In the meantime, though? Boy howdy, what a fun hour of television!

For all the lines of code the characters stare at, and for all the hacker jargon that gets thrown around, the plot is actually very simple. Darlene and Elliot need all the members of the Deus Group in one place so they can simultaneously ping all their phones with a phony alert from their bank. Once they all input their security codes, the Aldersons can break into their accounts and wipe out their fortunes.

But the plan works only if every member of the Deus Group — from Whiterose herself to a guy who sure looks a lot like Donald Trump — is in the same place at the same time, since a staggered hack would enable stragglers to wise up and ignore the fake alert. And as it turns out, Whiterose has moved the venue for the Deus Group meeting from its original location, which she has reserved for a one-on-one confrontation with the deposed E Corp chief executive, Philip Price. Her goal is to demand that Price give up what he knows about Elliot’s plans, but her presence at this separate location complicates those plans considerably.

Darlene is the one who is forced to get the most inventive, as Mr. Robot dispatches her to the new location (Cipriani, in case you want to make a reservation) to prepare the big Deus Group phone hack. Improvising cleverly, she shoots a new fsociety video, outing the conspiracy and announcing their current location. Crowds begin to gather, cutting off the plutocrats’ escape. Darlene also hacks the building’s parking-garage exit, trapping all their limousines inside and further slowing things down.

In the end, it all works out. Elliot gets Whiterose’s number. The Deus Group’s accounts are collectively wiped out. Enraged, Whiterose shoots Philip Price dead in a street full of witnesses and flees. The episode’s final shot shows her putting on her makeup (she spent the entire episode in her male-presenting secret identity, the Chinese state security minister, Zhang) while the sounds of a gun battle between police and her Dark Army minions are heard in the background. Everyone’s comeuppance has well and truly come up.

But even now, there are intriguing loose ends and charming plot threads not covered in a description of the main action. Take Philip Price, for instance. As played, brilliantly, by Michael Cristofer, Price seems to have known his time was almost up the moment he allied himself with Elliot to take down Whiterose. So when he realizes he has arrived at what is clearly meant to be his place of execution, he is resigned to his fate and spends the ensuing meeting getting hammered on champagne.