Spoiler warning: if you haven’t been initiated into fsociety, this article contains spoilers for Mr Robot season one
The first season of Mr Robot was one long rabbit hole of corporate intrigue, anti-capitalist propaganda and mental instability, a plunge that showed no signs of bottoming out in the final scenes: with Evil Corp successfully hacked by fsociety, the global financial system is in crisis, leaving a three-day gap in the memory of Elliot Alderson, our decidedly unstable hero. Elliot has also finally come to the realization that fsociety mastermind Mr Robot is actually just a fragment of his own mind, taking the form of his late father. And Whiterose, the transgender hacker behind the Dark Army who helped fsociety, apparently has a mysterious relationship with Evil Corp CEO Phillip Price – disguised as a man.
What’s going on here? As we prepare to go back into Elliot’s mind, let’s take a step back and compile what we know about season two of Mr Robot.
The cast
It looks like the Robot family is about to get a whole lot bigger. Several recurring cast members from season one have been promoted to regulars, including Michael Cristofer as Price and Stephanie Corneliussen as the complicated, intriguing Joanna Wellick, whose husband Tyrell is being blamed for the hack. (Joanna also reportedly has a new love interest by Chris Conroy, which bodes poorly for Tyrell.) BD Wong will also have a bigger role as Whiterose.
Most of the show’s new cast members are a little more recognizable – which could be exciting, or accidentally puncture the drab, borderline-monotony of Mr Robot’s aesthetic and established world. Grace Gummer has joined the main cast as an FBI agent investigating the hack. She’ll be assisted by another agent, played by Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi.
Craig Robinson will play a new, apparently very helpful person in the neighborhood, which is highly suspicious considering that no one on Mr Robot is ever helpful, unless by “helpful” you mean “incredibly mysterious and manipulative”. If Robinson’s character is another figment of Elliot’s imagination, he’ll just die really quickly, or, based on a glimpse of him looming over a cut-up Elliot in the trailer, he’ll turn out to be a new sinister operator. No matter what, Robinson is surprisingly deft at dramatic roles, and his comic chops will hopefully bring at least a little levity to an often very dour show.
In his first serious acting role, Joey Bada$$ will be playing Leon, “a friend of Elliot’s”. Like Robinson’s character, this seems unbelievable. However, Leon also reportedly “talks excessively to Elliot, advising him and philosophizing the meanings of life”, which sounds like it could just require him to yell a bunch of lyrics from his 1999 mixtape.
But the most important addition to the show is President Obama, or whoever is impersonating his voice in this trailer. It would be pretty funny to continue to facetiously depict the real Obama as a character on the show, but at the very least this means that Mr Robot isn’t afraid of seriously challenging the way the world works, or of warping it for the purposes of its own fictional universe. (The show’s divergence has already been pushed to a breaking point – apparently, bitcoins are now a hot commodity.)
The style
Series creator Sam Esmail is, notably, directing every episode of this season, so it seems safe to say that season two of Mr Robot will be much closer to a personal vision, and have more of the touches that Esmail has brought to the show. Hallucinatory flashbacks/breakdowns in reality? Check. Dark, brooding shots of Rami Malek? Double check. Scenes where Christian Slater keeps disappearing and reappearing to take advantage of the fact that he’s not a real person? We can only hope.
And with Elliot seemingly fully aware of the audience (confirmed in the first season finale), will Esmail and co go even further in breaking the fourth wall? Or at least increase the frequency of Elliot’s audience address to Frank Underwood levels?
The plot
The trailer for season two suggests that a big part of the season will focus on Elliot trying to discover what he was doing during the three days of the hack. Nothing good, right? Add that to Elliot’s newfound understanding of his relationships with Darlene and Mr Robot and Esmail’s stated focus for the year, and it seems safe to say that the second season of Mr Robot will spend some time in the past exploring the history of the Alderson family.
Contra the inwardly focused Elliot, Darlene looks like she’s going to be the one pushing the show forward. The show’s website features some clues written by what appears to the current incarnation of fsociety, either Mr Robot or – just as likely given her joy and excitement at the end of last season – Darlene. It reads: “We lit the fuse of revolution. Now we decide if it sputters and dies, or truly ignites.” If Darlene really is continuing the group’s mission of toppling the corporate, plutocratic order, she’ll certainly be living in a nice fantasy.
The website also includes a couple of clips giving a sense of the ramifications of what is now being called the Five/Nine hack. With Tyrell Wellick firmly in the nation’s crosshairs as the chief suspect and fsociety running rampant, there looks to be a manhunt of sorts, with the government stepping in for Evil Corp as the giant power opposing Elliot, at least implicitly. Will they be harder for him to take down? Only one way to find out: bring on the hacks.
- Season two of Mr Robot premieres on 13 July in the US
