From the very first episode of Mr. Robot we have been engaged with layer upon layer of mysteries and questions, causing us to continually speculate and guess the nature of the show’s reality. Time travel is one of the big puzzles we’ve tried to solve. In the previous 12 months of this column, we’ve chronicled and reviewed the time travel evidence the show has presented to us. And now, with our viewing of the series finale, the puzzle pieces have fallen into place. We have our answer.
Fundamentally—and at its foundation—the core story reality of the Mr. Robot series is mental illness; specifically, an acute dissociative identity disorder affecting the central character we have never directly met: the real Elliot Alderson. Like so many story aspects of the Mr. Robot series, it’s easy at times to assume we have all the answers; only to find out later through a “big reveal” that we weren’t seeing the full picture. In this final review of the series finale, we’re going to explore once more our driving question: Is Mr. Robot about time travel? At face value, we might assume the series has answered that question once and for all. But, let’s dig a little deeper.
Season 4 – Episode 12 (Series Finale Part 1)
Writer/director Sam Esmail has thrown us many time travel clues throughout the entire series, and within the two-part finale he offers up three of the most common time travel tropes. The self-visitation paradox is the first.
In this episode, we have two uniquely identified yet identical “Elliots” who have come to occupy the same space and time. “Alter” Elliot arrives in the time and place occupied by “host” Elliot. He visits his childhood home and meets with his mother. She’s naturally oblivious to the switch and accepts this Elliot as her son. During their visit, Elliot’s mom says about her new curtains, “Crazy how one small change can make an entire place feel new.” It’s an interesting comment—all things considered—and a very accurate description of the butterfly effect.
Elliot soon realizes that he’s not alone in this place, as the evidence of host Elliot’s existence continues to intersect with his own existence. As in any self-visitation paradox, the first decision one might have is whether or not to meet your other self. Curiosity quickly drives alter Elliot to go to his apartment, where he—true to character—hacks into host Elliot’s computer to uncover all that he can learn about his other self. Inevitably, host Elliot comes home to his apartment and the two Elliots are staring eye-to-eye at one another. They decide to calmly sit across from each other at a table to negotiate and sort this situation out as peacefully as they can. It’s during this point of calm that host Elliot experiences the unsettling effect of being able to hear alter Elliot’s inner thoughts. Before the two of them can even react to this unexpected shared-brain experience, host Elliot touches alter Elliot’s arm and there’s a sudden earthquake and violent shaking of the apartment. This instantaneous instability and presumed shifting of tectonic plates at the mere touch of an elbow suggests that two identical people cannot occupy the same space and time. While we now know this to be true of the underlying mental health story reality, we can take a step back to gain a sense of how time travel and the self-visitation paradox is being appropriated to propel the story narrative.
Just before Part 1 ends, we move to the second of three time travel tropes—the grandfather paradox—as alter Elliot attempts to kill host Elliot.
Season 4 – Episode 13 (Series Finale Part 2)
We begin Episode 13 reemphasizing the grandfather paradox with a replay of the last moments of Episode 12. We see Elliot’s hand covered in the blood of his other self he has just attempted to kill. This is of course a variation on the grandfather paradox. The grandfather paradox is at its core killing your creator. So, I think it’s safe to say that Sam Esmail is still employing the grandfather paradox, although somewhat loosely interpreted.
After alter Elliot’s attempt at killing host Elliot, Mr. Robot shows up in the apartment and tries to explain to alter Elliot how the plan to take over host Elliot’s life simply will not work. Alter Elliot is having none of this. He had comically placed his other self into a cardboard “Self Storage” moving box, and now wheels the box with the body down to the street outside of his apartment. While attempting to load it into his illegally parked SUV, he’s stopped by a familiar face. It’s Dom DiPierro, who in this world appears to be a regular beat cop and not an agent of the FBI. Oddly enough, when Dom asks for and glances at Elliot’s identification, she says, “This ID belongs to Elliot Alderson. This person is nothing like you.” Her observation seems an allusion to what Mr. Robot was trying to convey to Elliot; that the plan isn’t going to work. Dom insists that she open the box and take a look inside. When she does, she’s confronted with a body that looks exactly like the person who’s trying to load it into the SUV. And again—at that precise moment—there’s a tectonic shift and earthquake.
Elliot takes advantage of the distraction the earthquake provides, and he makes a run for it onto the ubiquitous New York subway. Mr. Robot is there in the train car waiting for him. He again confronts Elliot, trying to convince him of the futility of his plan. Fulfilling the concept of the grandfather paradox, if you erase your creator, you will begin to invalidate yourself. Which leads us to wonder what Dom saw on Elliot’s identification when he was asked to produce it. Clearly something was very wrong, and things didn’t match up.
Prior to Elliot’s interaction with Dom, he had received a phone call from his future father-in-law (none other than Phillip Price in this upside-down world) and Elliot learns he is expected at Coney Island for wedding photos as soon as humanly possible. So, Elliot escapes the scene with Dom and the presumed body of his dead host self, and he arrives at Coney Island. It’s a setting that looks something like a wedding, but there are several indications that things aren’t quite right. Once again, he’s met by Mr. Robot, and this time Robot tells Elliot the whole truth. And in that truth, we engage the third and final time travel trope Sam Esmail uses to propel the finale along: the loop paradox.
Elliot remains convinced that Whiterose’s time-altering machine is responsible for all that he’s experiencing. Mr. Robot sets the record straight. “This is a world you created,” he says.
Elliot still isn’t getting it. “This is some kind of dream?”
“No,” Mr. Robot says. “Not a dream. A prison. A recursive loop that you constructed about a year ago to keep him occupied so you could take control of him.”
“Who?” Elliot asks.
“The real Elliot,” Mr. Robot answers.
Elliot is resistant to hearing the truth and he runs away, ending up in a recreation of his therapist’s office. But it isn’t Krista Gordon he’s talking with. Instead, it’s a manifestation of Krista assembled by Elliot’s other alter selves as a further means of trapping him in an even tighter loop intended to convince him to relinquish control and allow host Elliot to regain control of his life. The loop—and the stalemate—ends when the ceiling in Krista’s office collapses in on alter Elliot.
The episode—and series—ends with an emotional and touching scene between Elliot and his sister Darlene.
“Hello, Elliot,” Darlene says, presumably talking to the real Elliot Alderson.
In the final analysis, Mr. Robot was not about time travel. But, for me, the paradox of Mr. Robot is that it was all about time travel.
Join me next month for a final look back at the role time travel has played within the entire Mr. Robot series. We’ll be taking one last trip back to the past, as we head into the future.
David La France
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