I didn't really care for this final twist.
My understanding of the twist is that the Elliot that we've been with: created Fsociety and planned out "Stage 1" and "Stage 2." He lied to the audience, making it out that Mr. Robot was the one doing all these things to feel like a hero. He was the "rage" personality taking radical action and "the mastermind" behind the plans just mentioned.
Lying can be really engaging and compelling in story-telling. Usually, it's a character lying to another character, but the audience is seeing the situation from the point of view of the character lied to. With Mr. Robot, we see things many things from Elliot's perspective. He's not lying to another character, he's lying directly to the audience, and arguably himself. He has a solid motivation for lying, he wants to make himself out as a hero. This is moderately compelling, and it is the final twist is that finally uncovers the lie. Unfortunately, I don't find it engaging; I think the build-up is poorly done.
Elliot was an unreliable narrator from the show's beginning; he speaks to the audience. The way his multi-personality disorder is presented inherently makes him an unreliable narrator, as well as more minor things, such as his perception of E-Corp as Evil Corp. But now, finding out that Elliot was unreliable in a particularly malicious way towards the audience. It brings everything portrayed from Elliot's perspective into deeper question, as now none of what is portrayed from Elliot's perspective is reliable concerning continuity. Earlier on, the way Elliot was an unreliable narrator felt more grounded. We would experience his struggle with him. We were with him as he went through his delusions from his dissociative identity disorder, but now we find out that his gaps were just sequences he didn't want to show the audience or whatever.
It feels like a cop-out. If I try to criticize parts of the show from Elliot's perspective, there's always the interpretation that: "No, that's not what happened. Elliot was tricking you." There is nothing wrong with ambiguity, but in most cases, the setup implies the payoff. With how the ambiguity is utilized with this twist, it doesn't.
From a story perspective; I think it's a bad idea to have ambiguity like this on such a wide scale, especially for a twist. And it makes the show makes any attempts to uncover this lie nearly impossible. This is because I feel the show was inadequate in providing setups that fell outside of its ambiguity. I found the final twist cheaply unpredictable regarding certain specifics. And it made the twist feel like it existed despite the rest of the show. I think this type of twist would've worked better in a movie, where the build-up to it could've been better polished. I've heard Mr. Robot was initially planned to be a movie, and unfortunately being a rather convoluted television show, made it cheaply unpredictable.
I thought it was apparent they would expand on the multi-personal disorder somehow. At one point, Elliot questions if Tyrell Wellick is just another personality of his, and more blatantly, and in hindsight, outside of ambiguity, the ending of 402. The specifics, though, feel entirely out of the left field.
I feel many "setups" for the twist, such as Angela handing Elliot a key and saying: "Elliot, you are the-" and it cutting out in 104, just to be reincorporated in the finale as: "Elliot, you are the mastermind." My problem, if not obvious, is Angela could've just said anything like: "Elliot, you are the coolest person in the world." Stuff like this doesn't signify anything. One of the only things I can think of that definitively does is the hallucination sequence in which the scene mentioned prior takes place. This sequence supposedly represents the world the "real Elliot" is trapped in. However, I think that concluding what we find out this hallucination is supposed to represent is entirely out of left field.
There are things that are correctly recontextualized where they undoubtedly signify something, such as the meetings between Mr. Robot and the other personalities in 409. This clearly signifies that Elliot is a created personality, but doesn't signify how exactly our Elliot is tricking the audience. I feel some parts allude to how Elliot is tricking us, such as the end of 406, where we have Mr. Robot musing: "What if Elliot isn't the hero?" but overall, I felt that aspect of the twist was utterly unpredictable. I think too much information is withheld from the audience to figure out the ending.
I also found situations like these incredibly disjointed. They end up being one of many in the show that is perceived as cryptic when first viewed. This is important to note. Your brain treats information and problems with one of two systems. System 1 is fast thinking; it's a reflexive way of thinking through a situation. When your brain operates in this state, what it experiences is stored in short-term memory. This is done mostly for repetitive tasks. Say you take out the garbage. Unless something particularly unique occurs, you'll never remember it; it takes little thinking. It relies on long-term memory from when you learned to take out the garbage. System 2 is slow thinking when you are presented with new problems to solve, which is more likely to be placed in long-term memory. Unfortunately, many situations in the show are cryptic or vague, and a sizable percentage of them had no significance in the first place or stay undefined. Because of this I inadvertently trained my brain to use System 1 for these sequences, and I engaged with these sequences that set up the final twist in the same way I learned to with the others. To put them into the backlog of my mind, potentially completely forgetting them and hoping they will be explained later. I was never encouraged to engage with them otherwise. I feel the best path to improve this seems simple: Don't make a lot of elements of your story cryptic outside of stuff that sets up your twist, so its importance is properly signified. But, how Mr. Robot is done, fails to engage me.
