Mr. Robot season 3 premiere review: “Eps3.0power-saver-mode.h”

Mr. Robot returns for its third season with a premiere that makes us question the basics, like whether we can trust anyone at all.

Mr. Robot is not a particularly easy television show to watch. Out of all the dramas that have blossomed in the age of Peak TV, there are few that make you work as hard as this one does to be a viewer.

On the one hand, that’s a compliment. It’s extremely obvious that series creator Sam Esmail respects his audience, possibly a bit too much at times if fan reaction to Elliot’s surprise stint in prison last season is anything to go by. But it also means that, as viewers, we spend a heck of a lot of time wondering just what on earth is going on. Over the course of the series’ first two seasons, Mr. Robot‘s narrator lied to himself, purposefully misled the audience, and set in motion a literal world-changing plot whose pieces we still don’t entirely understand. (Or even completely know.)

Season 3 appears as though it will be no different.

The premiere picks up where season 2 left off and covers all the basics — the fallout from Elliot getting shot, the increasingly separate nature of his “Mr. Robot” personality, and his attempt to stop Tyrell Wellick and the Dark Army from implementing “Stage 2” of their plan and blowing up an E-Corp data center.

But, at its heart, the episode is wrestling with darker themes. Mr. Robot doesn’t just provide a mirror that reflects many of the current anxieties most of us wrestle with daily. That dystopian existence Elliot describes, as he talks about the unintended consequences of fsociety’s 5/9 hack feels closer than ever, as the series intersperses images of U.S. President Donald Trump and U.K. Prime Minister Teresa May over a backdrop of riots, protests and fear. As Elliot questions whether he and fsociety freed the masses or merely doomed them to a hell that looks different from the old one, we have to wonder how we ended up living in some version of the what-if Elliot described.

Or have we? “Eps3.0power-saver-mode.h” wrestles with big ideas of perception and control. Everyone suddenly seems untrustworthy. Who can we believe? Whose perception is accurate? In a show that’s made the concept of an unreliable narrator a key piece of its identity, it’s hard to say for sure.

“Do we see reality as it is?” asks an E-Corp scientist in the premiere’s opening moment. And perhaps that’s the great question of Mr. Robot, in the end. Because we can’t really say for sure.

so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow

As the season opens, Elliot Alderson seems much more clear-eyed, focused and in control than ever before. To the likely surprise of no one, that last bit isn’t exactly true, but since Mr. Robot doesn’t appear until the end of the episode, it does feel as though it could be. (There’s something interesting there — about the things we want to believe still, despite all the evidence this show has given us in the past that we shouldn’t.) The revelation that Mr. Robot is not only a true split personality, but one that others beyond Elliot are aware of, are even friendly with, somehow feels both shocking and inevitable.

This is, for the moment, a good thing. Mr. Robot has never been particularly interested in the whys of Elliot’s delusions, merely that he had them and that they provided interesting touch points for both drama and a physical manifestation of his own narcissism. At least it writes Mr. Robot as an alternate personality, if only because it establishes clear rules for what Elliot does and does not remember. (Though sadly, it seems as though it also marks the end of scenes in which Elliot and Mr. Robot interact with one another, at least for the time being.)  But what is his goal? Vengeance for the father who died? Power? Control?

glazed with rainwater

In addition to resetting Elliot’s relationship with Mr. Robot, the season 3 premiere intriguingly reorients the series’ supporting cast around him.

As the episode opens, Darlene is out of FBI custody. But rather than return to her role as Elliot’s primary lieutenant, she balks at implementing Phase 2 and finds herself having panic attacks in bathrooms. Angela, once an ECorp insider and Elliot’s rock, betrays her best friend in order to secretly work with his dark alter ego.  And Tyrell Wellick, Mr. Robot’s truest believer, seems to be slowly unraveling. The rest of Elliot’s friends and co-conspirators are either dead or missing. Even fsociety itself has undergone a metamorphosis, from computer hacking digital terrorists to the very real, blowing stuff up kind.

As for Elliot himself, his transformation is perhaps the most shocking. His quite literal split from Mr. Robot offers the opportunity to see him more clearly than ever before. The brutal monologue in which he realizes that his idealistic vision for the future has been co-opted by the same factions that trafficked in oppression is a rare moment of clarity for the character. Elliot blames himself. He brought about this new world, which in truth is a worse version of the old. And this revelation brings things full circle: He must get a job at Evil Corp, to fix things from the inside. As Elliot gets a purpose again, it  gives the series a direction it lacked in season 2.

beside the white chickens

With the emergence of Mr. Robot as a more direct presence — and one who seems capable of operating independently from Elliot himself — an entirely new dynamic has been established between all the series’ main characters.

This leads to some intriguing set-ups. As it stands now, it seems as though Mr. Robot and Angela (with some possible help from Wellick, in his saner moments) seem set on a collision course with Elliot and Darlene. The Alderson siblings seem more aware than ever that their fsociety actions have terrible consequences.  But where Elliot and Darlene seem ready to face what they did — even to undo it, if possible — Angela and Mr. Robot appear more dedicated to the cause than ever before. Or are they?

It is not an accident that it is Angela — who has spent the series shifting  from everygirl to corporate maven to Dark Army hacker — that brings up the idea that perhaps everything that’s happened can be undone, even the death of her and Elliot’s parents. It is as yet unclear whether this means that Mr. Robot will step up to the edge of crossing into true science fiction territory. But it’s hard not to read this as confirmation that in this universe things like time travel or alternate dimensions might be possible.

But as with most things in Mr. Robot, we can’t always assume that we saw what we thought we saw. “Do we see reality as it is?” Maybe. But maybe not.

Next: What can we expect from Mr. Robot season 3

Mr. Robot continues next Wednesday on USA Network.