Reality is just a state of mind
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| Rami Malek and Chistian Slater in Mr. Robot |
One of the series I belatedly caught up on is “Mr. Robot” (2015–2019).
I watched all four seasons back-to-back, and it was a truly emotional journey.
The main character is a hacker, Elliot Alderson, played by the very talented Rami Malek, who wants to destroy the “System” and rebuild it from scratch.
It may seem trivial when put like this, but in reality this series offers an extreme representation of the current world that is scary, precisely because we realise how much we really could be moving in that direction, and perhaps we already are.
This “System” is initially represented by E-Corp (renamed by the protagonist Evil Corp, which in reality corresponds to large corporations like Amazon or Google, but which in the story is so deeply embedded in every area of people’s lives (hardware, software, banking, electronic money … everything is managed or sold by this company) that it leaves no room for anything else. Added to this is the Dark Army, a group of “bad” hackers led by a certain Whiterose, but who in fact depend on another financial group that controls the entire world, E-Corp included.
Fighting against all this is our Elliot and his Fsociety.
The protagonist moves in this context, speaking directly to us (Hello, friend…), as if we were a silent presence in his head. And his head is a real mess!
Yes, because Elliot is an unreliable narrator. He suffers from split personality on such a profound level that he cannot remember much of his life and occasionally one of his mental alter egos takes control of him. What we see is what Elliot thinks he sees, not what actually happens.
And so, throughout the series, all these aspects of him are brought to light, leading to unexpected twists that completely change the perspective from which we observe the story.
All this is possible thanks to the masterful interpretation of Rami Malek, supported by an excellent Christian Slater, in the role of Mr. Robot, and by an exceptional DB Wong, who creates two versions of the same character in an absolutely credible way.
I quite enjoyed the first season, but I admit that the second season almost felt like it was dragging on at times. It suffers from having a transitional role. Things improve when the real events start to become clearer, compared to those imagined by Elliot, and this happens even more so in the third. But the fourth is really beautiful!
Apparently, the series’ creator, Sam Esmail, planned it from start to finish and decided to end it after the fourth season, not because he was forced to do so by an imminent cancellation, but because it had reached its conclusion.
This is noticeable in the way that clues to the revelations in the latest episodes are scattered throughout all the seasons. But maybe I should watch it again from the beginning to catch them all.
In the fourth season all the threads of the story are closed with a succession of events that flow at full speed and with a really high number of people killed.
I think the best part is the central one, where Elliot finally discovers something important about his past and at the same time carries out the final blow to the “System”.
The latest episodes, however, shed light on the final mystery of Elliot’s multiple personalities. Maybe they’re a bit weaker than the previous ones, but they close the circle perfectly.
Personally, I had grown so fond of that version of Elliot that I was a little sad about the final reveal (I can’t say what, because it would be a spoiler).
But there is a curiosity that I carry with me and that I fear will never be satisfied.
What exactly was Whiterose’s “machine”?
If you haven’t watched “Mr. Robot”, I recommend doing so in a relatively short space of time, so that you have every aspect of the story fresh in your mind and can piece together the threads of the plot without getting lost.
