Season 4, Episode 2: ‘402 Payment Required’

“There’s a powerful group of people out there that are secretly running the world. I’m talking about the guys no one knows about. The guys that are invisible. The top 1 percent of the top 1 percent. The guys that play God without permission.”

In the very first episode of “Mr. Robot,” the brilliant hacker Elliot Alderson described his quarry in memorable terms. Only now, in the series’s final season, does it appear he’s truly on their trail — and in their cross-hairs.

In the latest installment of Sam Esmail’s techno-thriller, Elliot and his alternate personality Mr. Robot (modeled after his father; that’s important, as we’ll soon see) hold a meeting in their secret base with one of those guys: Phillip Price. The figurehead chief executive of the giant conglomerate E Corp, Price has just saved Elliot’s life after Elliot fell into a trap set by the nefarious hacker-terrorist collective the Dark Army. Now he’s ready to tell Elliot whom he’s really up against.

Over a dazzling montage of real-world news footage and shiny happy stock advertising imagery, Price tells Elliot and Mr. Robot the story of the real guys behind the guys behind the guys: the Deus Group. Founded after the fall of the Berlin Wall by the ambitious Chinese bureaucrat Zhi Zhang — better known by her hacker alias, Whiterose — this elite organization took advantage of the collapse of Communism by putting the whole world up for sale. The first gulf war , the internet, the rise of authoritarianism, the depredations of late capitalism — all of it was the Deus Group’s doing.