Patrick Ryan

USA TODAY

NEW YORK — There's no shaking Mr. Robot.

Cloaked in his usual black hoodie, with hands buried deep in his pockets, Elliot (Rami Malek) sits forlornly on a bustling basketball court, his scruffy alter ego (Christian Slater) perched behind him on rickety bleachers. It's the second-season premiere of USA's surprise hit Mr. Robot, due July 13 (Wednesdays, 10 ET/PT), and the vigilante hacker is a voluntary recluse: now living at home with his mom in Queens, a month after orchestrating a large-scale hack of a major corporation that erased people's debts but sent the global economy into a tailspin.

"Whatever you heard, it's not true," Elliott mutters to Ray (Craig Robinson), an affable neighborhood dweller who prods the cybersecurity engineer about his computer expertise. "I don't do that anymore."

When the new season picks up, "he's just trying to keep himself from making any more mistakes and causing more collateral damage," Malek says. Elliot, who receives court-mandated therapy for mental illness, is also reeling from the realization that Mr. Robot, the mysterious leader of hacker group fsociety, isn't real, but merely a projection of his father, who died of leukemia when he was young.

Keeping to a strict daily routine, "he's ostracized himself so that he can keep Mr. Robot at bay as much as possible," says creator Sam Esmail. "He thinks that by controlling every aspect of his life, and exiling himself from anyone he cares about, this is the path to curing this very serious mental illness."

But Elliot's internal struggle is just one aspect of what Esmail describes as a "darker," more ensemble-driven season of Mr. Robot, which won Golden Globe Awards for best drama and supporting actor (Slater) early this year. With an FBI agent (Grace Gummer) hot on Elliot's trail, and his hacker sister, Darlene (Carly Chaikin) feeling more empowered by the data breach, the stakes are even higher for all involved.

"Last season, they were really trying to work together to make this hack possible," Chaikin says. "This season, they're struggling being on two different pages in regards to how they feel about what just happened. But of course, they always stick together."

Adds Slater: "There are certainly repercussions from Season 1 that have to be tackled and dealt with." He likens his Mr. Robot to the Hulk, if Elliot was Bruce Banner, and says that even as Elliot wrestles for control of his mind, "I don't necessarily know that Mr. Robot being gone equals Elliot being well."

Rather than introduce another villain or conflict, "the second season is watching our characters struggle with the decisions they've made," Esmail says. "We're not rebooting or putting our characters on a new mission — we're continuing along the same arc."

Esmail, who was once fired from his student job at a New York University computer lab for hacking into another school's server, was inspired to write Mr. Robot by his years spent reading tech blogs and hanging out with programmers and coders. Elliot stems from his desire to explore loneliness.

"We're in such an unprecedented stage in history, where technology has diminished real, human interaction and replaced it with technological interaction," Esmail says. "I don't just mean phone calls or text messages, but pictures and emojis. Emojis have directly replaced emotions. On Facebook, you can interact to a posting with a sad or happy face. Those sort of diminishing returns on human interaction are going to have this huge side effect on society." With Elliot, he says, the question is: "How does a guy who's in so much need of a connection thrive in a society like that?"

Robot, which averaged 1.4 million viewers in its first season, is a prestige play for USA, which has been moving toward more serialized drama with shows such as Suits, Political Animals and Graceland. For its second season, directed entirely by Esmail, the network has bumped up its episode order from 10 to 12 (including a two-hour series premiere) and added a Talking Dead-style after-show featuring clips and live interviews.

"When Mr. Robot came in, it felt like, 'This is a great chance to go even further and really embrace a new paradigm,' " says Alex Sepiol, USA's executive VP of scripted development. "It felt younger; it felt like something that'd appeal to Millennials and be something really distinctive and edgy and different."

The series' success hinges largely on Malek, who has earned Screen Actors Guild and Television Critics Association award nominations for his performance. Before his Robot breakout, the 35-year-old Egyptian-American actor appeared in lighter roles in Need for Speed and the Night at the Museum series — an upbeat quality that initially endeared him to Esmail.

"He has an immense warmth that shines through no matter what he's saying," Esmail says. He auditioned by reading Elliot's grim tirade against society, a speech that "could come across as callous and obnoxious. But because Rami has this warmth, it came off very hurt and pained, and made me want to hug him as opposed to feeling lectured at."

It's an easy appeal echoed by his co-stars. Slater describes Malek as "approachable, ego-less and an all-around nice guy," while rapper Joey Badass, who plays Elliot's friend Leon this season, says he's a "humorous cat. He can hit you with the dry humor, with the random, spontaneous joke or burst of excitement."

Malek, who is admittedly exhausted but genial on set, says he enjoys being part of a show that not only shoots in New York but is also respected by his peers. How has his life has changed since Robot? His own views on privacy ("I try to limit the use of any type of technological device these days") and being instantly recognized on the street (while he's shooting, a cluster of people clutching their smartphones has assembled outside the Brooklyn playground).

"I don’t think anybody ever gets used to that," Malek says. "Seeing your face on the billboard for the first time is a bit of a shocker. I was finishing a show and doing some press in Los Angeles, and (while) driving I looked up and saw my face. Then I got in a fender-bender because I hit the car in front of me."