I stated that I feel like the twist exists despite the show. The stuff mentioned with Elliot is one of these reasons, but ultimately the stuff with Elliot would be fine if the other characters were written around this twist...I don't feel any characters are written for this twist. Many characters feel like they only exist so that people around Elliot have died, such as Trenton, Mobley, Angela, Tyrell, Cisco, etc. These characters feel like they are just needed for a checklist of people dying, and these characters could be applied to a myriad of other tragic stories. They are not explicitly written for the twist. Also, Whiterose initially feels like she's written to reflect Elliot and Mr. Robot's dynamic in the earlier seasons. Yet, in the later seasons, with stuff such as the backstory she receives, all feel to be written so that the fakeout of her machine is initially believable. And Darlene: In the final episode, we find out that Darlene knew the entire time that our Elliot wasn't the "real Elliot." My main issue is that Darlene struggled with many personal problems, none of which I felt were explored, though likely they just couldn't, so a twist such as this could work, but ultimately her issues are vaguely coped with. The twist recontextualizes her character to that she had multiple things she was already struggling with, but knowing our Elliot wasn't the real one was another one of these. The twist simply adds one more layer to her checklist of personal struggles. I don't feel anything we are shown with her character before the twist is specific for the twist.
The entire appeal of mystery stories is being given pieces of information, but only enough to maybe figure out what was happening. Then an aspect of the information you likely overlooked is pointed out to you, or the pieces of information are put together in a way you didn't expect. It's engaging because you're provided a puzzle to solve, and to predict it beforehand you would have to put the pieces together by yourself. However, Mr. Robot is either too convoluted for me to identify all the pieces, or vital pieces are completely withheld, making it impossible to definitively predict. And ultimately, I feel this twist ended up going more for shock value than being compelling, and I have to question if many of those who like it have hindsight bias.
My understanding of the twist is that the Elliot that we've been with: created Fsociety and planned out "Stage 1" and "Stage 2." He lied to the audience, making it out that Mr. Robot was the one doing all these things to feel like a hero. He was the "rage" personality taking radical action and "the mastermind" behind the plans just mentioned.
Lying can be really engaging and compelling in story-telling. Usually, it's a character lying to another character, but the audience is seeing the situation from the point of view of the character lied to. With Mr. Robot, we see things many things from Elliot's perspective. He's not lying to another character, he's lying directly to the audience, and arguably himself. He has a solid motivation for lying, he wants to make himself out as a hero. This is moderately compelling, and it is the final twist is that finally uncovers the lie. Unfortunately, I don't find it engaging; I think the build-up is poorly done.
Elliot was an unreliable narrator from the show's beginning; he speaks to the audience. The way his multi-personality disorder is presented inherently makes him an unreliable narrator, as well as more minor things, such as his perception of E-Corp as Evil Corp. But now, finding out that Elliot was unreliable in a particularly malicious way towards the audience. It brings everything portrayed from Elliot's perspective into deeper question, as now none of what is portrayed from Elliot's perspective is reliable concerning continuity. Earlier on, the way Elliot was an unreliable narrator felt more grounded. We would experience his struggle with him. We were with him as he went through his delusions from his dissociative identity disorder, but now we find out that his gaps were just sequences he didn't want to show the audience or whatever.
It feels like a cop-out. If I try to criticize parts of the show from Elliot's perspective, there's always the interpretation that: "No, that's not what happened. Elliot was tricking you." There is nothing wrong with ambiguity, but in most cases, the setup implies the payoff. With how the ambiguity is utilized with this twist, it doesn't.
From a story perspective; I think it's a bad idea to have ambiguity like this on such a wide scale, especially for a twist. And it makes the show makes any attempts to uncover this lie nearly impossible. This is because I feel the show was inadequate in providing setups that fell outside of its ambiguity. I found the final twist cheaply unpredictable regarding certain specifics. And it made the twist feel like it existed despite the rest of the show. I think this type of twist would've worked better in a movie, where the build-up to it could've been better polished. I've heard Mr. Robot was initially planned to be a movie, and unfortunately being a rather convoluted television show, made it cheaply unpredictable.
