Re-Introducing the “Character” Before the Season 3 Premiere of Mr. Robot

Password or person? (USA Network)

It is less than one week until the season three premiere of Mr. Robot so as we keep getting closer to the premiere I have been taking a few minutes to reintroduce some of the main characters and today I am breaking “Whiterose” down.

<If you haven’t watched the first two seasons of Mr. Robot *Spoiler Alert*>

The Mr. Robot Wiki entry for “Whiterose” starts with the following <inaccurate> statement:

“Whiterose is a hacker affiliated with the Dark Army.”

Is that true? Let’s Discuss:

There is no person Named Whiterose on Mr. Robot The person we refer to as “Whiterose” is the transgendered leader of the Dark Army (who to date remains unnamed) The person we refer to as “Whiterose” is known (by many) as “Minister Zhang” the Chinese Minister of Defense The person we refer to as “Whiterose” wants to maintain control of the Washington Township Facility (WTF)

There Is No Person Named “Whiterose” On Mr. Robot

This will sound like some wild Sci-Fi theory, but there IS NO PERSON NAMED WHITEROSE on Mr. Robot.

How do I know this? I asked a few important people, first, B.D. Wong (who plays the character):

And then I had a couple of discussions with old-school programmers about the history of using only lowercase passwords then turned to Sam Esmail himself:

So, “Whiterose” is actually — whiterose — and that ‘name’ represents a password and not a person (in addition, because it is a password, it should be lower-case not capitalized (as it often is).

Remember that Mr. Robot is often about the differences between what we see and what is real, for instance:

The world sees Elliot Alderson as a unified whole person, but he is actually dissociative and a fractured whole including at least one alter (Mr. Robot).

We assume Elliot is an ‘unreliable narrator’ when often what he is calling to question is the very idea that reliability and objectivity are possible at all.

The person we refer to as “Whiterose” is the transgendered leader of the Dark Army

Vindictive Ever? (USA Network)

We can be fairly certain that the person represented by the password ‘whiterose’ is the leader of the sub-national hacking collective known as the Dark Army (as certain as we can be of anything else on Mr. Robot).

We first encountered password ‘whiterose’ when Elliot decided that the interests of Fsociety were coming into conflict with the interests of the Dark Army. The Dark Army has, for the most part, been an ally of Fsociety in their actions against E-Corp.

The main sites of power on the show, to date are:

Fsociety — a sub-national hacker collective including most of the members of the cast

E-Corp — A corporation run by Phillip Price

Joanna Wellick — A person who is married to Tyrell Wellick

The Dark Army — a sub-national hacker collective (much larger than Fsociety)

The US Government — Represented by Dom DiPierro and several high-ranking government members

The Alt-Right — While they have not been prominently featured to date, they did have an Info-Wars style host represented in several episodes and <arguably> carried out the assassination of Gideon Goddard.

Alexa — Representing the Singularity (kidding, well, maybe)

The Dark Army appears to be the most globally aware sub-national organization on the show and it’s interests seem entirely controlled by the person we know as password ‘whiterose.’

It is hard to know what the real interests of the Dark Army are and they could be a chaos agent (they seem to be playing all sides against each other, for example, the Dark Army helped E-Corp preserve their data after 5/9 at the same time they were also financing Elliot’s Stage 2 plan to destroy the exact same data).

The Dark Army currently includes Angela Moss and Tyrell Wellick as <at least> affiliate members and are primarily responsible for Fsociety surviving the 5/9 fallout.

The person we refer to as “Whiterose” is known (by many) as “Minister Zhang” the Chinese Minister of Defense

Minister Zhang meeting with Phillip Price (USA Network)

My suspicion has long been that China has no idea that Zhang is really a Transgender woman.

Many of the early interviews with Sam Esmail and B.D. Wong about the ‘whiterose’ character suggest that ‘whiterose’ represents the closeted but true personality of the person we later find out is publically known as Minister Zhang (the Chinese Defense Minister). For instance, here is a snippet from an interview from Vulture with B.D. Wong:

“You very rarely see a transgender actor playing the part of a grocery-store clerk without having to say, Oh, look at that trans person. They aren’t ready for that yet. They don’t think the nation is ready for that yet. Sam said, She is transgender, but her transness has nothing to do with anything. Sam then told me the irony really is that Whiterose is in disguise when Whiterose is a man, and not when Whiterose is a woman. At the end of Wednesday night’s episode, when Whiterose meets with [Evil Corp CEO] Philip Price, Whiterose may or may not be suppressing all of the femaleness of her to have these conversations with Price. That is a very radical concept, which I don’t know if we have ever seen before. I made it clear to Sam that I am not comfortable with the idea of masquerading. He said, If there is any masquerading at all, it is Whiterose masquerading as the businessman working with Philip Price, not the reverse. That, to me, was interesting. I don’t yet know what he means by that, and I hope the show goes a bit further with it.”

The use of a password could be about how one gains access to the head of the Dark Army but it could also be a signifier for the real person behind the masquerade. In other words, the person the world knows as the male Zhang sees herself as ‘whiterose’ as Sam Esmail discussed during a Season 2 interview (in reference to her meeting with Dom):

You’re right. There is a sadness, and I equate that with passion. She’s going through this inner struggle with her identity. She feels so much like one person, and she doesn’t feel like she can be that person. That’s part of her passion. She wishes she could. I think what she sees in Dom is that same notion. We haven’t gone down Dom’s path yet, but there is something about Dom that has that same sadness, the same hiding behind the mask. Is she the person she wants to be? Does she feel like she can be the person she identifies with? What I love about it is that Whiterose always goes to the background for people. She doesn’t talk to Santiago, who is the head figure. She goes to the person that she sees is a little more cunning, a little smarter and more on her game, but just doesn’t fit into her identity as well as she could. I think that’s the connection Whiterose feels with Dom.”

I also have a theory that the password itself represents repressed identity.

Historically, there was an academic resistance group in Nazi Germany called the White Rose whose attempts to speak the truth were met with show trials and harsh punishment. Repressed identity is usually based in a fear of being repressed. And let us not forget, there are real work examples of repression for Trans identity all around us:

What I am suggesting is that repression of identity is violence and results in violence and the difference between open identity and repressed identity is violence.

This particular character is represented by a password because passwords represent secret identities and this particular character is closeted.

The person we refer to as “Whiterose” wants to maintain control of the Washington Township Facility (WTF)

First Meeting? (USA Network)

We might not know much about the Dark Army’s motives, but we do know that Minister Zhang was willing to give up a bunch of mining rights in the Congo and make other concessions to Phillip Price over E-Coin just to maintain ONE thing.

And what was that?

Control of the Washington Township Facility (WTF).

Yup, the same facility that gave Elliot’s Dad and Angela’s mom lethal doses of cancer. The same facility that ‘whiterose’ mentioned might explain why Elliot and Angela might be exceptional.

I have penned a theory about this in the past, but it is just a theory:

It seems fairly clear that we will learn more about the WTF in Season 3. Maybe, if I get crazy, I will do a short Dom piece tomorrow (we will see). Don’t forget, “Who Is Mr. Robot’s Landlord?” returns on Thursday (my long-running Mr. Robot recap).

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