Why not, hes done it before, so why not again? It makes IMO perfect sense. Especially with his last sentence that scene.

Maybe a year ago elliot finds out his dad isn't dead. Has a psychotic episode. He subconsciously blocks out that his dad is dead. He cracks and imagines he sees and talks with Mr robot without knowing he looks like his dad, even taking over his persona. So what we've seen is a combination of imagined Mr robot and real Mr robot.

We still don't know why he initially had the mandated meetings with the therapist do we?

Nope - that's a legal issue I'm sure

The psychiatrist Gloria Reuben is still milfy hot 20 some years after her ER heyday. Even Elliot's a little sweet on her, pretty sure.

The hyperbole in this thread is amazing.

How about another theory? Elliot is the alter ego of Mr. Robot. Then that allows every single dual happening to work, and make sense.

nunnehi, that's a pretty lame theory if that's what you're really trotting out, to just sneer at everybody.

Take a stand! Or just admit you don't know what the **** is going on, like the rest of us.

That's why this show is so great! Nobody and I mean nobody has a clue what will happen next!

lol, I'm obviously intrigued. And no one can really tell what's going on, because they've made such a point of trying to make it as confusing and that what we're seeing is as unreliable as possible.

then darlene wouldnt be his sister...

How so? She'd already know who her dad is, and doesn't need to call him dad. That's the whole "cut the s***" type number when Elliot asked where her boss was.

he remembered his childhood with her when they were both young, after she reveals that he knows her.

also angela knows about his father.

his interactions with a lot of people (like crazy drug dealer guy) would be a lot different if he were an old man too. Same with his coworker (angela's ex-boyfriend), etc...

Maybe he's in heaven getting a second shot. Regardless, no one can tell where this is going, because it's trying to head fake the audience at every turn.

Just shot through all the episodes in the last day and a half, and, for the most part, really enjoyed it.

Even though I like it, the idea of another bunch of seasons kind of worries me. The real attraction of the show is trying to figure what the hell is going on with Elliot, which I can't see them managing to stretch out for that long without compromising the quality of the show.

On the other hand, if everything is revealed early, the main story of just bringing down E Corp isn't substantial enough imo to keep me interested.

Question for folk who know the TV world better than me.

Is it possible that they had a 'backup' story ready, in the case that show bombed and was cancelled? It would explain why in the early episodes they obviously implied Mr Robot wasn't real, something which could have been revealed at the end of a one season show.

When the show did well (is it?), they went with the original story where Mr Robot is real, which is why he's suddenly interacting with people in the later episodes.

I know it's a kind of silly theory as it'd involve quite a bit of effort and extra filming, but it was just something that crossed my mind when watching it.

He could be dreaming in a closet on privet drive for all we know

thethethe- TV shows used to be able to do this when they were filmed week-by-week, so that production was only a few weeks before the airdate, but modern practice is to film a pilot and then, if that succeeds, pick up the whole rest of the season and film it all before any episodes air. Sometimes shows get the direct-to-series buy where there's no pilot if they are established properties with big stars attached and stuff.

So unless they literally filmed both the A and B versions of the last 4 episodes and just picked which one to air as it went, which seems cost prohibitive, I don't think so.

Fly, that's not quite true. In the case of this show, it was originally pitched as a miniseries so some changes probably happened at some point in the show to extend it away from that. It was renewed early before it aired, which caused a course correction. So, certainly there have been some changes of intent from the Pilot to maybe the 3rd or 4th episode. I'm sure the show was probably pitched with 2 episodes (meaning it was created as a 2 hour Pilot), so any changes could have happened after that. Considering the nature of the storytelling, they could tell pretty much a completely different story than what they shot in editing.

Production probably wrapped about 2 weeks before the first episode aired (could have wrapped as late as the first episode airing based on the original start), and they could have retooled it earlier than that, as well as had that preview (that got it renewed) so that they could wait to lock the last episode until as late as possible. The show's shooting in a really consistent way, so no one would really know if stuff was taken much out of sequence. To me, it felt like the last two episodes were maybe intended to be 3 and 4 or 4 and 5 originally. It felt out of sequence. The payoff would have happened sooner in a miniseries than it did here most likely.

I think the best play for the show is to end with some pretty serious cliffhanger and with pretty much all loose ends still hanging.

That will give them the maximum audience for season 2.

I have a feeling when this ends its going to pick up a lot of viewers between then and S2.

He has a 4 or 5 season arc planned, so that's not really necessary. Audiences hate mysteries with a burning passion these days. That would be a pure amateur play (this show has a devoted following, but its ratings are really not very good). However, USA's current most popular show, Suits, constantly rinses and repeats the same storylines/formulas every season and people eat it up.

Even tho I hate the dumb storyline Suits continues to go back to I still watch for some reason.

The timeline, per Wikipedia, is that the pilot order was in July of 2014, it got picked up as a series in December, started production in mid-April, and put the pilot up on the internet for streaming at the end of May, a month before it hit the air. It got officially picked up for a second season just before the airdate(so after the pilot had already hit the public, but after production had wrapped or was about to wrap, idk what the schedule was for this but we're talking about 11 or 12 weeks to shoot 9 episodes).

So they might have reshot some of the pilot before the May 27th soft launch, and the original pilot could've been different, but they had 4 months to retool the miniseries concept into a series before principal photography started.

It's possible they were recutting everything and also possible they've brought people back for secret mid-July reshoots or whatever, but I'm pretty confident all the creative decisions for this show were made before June 24th. They could be moving stuff around, reordering episodes and subplots, but actual developments like whether a character is real? That's not something you decide on the fly, if nothing else, no studio executive is going to sit through a pitch where the hook is "and not even I, the writer, know whether this character is real. Seriously, IDK, we'll see what people think once we start airing the first few episodes".

It's 10 episodes isn't it? Typical production per hour long episode is about 7-8 days. The Pilot had definitely been shown to the public before it was out of production. They already had enough data to know they wanted to renew it before it hit air. If you wanted to say 8 days per, and it's 10 episodes that's 80 days of production, with probably 6 day weeks, 5 day minimum. The final episodes were very likely still shooting in June. I just realized it was 9 episodes left, so figure on 72 days of production.

Again, this show could have been completely restructured in editing without reshooting anything, and I already feel like they could have played some of the story out a lot earlier than they did (out of originally intended sequence).

Since you edited, no I don't think they reshot anything. I think they just decided how to end the season once they got the renewal (and they knew before we did). Pilot also might have been a little retooled, but probably not enough to affect the story. Sam definitely knows what's real and what isn't, I have no doubt of that.

I'm still in the "he's not real" camp.

In the final scene he turns up seconds after Elliot realizes it's his dad saying "I think we need to talk". I mean, that doesn't happen if he's real. It happens because it's all in his head.

Brilliant episode also.

Best thing on TV since Breaking Bad. It's moved past season 1 of TD for me.