Who Is Mr. Robot’s Landlord? Recap of Season Four “412 413 Finale”

Hello friend...

I have been writing about Mr. Robot for a very long time. You can read all my earlier writing about the show using this guide.

We have finally come down to this one final season, hopefully, we will get answers to many pressing questions (I put together this list of questions in advance of the final season)

You can also follow me on Reddit (I am ypsifactj48, I usually hang around r/Mr.Robot and the Black Mirror and Orange Is the New Black rooms.

If you have not watched every episode of Mr. Robot or read Red Wheelbarrow this could contain spoilers *Spoiler Alert*

My Monster Is Still Alive

Many years ago there was this great video game called Fallout 3 and in that great video game, there was a side quest where you were transported to an alternative reality that seemed, for a few seconds, like the perfect world. It played out like a television show depicting an idealized 1950s sitcom...until gradually, you learned that it was a simulation being controlled by a psychopath.  That side quest was called “Tranquility Lane.”

In essence, the “real” Elliot has been living, throughout the entire duration of Mr. Robot, on Tranquility Lane, held captive by “The Other One” aka “The Mastermind.”

The closest I got to working this out was when I was reflecting on  eps2.2_init_1.asec. Sometime after that, I mentioned in some recap or other that Elliot had an entirely different face during that scene, a face that had no warmth and one which was totally emotionless (this was the scene where he dreamed up the 5/9 hack).

I am pretty sure that is literally the moment when “The Mastermind” started to take Elliot over.

I had a bunch of different times where I wrote that maybe Elliot was bad, but I never put it all together. I wrote about in reference to all the people who were hurt by the five-nine hack when I talked about all the terrible things he had done to Darlene and his other friends. And, of course, his willingness to go full-on vigilante and hack people’s lives to serve his own purposes.

Elliot wasn’t bad but the part of him that was in charge of doing bad things, anger, rage, revenge, became the dominant personality and banished everything loving and sweet that remained imprisoned in a feedback loop inside Elliot’s head. We only saw the real Elliot for mere seconds whenever there was a glitch. Remember all of the glitches when he came back from jail? Well, now they were earthquakes and ultimately when he gave control back, you saw a flicker. 

If we think about it that way, all of Season 2 (and Red Wheelbarrow) make a lot more sense, Mr. Robot was trying to get “The Mastermind” to give control back to E Prime (which explains all the many different tricks he used from shooting him in the head to stabbing him multiple times). If I have a remaining question, it is to simply ask why Mr. Robot didn’t just tell “The Mastermind” that he was not Elliot way back at the beginning when he pulled off the coup. 

It totally makes sense for Mr. Robot to keep the truth about Edward away from him but why not tell the Mastermind the truth about who he was and what he was doing? The only answer I can come up with is his own fear of annihilation. If “The Mastermind” was powerful enough to take over E Prime and banish Elliot to Tranquility Lane, he could theoretically do the same to Mr Robot, Magda, to young Elliot, and to anyone else who decided to make an appearance in Elliot’s brain.  What makes this messy is that Mr. Robot worked hard to protect and help “The Mastermind” just as he was created in order to protect Elliot. I guess it is also confusing as to why Mr. Robot would conflate the protection of “The Mastermind” with the protection of Elliot. In fact, those two things were clearly not, for much of this adventure, consistent with each other. 

It is possible that this could explain why Mr. Robot disappears and reappears. It is possible Mr. Robot only appeared when what “The Mastermind” was doing was consistent with the goal of protecting Elliot (but that hardly explains why he would go along willingly with banishing Elliot to Tranquility Lane. Or, if he did not go along willingly, why would he still try to help “The Mastermind” out while he had trapped Elliot in an endless loop?

I do get that “The Mastermind” originally took over, as alters regularly do because he was needed. But he never left and that should have been problematic to Mr. Robot Iand probably to Magda and young Elliot as well).

And the Mastermind did have some serious ambivalence about crushing other people’s lives, even about crushing other parts of E Prime in the service of eliminating threats to his continued dominance (or acting out all of E Prime’s anger). Not only was he willing to actually exterminate the real Elliot, to throw millions into abject poverty, but he was also willing to sentence the real Elliot to a meaningless forever existence on Tranquility Lane without the one person he truly loved the most beyond all others (Darlene). 

