela’s personality, the disappearance of Tyrell, and a White Rose shocker at the tail end that makes us wonder whether or not he is really tied to Evil Corp in any capacity, or what he meant by the “burning of Rome”. Instead of giving us answers, the show merely asked more questions when it comes to particular story elements, with one of them being whether or not we will see more of B.D. Wong come season two. Another: Who knocked on Elliot’s door?
The biggest revelation tonight was an emotional one for Elliot himself, as he started to realize more that Mr. Robot was his own creation, and yet one that he could not free himself of completely. It took him making it to his father’s grave before realizing the truth, and the fascinating part of this is trying to uncover where the show is going to take this character now, and how Christian Slater can still be evolved with Mr. Robot being more of a conscious entity.
Even sitting here minutes after the episode aired, we feel it still merits another watch, and the same goes for almost the rest of the season to really see things through the lens of what we know now. At least we can say regardless that this was a very strong finale to a wonderful show, one that tested us and forced us to question even how we process scripted television. We cannot wait for more. Grade: A-.