Many years ago there was this great video game called Fallout 3 and in that great video game, there was a side quest where you were transported to an alternative reality that seemed, for a few seconds, like the perfect world. It played out like a television show depicting an idealized 1950s sitcom...until gradually, you learned that it was a simulation being controlled by a psychopath. That side quest was called “Tranquility Lane.”

In essence, the “real” Elliot has been living, throughout the entire duration of Mr. Robot, on Tranquility Lane, held captive by “The Other One” aka “The Mastermind.”

The closest I got to working this out was when I was reflecting on eps2.2_init_1.asec. Sometime after that, I mentioned in some recap or other that Elliot had an entirely different face during that scene, a face that had no warmth and one which was totally emotionless (this was the scene where he dreamed up the 5/9 hack).

I am pretty sure that is literally the moment when “The Mastermind” started to take Elliot over.

I had a bunch of different times where I wrote that maybe Elliot was bad, but I never put it all together. I wrote about in reference to all the people who were hurt by the five-nine hack when I talked about all the terrible things he had done to Darlene and his other friends. And, of course, his willingness to go full-on vigilante and hack people’s lives to serve his own purposes.

Elliot wasn’t bad but the part of him that was in charge of doing bad things, anger, rage, revenge, became the dominant personality and banished everything loving and sweet that remained imprisoned in a feedback loop inside Elliot’s head. We only saw the real Elliot for mere seconds whenever there was a glitch. Remember all of the glitches when he came back from jail? Well, now they were earthquakes and ultimately when he gave control back, you saw a flicker.

If we think about it that way, all of Season 2 (and Red Wheelbarrow) make a lot more sense, Mr. Robot was trying to get “The Mastermind” to give control back to E Prime (which explains all the many different tricks he used from shooting him in the head to stabbing him multiple times). If I have a remaining question, it is to simply ask why Mr. Robot didn’t just tell “The Mastermind” that he was not Elliot way back at the beginning when he pulled off the coup.

It totally makes sense for Mr. Robot to keep the truth about Edward away from him but why not tell the Mastermind the truth about who he was and what he was doing? The only answer I can come up with is his own fear of annihilation. If “The Mastermind” was powerful enough to take over E Prime and banish Elliot to Tranquility Lane, he could theoretically do the same to Mr Robot, Magda, to young Elliot, and to anyone else who decided to make an appearance in Elliot’s brain. What makes this messy is that Mr. Robot worked hard to protect and help “The Mastermind” just as he was created in order to protect Elliot. I guess it is also confusing as to why Mr. Robot would conflate the protection of “The Mastermind” with the protection of Elliot. In fact, those two things were clearly not, for much of this adventure, consistent with each other.

It is possible that this could explain why Mr. Robot disappears and reappears. It is possible Mr. Robot only appeared when what “The Mastermind” was doing was consistent with the goal of protecting Elliot (but that hardly explains why he would go along willingly with banishing Elliot to Tranquility Lane. Or, if he did not go along willingly, why would he still try to help “The Mastermind” out while he had trapped Elliot in an endless loop?

I do get that “The Mastermind” originally took over, as alters regularly do because he was needed. But he never left and that should have been problematic to Mr. Robot Iand probably to Magda and young Elliot as well).

And the Mastermind did have some serious ambivalence about crushing other people’s lives, even about crushing other parts of E Prime in the service of eliminating threats to his continued dominance (or acting out all of E Prime’s anger). Not only was he willing to actually exterminate the real Elliot, to throw millions into abject poverty, but he was also willing to sentence the real Elliot to a meaningless forever existence on Tranquility Lane without the one person he truly loved the most beyond all others (Darlene).

Luckily, when confronted with painful truths, “The Mastermind” does the right thing. He did the right thing when confronted with the truth about Edward and he did the right thing when the rest of the personalities conspire against him to get him to give power back up to the real Elliot.

It has been several years since I did my deep dive into the literature on Dissociative Identity Disorder (I did it in the Summer after Season One) but if I remember correctly primary or dominant personalities can switch around based on need, but I never read about personalities out-competing each other (or annihilating each other). Usually, they work in concert as a fragmented whole. I read about Sam consulting with an expert on DID, so I will guess he knows what he is talking about here.

Anyway, Mr. Robot, Magda, young Elliot, and The Mastermind are all now sitting in the theater of Elliot’s brain watching the movie of their life.

It was a beautiful ending. So appropriate that Darlene was there to see him return, I only wish we had gotten to know him a little bit better before everything ended. I suspect he is a very nice person (with some incredible high-end computer skills).

The power of masks is incredible, sometimes we create protective masks and like their feel so much that we never stop wearing them...not even when it means our true self gets buried.

The Washington Township Community Center