Get the first look at the special episode of Mr. Robot right here! Presto dives behind the scenes to talk with cast and crew of the hit TV show. This episode contains information and spoilers from season one of Mr. Robot. Courtesy: Presto

Season one spoilers follow.

A STORY about conspiracies and hackers naturally lends itself to all sorts of wild fan theories. Throw in a multiple personality a la Fight Club and those theories become supercharged.

With the second season of the groundbreaking Mr Robot less than two weeks away, let’s take stock of some of the speculation, theories and rumours that may prove themselves true in a new season that has promised to be very different.

ELLIOT IS TYRELL IS ELLIOT

This one is a doozy, but so clever if it proves to be true. It’s the most popular and dominant theory and it’s to Mr Robot what L+R=J is to Game of Thrones.

If Mr Robot can be a psychological manifestation of Elliot’s alter ago in the form of his dead father, the next level theory is that Elliot (and Mr Robot) is already an alter ego of Tyrell Wellick’s. Whoa. Inceptioned.

There are all kinds of clues littered throughout the first season that points to this theory — among them, Elliot recoils at other people’s touch, but not Tyrell’s; Tyrell says to Elliot: “We’re the same”; and Elliot’s subconscious saying “I was only born a month ago”.

Of course the biggest pointer to this is it’s implied Tyrell helped out with the hack but disappears for the whole finale. Elliot blacks out and can’t remember the past few days (when the hack actually happens) and he wakes up in Tyrell’s car.

Elliot tells us: “Why did Tyrell let this happen? He was with me, I told him the whole plan, he was going to stop it.”

Mr Robot also refuses to tell Elliot where Tyrell is (or if he’s alive), a far more menacing scene if it turns out it’s three personalities within the same body jockeying for control.

The scene in the finale between Elliot and Tyrell’s wife Joanna has a creepy undercurrent where it starts off as if she has no idea who he is, slowly shifting to as if there is a history between them. She also says to him, in Danish, “If you’ve done something to him, I will kill you.” Why would she threaten him in Danish unless she knows he understands?

The whole exchange also works if Elliot is Tyrell’s alter ego and Joanna speaks to him knowing exactly that. There was also her instruction to him two episodes earlier to “not unravel”.

Other than Elliot, no one else on the series is given the same kind of character treatment in terms of their internal world. Throughout the season, the audience spends time with Tyrell in a way that isn’t about how he relates to other characters or to advance the story, rather it’s more of a look into who he is as a person.

The scene where he pays a homeless person to be whaled on is a prime example of this — it serves no other purpose other than as a glimpse into Tyrell’s psychological profile.

The big spanner in the works is that Elliot and Tyrell have appeared in the same scenes and other characters have interacted with them as separate entities but there could be a way to explain it. It may sound outlandish but a show as layered and complex as Mr Robot could pull it off.

WHO IS WHITE ROSE, REALLY?

Is White Rose a hacker infiltrating the one per cent of Richie Riches or is White Rose a Richie Rich that infiltrated the hacker community?

Originally introduced as a transgender white hat hacker helping out fsociety in taking out E Corp, the final post-credits scene of the first season was a slap in the face for any viewers who still took Mr Robot at face value.

After everything that happened in the series, White Rose, now presenting as a man, saunters into an imposing and well-appointed mansion/castle and sits down for a tete-a-tete with E Corp chief executive Phillip Price. The two are clearly on very familiar terms.

White Rose asks Price if he knows who initiated the hack and Price replies “of course”. There are then references to some mines in the Congo and some (presumably) nefarious agenda.

Does this mean White Rose, and therefore E Corp, still has the data that was hijacked?

Creator Sam Esmail said that scene was designed to remind audiences of something larger at play and chess moves happening somewhere else, at a higher level than where Elliot is playing.

How White Rose fits into that picture is one of the most pressing questions going into season two.

ELLIOT IS A TIME TRAVELLER

This theory, like all time travelling ones is seriously trippy and comes courtesy of a writer over at Decider.

The speculation here is that everything is paying homage to Back to the Future, Elliot’s favourite movie. And that like Marty McFly, Elliot is a time-traveller (but the theory also posits Tyrell may be the time traveller) and when he says “hello, friend,” he’s talking to his future self.

This proposes that Elliot’s father is actually Tyrell Wellick and that his mother is Joanna, which makes him the baby born at the end of the season.

And just like in Back to the Future, Elliot takes on different personas to try and change history — this is, apparently, what White Rose is referring to when she says Elliot “hacks people”.

As a side-note, in Elliot’s childhood photos, there’s a picture of him and Mr Robot dressed as Marty and Doc Brown.

IS DARLENE REALLY ELLIOT’S SISTER?

One of the biggest bombshells to drop in the latter half of the first season was that fellow fsociety hacker Darlene is Elliot’s sister, a fact made clear to the audience only after Darlene recoiled with horror when Elliot tried to kiss her.

Elliot, in his delusions and memory blackouts had completely repressed all memories of the familial relationship between himself and Darlene.

But there are interwebs folk who thinks Darlene isn’t really his sister because she didn’t appear in the Times Square sequence in the vision with the rest of Elliot’s family.

There’s also a family photo that originally had only Elliot and his mother, but once it was revealed Mr Robot is his father it also featured his father and Darlene. But there are times when we see that photo again and Darlene is missing again.

Esmail has said that there’s a reason that Darlene isn’t in the Times Square vision — we just don’t know what that is yet.

There’s also a crazy theory that Darlene is Joanna Wellick’s daughter.

SAM ESMAIL IS CLAIRVOYANT

Nah, not really.

But it’s almost disturbing how accurate Mr Robot has been in forecasting things that go on to happen that some people have started to wonder if the show’s creator has a line to some higher power denied to the rest of us mere mortals.

There’s a line in the finale about a massive Ashley Madison hack — this was written months before tens of millions of cheaters were exposed in real life. Spooky.

Then there was the scene in the finale of an E Corp executive who shoots himself on live TV during an interview. The episode’s broadcast had to be delayed a week because of the real-life incident in the US which saw two TV reporters, Alison Parker and Adam Parker, shot and killed during a live cross by a former colleague, Vester Flanagan.

Esmail isn’t a clairvoyant, rather the series has been so adept at drilling into the mood and challenges of today’s society that it can concoct these storylines that are so eerily “predicting” real life. So despite all of Mr Robot’s seemingly fantastical elements, it’s actually scarily realistic.

Mr Robot season two starts on Thursday, July 14 on Presto.

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