Mr. Robot season 4 premiere review: We’re in the endgame now

The final season of hacker drama Mr. Robot kicks off with an adrenaline-fueled hour that shakes up the status quo, but feels more than a little hollow inside.

It’s been well over a year since last we saw USA Network hacker drama Mr. Robot on our screens, but the series comes roaring back for its fourth and final season with an adrenaline-fueled hour that’s impossible to look away from.

“Unauthorized” – notably the series’ first installment with a title that isn’t computer code –  blends some of the best and worst elements of Mr. Robot together to create an episode that feels nonstop while it’s all happening, but leaves you feeling hollow afterward. It opens with a murder and concludes with a near-death experience, and in between it takes us back to the season 1-style antics we all loved so much.

Elliot blackmails a scuzzy lawyer named Freddie with child pornography on his computer into helping him gather information on Whiterose and the Dark Army. We’re treated to a long, complicated scene of Mr. Robot tailing him around Grand Central station that is positively anxiety-inducing, even when we learn Elliot was never in the building proper, merely watching Freddie via CCTV the whole time.

In theory, this is all meant to help him gather information about the Dark Army’s organization, specifically the bank where they keep the bulk of their cash and operating funds. And in many ways, it’s an amazing sequence: Fun to watch, thrilling, and ending with the throat punch of Freddie’s suicide – just another death to add to the toll of things Eliot Alderson is in some way responsible for.

But gone  is the sense that Elliot is working toward something larger than himself, that he believes in the possibility of a better world he can help create. There’s a sense of bleakness to his actions now, as he shoves everyone around him away. He’s rushing to stop Whiterose before the artificially imposed deadline that will mean the end of his life (apparently the Dark Army sees him as disposable once her faux Haldron Collider reaches the Congo), but there’s no sense about what his life might look like past that point.

(The idea that it’s Mr. Robot who will serve as our bridge into the narrative – for the moment at least – is a fascinating one, however.)

In theory, Elliot’s behavior can be seen as a direct result of the events of the series’ cold open – an impressive moment in which the series’ previouslies switch seamlessly into the present. (Or, rather, a different perspective on a scene we saw at the end of last season.) In it, Angela Moss is brutally murdered by agents of the Dark Army, after ignoring her newly revealed father Philip Price’s pleas to let go of her vendetta against Whiterose.

That Angela ultimately ends her story on the side of the angels once more doesn’t make her death feel like anything other than something done for shock value, and to drive the stories of others.

We never see Elliot or Darlene learn of Angela’s death in an emotional capacity, merely  witness how her absence impacts their lives. Elliot becomes increasingly closed off from everyone around him – no longer speaking to his “friend” the audience, largely ignoring Mr. Robot, and pushing his clearly struggling sister away, all in the name of making sure Whiterose gets what’s coming to her.

As for Elliot’s sister, Darlene is a mess, taking all the drugs she can find and hallucinating Angela wearing the ratty bathrobe she last saw her in. She’s not coping, and no one seems particularly concerned about her plight, not even her own brother. (Admittedly, however, the scene where Elliot immediately taps out and forces Mr. Robot to deal with Darlene was pretty great.) How does she fit into this story anymore?

This all feels especially jarring when considering the last few episodes of season 3 which doubled and tripled down on the value of human connection, on the importance of hope, on our ability to change our fates. Here, the 9/5 hack has been reversed during the offseason, the world has slowly started to come back to itself, and we never even see Elliot learn that his best friend is dead.

Now there appears to be only vengeance and suffering for the characters we’ve come to care about. Tyrell Wellick is a public hero with a hollow internal life. Elliot is willing to sacrifice everything to chase – and presumably punish – Whiterose. Dom has walled herself away in her mother’s home, becoming increasingly paranoid as the Dark Army’s operatives threaten her family. Darlene is drugging herself to death.

Suddenly, only Mr. Robot appears to be the most grounded and together person on the show? Which, considering he doesn’t exist, kind of says a lot.

The final season of Mr. Robot continues Sunday nights at 10pm on USA Network.