Luckily, when confronted with painful truths, “The Mastermind” does the right thing. He did the right thing when confronted with the truth about Edward and he did the right thing when the rest of the personalities conspire against him to get him to give power back up to the real Elliot.

It has been several years since I did my deep dive into the literature on Dissociative Identity Disorder (I did it in the Summer after Season One) but if I remember correctly primary or dominant personalities can switch around based on need, but I never read about personalities out-competing each other (or annihilating each other). Usually, they work in concert as a fragmented whole. I read about Sam consulting with an expert on DID, so I will guess he knows what he is talking about here.

Anyway, Mr. Robot, Magda, young Elliot, and The Mastermind are all now sitting in the theater of Elliot’s brain watching the movie of their life.

It was a beautiful ending. So appropriate that Darlene was there to see him return, I only wish we had gotten to know him a little bit better before everything ended. I suspect he is a very nice person (with some incredible high-end computer skills).

The power of masks is incredible, sometimes we create protective masks and like their feel so much that we never stop wearing them...not even when it means our true self gets buried.

The Washington Township Community Center

I am very glad ultimately that it was not a sci-fi ending.

As you probably remember, I have been screaming since almost the very beginning that the story is more about Occam’s razor than it was about science fiction. 

I do want to give Sam Esmail a lot of credit though. I mean who else could have made all of these things seem both possible and logical at the same time (on a television show no less)? 

There was a tell, as I mentioned last week, in that Darlene was not present in the parallel universe (which would, by definition, make it not a parallel universe).

It was very similar to “Ray’s computer” problem from Season Two. The tell in season two, that proved Elliot was in jail (or something like it) was that he only had access to one computer in the entire world (Ray’s computer). 

I love that Sam was so willing to let us have a taste of so many different endings to the story:

We had ‘whiterose’s’ dream ending (where she ended up with her lover).

There was a possible sci-fi ending that turned out to be a memory loop.

There was the practical ending for both Darlene and Dom where instead of finding their way together they decided to follow different paths. 

And there was the ending where Darlene and Elliot find each other again and they get to be brother and sister the way they both secretly always wished might happen.

Elliot might not be able to sit at the table with all of his friends as he imagined many years ago, but at least he gets to have some family sit at a table with him.

Finally, it seems the question of “friendship” was resolved, Hello Friend was “The Mastermind’ talking with the real Elliot (and/or maybe the other alters too). The process was depicted in the scene where Elliot could hear all of the internal dialogs.

Bon Soir Mr. Robot

Thanks to Sam Esmail for creating such a beautiful and interesting universe. To Kor Adana for making the hacks real, to Mac Quayle for filling out that universe with music, and one of the best writing rooms and casts ever assembled for bringing his vision to life.

In particular, I give Sam credit for having unlimited courage. What an amazing final season, beautifully executed.

One of the best parts of this adventure for me has been experiencing all of the thousands of theories other people have invested so much time, caring, and love into writing.

I have long believed that art is co-productive and that all of us, and everything that we all wrote and contributed, has become part of a larger Mr. Robot universe. 

In this sense, ‘whiterose’s’ project was successful, many alternative and parallel universes have opened. It is sincerely my hope that one of them ‘whiterose’ is with her lover. As homicidal as she was, you have to admire her commitment to love. 

In the end, it turned out that Elliot was Mr. Robot’s landlord ( and Magda’s landlord and young Elliot’s landlord, and ‘The Mastermind’s” landlord).

Bon Soir to everyone, goodbye Friends.

A Quick Apology

When I started this journey way back in 2015 I was a freelance writer and it was rarely a problem for me to stay up all night writing and sleep late the next day. Now, since I took a job as a full-time policy analyst at Safe and Just Michigan it has been REALLY challenging to get these recaps written after the show ends on Sunday nights at 11 pm and still get up in time to be at work between 5 and 6 am the next morning. 

I have tried my best to keep the quality up, but if I have slipped I want to apologize. I want to believe that I set a pretty high standard during the first three seasons and I am sorry if I have not done as good of a job with the recaps this season.

Luckily, I have tomorrow off. So, I am hoping I can do the final episode of Mr. Robot justice.

Fun Society

Every week, I will write another recap until we finish this journey together.

If you have any interest in criminal justice reform I am also the host of the Decarceration Nation Podcast

If you like Orange Is the New Black, you can read my recaps of that series using this guide.

If you like  Black Mirror, you can read my recaps of that series using this guide.