Mr. Robot season 3: Did the show’s latest Trump connection work?

The latest episode of Mr. Robot season 3 focused almost exclusively on the whereabouts of Tyrell Wellick following the 5/9 hack. But that’s not the only bit of the past it showed us.

Mr. Robot has always had an … interesting relationship to our present day reality. The socio-political climate of America is essential to the show’s plot. From Occupy Wall Street and global cyber security to megabanks and hacker culture, Mr. Robot worked hard to incorporate enough real world elements that the rise of fsociety and the fallout from its hack of E-Corp would ring true.

However, showrunner Sam Esmail obviously didn’t quite count on a 2016 that would turn out to be stranger than almost any fiction. Between seasons 2 and 3, America elected Donald Trump, and Mr. Robot’s habit of injecting real life into its fictional universe got kind of weird quickly.

Part of the problem is that the events of the show move too slowly to keep up with the real world. In Mr. Robot’s timeline, it’s still 2015. Barack Obama is still president, and only eight months have passed since the 5/9 hack that took place at the end of season 1. (That episode, for the record, aired in September of 2015.) Our realities are now just a little out of sync.

Or are they?

Just because Mr. Robot season 3 now takes place in the past (for us) doesn’t mean that the show can’t engage with the idea of a Trump presidency. (Or, more specifically, with the factions and ideas that give rise to politicians like Trump.) In the season 3 premiere, images of Trump and British Prime Minister Teresa May flashed over riots, protest and other scenes of fear, as the show cast their ideologies as what-if/worst case scenarios for a world in which fsociety’s attempt to free the masses from the tyranny of E-Corp decimated the lives of the very people they were trying to help.

But this week, Mr. Robot went a step further, drawing a much more direct connection between Trump and the dark, shadowy world of conspiracy that populates much of the show. Yes, “eps3.2_legacy.so” spent most of its time telling the story of what happened to Tyrell Wellick in the aftermath of the 5/9 hack. (We hadn’t seen the character for any significant amount of time since the end of season 1.) But that’s not the only bit of the past that the episode showed us.

The flashback installment filled in a few crucial gaps besides Tyrell’s location. We learned that new character Irving isn’t that new after all. (The Dark Army cleaner appeared at fsociety’s Coney Island headquarters following the 5/9 hack.) We saw how Elliot ended up in Tyrell’s car in the season 1 finale. And, perhaps most importantly we found out that Agent Dominique DiPerro’s FBI boss is secretly a Dark Army agent, a twist which sheds a whole new light on his many attempts to discredit or otherwise derail her hack investigation.

However, in one of the episode’s more bizarre twists, we also learn that Whiterose is more than likely responsible for the election of Donald Trump. Or, well, will be. Remember, the 2016 election hasn’t yet happened in Mr. Robot’s universe. But, the episode takes pains to point out that the Dark Army leader/Chinese Minister of Defense actively encourages a popular conservative TV commentator to start pushing Trump — on television with a “Make America Great Again” speech at the South Carolina Freedom summit — as a serious presidential contender. Whiterose, it seems, sees him as a figure she can control.

“If you pull the right strings, a puppet will dance any way you desire,” she says.

It’s an extremely blatant insertion of our real world into Mr. Robot’s fictional one. And it’s not entirely clear whether it works. Does the existence of Donald Trump in Mr. Robot’s universe add anything to the show? Does it even work in the world of the show? (Is it likely, for example, that Trump’s message would resonate in the aftermath of the fsociety hack?)

Yes, Mr. Robot frequently asks us to believe that conspiracy theories, shadowy underground armies and evil masterminds are not only real, but the obvious answers to many of the world’s ills. Is Elliot just another version of the modern day tech giants who have unleashed algorithms and social media bots on the world without bothering to think through the consequences? Was some version of Trump inevitable, in any reality that looks like ours?

Next: Mr. Robot season 3, episode 3 review: eps3.2_legacy.so

Mr. Robot continues Wednesday, Nov. 1 on USA Network.