A quick refresh before rebooting with ‘Mr. Robot’
The gripping cyberdrama Mr. Robot returns to USA Wednesday (10 ET/PT), and much like main character Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), we have a few holes in our memory. But instead of sitting through an anxiety-inducing 10 hours rewatching the first season, USA TODAY’s Hoai-Tran Bui has compiled the major plot points and twists that can prepare you for what creator Sam Esmail says is an even darker Season 2.
FSOCIETY WIPED ALL OF E CORP.’S DIGITAL RECORDS.
Elliot awoke from a three-day memory gap to find the world changed around him. E Corp. — what he calls Evil Corp. — was brought down by fsociety’s hack, throwing the world’s economy into chaos and erasing thousands of people’s debts to the conglomerate. The loss was so great the E Corp. EVP of technology commited suicide on live TV, while fsociety-masked people celebrated in the streets of New York.
ELLIOT IS MR. ROBOT.
The discovery that Mr. Robot is Elliot’s alter-ego, in the form of his father who died from leukemia, is a revelation Elliot will still be reeling from in Season 2. The leader of fsociety was none other than Elliot himself — explaining everyone’s confusion when he kept backing out of their mis- sions. While Elliot seems to have evicted Mr. Robot from his mind for now, he still needs to account for the three-day memory gap.
DARLENE IS ELLIOT’S SISTER.
She was one of Mr. Robot’s first fsociety recruits and essentially his right-hand man. However, an inappropriate kiss from Elliot led to the unraveling of his own conspiracy against himself.
SHAYLA IS DEAD, VERA IS ON THE RUN.
Elliot turned in Vera for raping Shayla, his drug dealer and girlfriend. Vera then briefly derailed Elliot’s fsociety plans, manipulating Elliot into hacking him out of prison. Sadly, after Elliot pulled off the prison breakout, Vera revealed he had already killed Shayla.
ANGELA IS WORKING AT E CORP.
Angela moved in with her dad to reopen the lawsuit against E Corp. for the cover-up of the toxic waste leak that caused Elliot’s father’s leukemia. But her former position at Allsafe, which protected E Corp., prevented her from going forward with the suit. She then made a deal with E Corp. that landed her a job at the conglomerate and got the CTO to testify about the cover-up.
TYRELL WAS IN ON THE FSOCIETY PLAN — AND IS NOW MISSING.
Frustrated with his lack of promotions at E Corp., Tyrell allies himself with Elliot. Through threats and blackmail, Tyrell gets Elliot to bring him to fsociety’s arcade headquarters, but that’s the last we see of him. Elliot wakes up three days later in Tyrell’s SUV, clueless of his whereabouts.
WHO IS WHITEROSE?
The transgender hacker who leads the Chinese Dark Army vanished after a brief meeting with Elliot but appeared at the end of the season, dressed as a man and on rather friendly terms with the CEO of E Corp. He knows who hacked them, the CEO claims. Did Whiterose sell out Elliot? Maybe we’ll find out in Season 2.