Season 4, Episode 1: ‘401 Unauthorized’

It starts with the death of a main character. It seems, at first, to end with the death of the main character. In between, it plays out like an eerie paranoid thriller against a backdrop of international corruption and capitalism run amok. Written and directed by the series’s creator, Sam Esmail, the fourth and final season premiere of “Mr. Robot” plays to all the show’s strengths and none of its weaknesses.

While it’s good to have the show return, it’s worth noting that this is also a return to form after the strange misfires of the Season 3 finale. That episode, in which the hacker Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) undid the “5/9” hack that wiped millions of credit records clean and accidentally unleashed a tide of chaos and violence, appeared to be an act of creative retrenchment for a show that has historically been at its best when it pushed the narrative envelope. How can you trust a show about revolution when the revolutionary wants to pull the plug?

With vows of vengeance, that’s how. This episode opens with one such declaration of vendetta. Angela Moss ( Portia Doubleday ) tells Phillip Price ( Michael Cristofer ), the chief executive of the global conglomerate E Corp — and, she has just learned, her father — that she will stop at nothing to get “retribution” against the architect of the terrorist bombings for which she was an unwitting cat’s paw. That architect is Whiterose (B.D. Wong), the trans woman general of the violent hacker collective called the Dark Army — and, under her male-presenting secret identity, a powerful minister in the Chinese government.

Unfortunately for Angela, Price is wearing a wire, so her threats are piped directly to her intended target. Watching the two realize that Angela has signed her own death warrant is some of the show’s most emotionally affecting work; Doubleday plays Angela as raw but resigned, while Cristofer’s Price visibly, almost physically struggles to keep himself together as assassins appear to snuff out his daughter’s life.