Mr Robot season 3 review: eps3.5_kill-process.inc

Mr. Robot season 3 continues as Elliot feverishly attempts to thwart Stage 2, only to find we’ve been looking in the wrong direction all along.

The most shocking thing about Mr. Robot season 3 right now is that somehow there are still four episodes to go in it. “eps3.5_kill-process.inc” follows up one of its most impressive technical episodes to date with another that narratively blows up, both literally and figuratively, the current state of the show. You have to give creator Sam Esmail a lot of credit. His Mr. Robot is fearless this year, and after the critical beating it took for the twist in its second season, that’s worthy of applause.

Despite lacking some of the visual flare of last week’s psuedo-single take installment, “eps3.5_kill-process.inc” is every inch as tense and terrifying. And, in many ways, it serves as a bookend to everything we saw there. This week, instead of following two protagonists on extended but separate journeys, Mr. Robot builds suspense through rapid action, cutting between scenes and mirroring moments from each. It’s almost unbearably difficult to watch in places, particularly as Dom closes in on Tyrell, and Elliot’s inner fight for control starts manifesting itself physically.

By the end of the hour, relationships have shifted, beliefs are questioned and thousands of people are dead. Tyrell is arrested. Elliot realizes he’s been working at cross purposes for weeks. And Whiterose is so far ahead of all of us, it’s almost laughable.

What on Earth will we find out next week?

Elliot

“eps3.5_kill-process.inc” picks up immediately where last week’s episode left off. Angela and Elliot come face to face, immediately after she kicks off the Dark Army’s Stage 2 plot to destroy all of E-Corp’s data. Given how much there is to say between these two people right now — Angela’s been manipulating his mental illness to achieve her own ends for weeks, and Elliot now knows it — this face off is pretty disappointing. The two (former?) best friends feel farther apart than ever, a gap that’s worsened by the fact that there’s just no time in this episode for them to deal with their fractured relationship.

Elliot races off to the E-Corp recovery building, to try and directly bypass whatever Angela did. “eps3.5_kill-process.inc” leans hard into the literal ticking time bomb nature of the story, with the added twist that Mr. Robot is actively attempting to stop Elliot from thwarting the plan. This sequence is largely played as a battle between Mr. Elliot and Mr. Robot for control of the body they share, with glitching screens and “lost time” delineating between each personality’s absence and presence. Rami Malek — who hopefully got hazard pay for this episode — plays the sequence as a physical battle for his own body, gamely throwing himself into walls and down stairs and into filing cabinets as Elliot’s mind spazzes and fractures.

Earlier in the episode, Angela points out that Elliot and Mr. Robot aren’t adversaries. Not really. “You sound like him,” Elliot tells her, when Angela talks about the necessity of seeing their revolution to its conclusion. “You, you mean,” she replies calmly. This season, Mr. Robot has gotten a lot of mileage thus far out of positioning Elliot and his alter ego as two distinct, warring parties locked in battle. But they aren’t. Mr. Robot doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Even though he can now operate independently from Elliot, he also is Elliot. “eps3.5_kill-process.inc” offers a teasing glimpse at some sort of integration – or, at least, a partnership. The borders between their two selves seem as thin as they’ve ever been. And while that’s just another question for the growing “where do we go from here” pile, it’s an intriguing one.

The two warring personalities ultimately work together to stop the recovery site explosion. But, unfortunately, it’s all for naught. The revelation that Elliot’s been so effective at preventing E-Corp’s paper records from reaching their destination that Whiterose simply decided to blow up 71 other buildings instead lands as the gut punch it should. The fact that almost everything we’ve seen in the past few episodes — the E-Corp riot, Angela’s dangerous hack, Elliot’s attempt to stop it all — is a massive misdirection should probably be more frustrating than it is. Instead, it’s exhilarating television that just leaves you wondering what’s next. Sometimes, you just have to tip your hat to a twist well played. 

Angela

While Angela doesn’t exactly have a manifestation of her parent to argue with, Mr. Robot does go out of its way to provide an equally important window into her psyche this week. We’ve seen Angela evolve into a true believer in Whiterose’s mission, whatever it is. But we don’t know what exactly it is she’s pledged her faith to. Nor do we know why such an obviously smart woman would willingly align herself with an international terrorist organization. “eps3.5_kill-process.inc” provides us with the beginnings of an explanation for some of this — or, at the very least the chance to understand Angela a little better.

The episode opens with an extended flashback sequence to Angela’s childhood. Her mother, already terminally ill, tells her daughter that “there’s another world out there, for both of us”. She promises that they’ll “see each other again, someday”. And just like that, Angela makes sense.

As the previouslies remind us, Angela’s spent her adult life trying to find justice for her mother’s death. She blames E-Corp for it and has done everything in her power, from filing lawsuits to protesting to working in the belly of the beast itself. She did all that because she believes — that her family deserves vengeance, that those responsible for her mother’s death should pay. But, as this episode shows us, that’s not all she believes in.

We’ve been speculating all season whether or not Mr. Robot will take a hard left into serious sci-fi territory, with the possibility of time travel, alternate realities or some other method by which the dead might be returned to the living. Angela keeps talking about it like it’s a thing that could actually happen, and this episode finally tells us why. Of course Angela believed Whiterose. She promised her the one thing she always wanted. Angela’s doing all this because she believes. She believes in the other world her mom told her about, and in the prospect of their reunion. The realization that she thinks Whiterose can give it to her is heartbreaking in its simplicity. Is it rational that Angela could truly believe that? Probably not. But is it understandable? Of course.

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After Angela’s tears last week over possibly blowing up one building, will her faith be shaken now she knows she’s part of a group willing to kill thousands? Or will these new attacks prompt her to double down on the Dark Army?