Our Elliot is not the real Elliot at all.

He is just one more alternate personality, the “Mastermind” who embodies Elliot’s rage and thirst for vengeance against the 1 percent and its destructive system. He took over shortly before the beginning of the show’s story, at which point he shunted Elliot’s “real” personality into the placid alternate reality he entered after having been knocked unconscious when Whiterose’s machine exploded.

That’s why that new world’s Elliot is so happy, so successful, so surrounded by friends and by love. Our Elliot, the Mastermind, needed to keep the real Elliot someplace that was part paradise, part prison — a place where he would be safe, yes, but also where he would feel no need to escape and retake control.

It’s the Mastermind incarnation of Elliot who wakes up in the hospital, his sister, Darlene, by his side. After informing Elliot that he has been credited with stopping a nuclear meltdown, destroying the machine (which never fully activated) and saving the world, she confesses that she knew she had been dealing with someone other than the real Elliot — “the one I grew up with,” as she puts it — all along. She kept silent because she treasured the time this Elliot wanted to spend with her, after she had pushed his true self away.

The episode concludes with our “Mastermind” Elliot joining the other manifestations of his shattered psyche — his abusive mother; his inner child; his protective Mr. Robot; and “the voyeurs,” a.k.a. us, in the audience — as they willingly retreat into oblivion. Esmail represents this with the light from a movie projector, which becomes a dizzying vortex of blurred images, a “2001” star gate at 24 frames per second.

Then Elliot — the real Elliot — wakes up again, and this time all we see is a close-up of one of his eyes, filled with tears. Darlene approaches and, looking directly into the camera, says “Hello, Elliot.”

And with that, it’s goodbye, “Mr. Robot.”

But in a way we already said goodbye to “Mr. Robot,” or at least “Mr. Robot” as we knew it. The creator, writer and director Sam Esmail did not choose to end his series as a techno-thriller, or a deadly game of cat and mouse, or a science-fiction mind-bender, or a work of political agitprop. He — and his luminous cast, particularly Rami Malek and Carly Chaikin as Elliot and Darlene — ended it as an exploration of an alienated, mentally ill young man.