I thought it was apparent they would expand on the multi-personal disorder somehow. At one point, Elliot questions if Tyrell Wellick is just another personality of his, and more blatantly, and in hindsight, outside of ambiguity, the ending of 402. The specifics, though, feel entirely out of the left field.
I feel many "setups" for the twist, such as Angela handing Elliot a key and saying: "Elliot, you are the-" and it cutting out in 104, just to be reincorporated in the finale as: "Elliot, you are the mastermind." My problem, if not obvious, is Angela could've just said anything like: "Elliot, you are the coolest person in the world." Stuff like this doesn't signify anything. One of the only things I can think of that definitively does is the hallucination sequence in which the scene mentioned prior takes place. This sequence supposedly represents the world the "real Elliot" is trapped in. However, I think that concluding what we find out this hallucination is supposed to represent is entirely out of left field.
There are things that are correctly recontextualized where they undoubtedly signify something, such as the meetings between Mr. Robot and the other personalities in 409. This clearly signifies that Elliot is a created personality, but doesn't signify how exactly our Elliot is tricking the audience. I feel some parts allude to how Elliot is tricking us, such as the end of 406, where we have Mr. Robot musing: "What if Elliot isn't the hero?" but overall, I felt that aspect of the twist was utterly unpredictable. I think too much information is withheld from the audience to figure out the ending.
I also found situations like these incredibly disjointed. They end up being one of many in the show that is perceived as cryptic when first viewed. This is important to note. Your brain treats information and problems with one of two systems. System 1 is fast thinking; it's a reflexive way of thinking through a situation. When your brain operates in this state, what it experiences is stored in short-term memory. This is done mostly for repetitive tasks. Say you take out the garbage. Unless something particularly unique occurs, you'll never remember it; it takes little thinking. It relies on long-term memory from when you learned to take out the garbage. System 2 is slow thinking when you are presented with new problems to solve, which is more likely to be placed in long-term memory. Unfortunately, many situations in the show are cryptic or vague, and a sizable percentage of them had no significance in the first place or stay undefined. Because of this I inadvertently trained my brain to use System 1 for these sequences, and I engaged with these sequences that set up the final twist in the same way I learned to with the others. To put them into the backlog of my mind, potentially completely forgetting them and hoping they will be explained later. I was never encouraged to engage with them otherwise. I feel the best path to improve this seems simple: Don't make a lot of elements of your story cryptic outside of stuff that sets up your twist, so its importance is properly signified. But, how Mr. Robot is done, fails to engage me.
I stated that I feel like the twist exists despite the show. The stuff mentioned with Elliot is one of these reasons, but ultimately the stuff with Elliot would be fine if the other characters were written around this twist...I don't feel any characters are written for this twist. Many characters feel like they only exist so that people around Elliot have died, such as Trenton, Mobley, Angela, Tyrell, Cisco, etc. These characters feel like they are just needed for a checklist of people dying, and these characters could be applied to a myriad of other tragic stories. They are not explicitly written for the twist. Also, Whiterose initially feels like she's written to reflect Elliot and Mr. Robot's dynamic in the earlier seasons. Yet, in the later seasons, with stuff such as the backstory she receives, all feel to be written so that the fakeout of her machine is initially believable. And Darlene: In the final episode, we find out that Darlene knew the entire time that our Elliot wasn't the "real Elliot." My main issue is that Darlene struggled with many personal problems, none of which I felt were explored, though likely they just couldn't, so a twist such as this could work, but ultimately her issues are vaguely coped with. The twist recontextualizes her character to that she had multiple things she was already struggling with, but knowing our Elliot wasn't the real one was another one of these. The twist simply adds one more layer to her checklist of personal struggles. I don't feel anything we are shown with her character before the twist is specific for the twist.
The entire appeal of mystery stories is being given pieces of information, but only enough to maybe figure out what was happening. Then an aspect of the information you likely overlooked is pointed out to you, or the pieces of information are put together in a way you didn't expect. It's engaging because you're provided a puzzle to solve, and to predict it beforehand you would have to put the pieces together by yourself. However, Mr. Robot is either too convoluted for me to identify all the pieces, or vital pieces are completely withheld, making it impossible to definitively predict. And ultimately, I feel this twist ended up going more for shock value than being compelling, and I have to question if many of those who like it have hindsight bias.