'Mr Robot' Season 4 Episode 11 sees Elliot experience Whiterose's perfect parallel world without 'shackles of the past'
The penultimate episode of 'Mr. Robot' poses a question. Would Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) still be the Elliot Alderson that we know and love without his layered trauma, without his alters, and without the dysfunctional relationships that teach him to love the hard way?
This question comes into play after Whiterose's (B. D. Wong) mysterious machine finally comes into play. In the cold open, Whiterose's Dark army agents take down the soldiers who have come to capture "Minister Zhang", while she puts on her makeup dressed in her mother's dress.
As she leaves, flanked by her bodyguards, she makes it a point to tell a near-dead soldier "Mr. Zhang is dead. Now there is only Whiterose". It is a symbolic burning of bridges -- for Whiterose there is no going back.
He and Elliot finally have that face-to-face we've been waiting for and it is all about close-up emotions as Elliot and Whiterose debate the nature of love, hate and what gets them out of bed every day, each claiming that their actions were trying to make a better world. Whiterose wants to show Elliot a life without being held by the "shackles of the past". He talks of being "tired" of the world as it was and "loving" people enough to change it.
Elliot waxes eloquent of how he is not in the emotional state to give love but encountered people who gave him love no matter what he threw at them. He never says "Darlene" but you can tell he is thinking of her. He still has hope in the world they are part of, as no matter how f-ed up it is.
Whiterose says it is time he saw what Angela saw and then shoots himself in the head. In some ways, you could say Whiterose and Elliot are both victims of trauma. Elliot has done the hard work, engaging with his trauma and working through it. (Thank you therapist Krista!)
The evidence is in the way he says goodbye to Darlene and apologizes for his behavior, trying to make amends. Whiterose, on the other hand, wants to escape, wipe the slate clean and start over.
This is where things get bizarre. As the nuclear plant starts to meltdown, Mr. Robot reappears urging Elliot to leave. Instead, Elliot plays the text adventure game titled 'eXit' on the old-time computer. He has a choice -- to stay in a dungeon with "a friend" or leave for a new world.
In his second try, he chooses to stay. And the screen goes red as the plant explodes minutes after Elliot and Mr. Robot say "I love you" to each other. After the red screen reboot, we're in what can only be described as an alternate reality.
Elliot 2 is the preppy CEO of AllSafe, the only child of Edward Alderson. He has a healthy relationship with his father. Angela is alive and they are to be married the next day. Whiterose is still the richest man on the planet and a mega-philanthropist.
Tyrell Wellick in an Elliot-esque hoodie is the earnest, idealistic CEO of "F Corp" and he seals the deal with Elliot after a heart-to-heart chat about hating the routine yet recognizing how lucky they are and how happy this "routine" is. It would all be great if Elliot 2 didn't have a splitting headache and flashes of something being wrong as the logo of "F corp" mutates to "E Corp" for a few brief seconds and there are reports of an earthquake in Washington Township, the epicenter of the nuclear powerplant meltdown in the original timeline.
But these are minor distractions. Elliot soaks in the 'Turn Up the Radio' song in the cab ride home and comes back to his cheerful flat and finds... himself - Elliot 1. He asks, voice quavering, "Who are you?" And with that mind-bender of a climax, its curtains for this week's episode.
'Mr. Robot' has been teasing parallel realities, about "undoing the past" and the existence of alternate timelines for a while now, all connected to Whiterose's machine. It is why Angela kept rewinding the tape of the building crashing down. But presumably, Mr. Price also knew what Whiterose's machine could do and yet urges Elliot to destroy it.
Is it because the machine creates Whiterose's perfect world rather than everyone's shared perfect world? That Elliot 1 has invaded Elliot 2's reality shows that there are leaks between timelines and it may not be that easy to erase the past. Whiterose's attempt to erase Darlene, the core of Elliot's emotional universe, might backfire spectacularly.
Mr. Robot's two-part finale airs next Sunday at a special time, 9/8c.
