Mr. Robot Season One: Where Our Minds Are Twisted Upside Outtop. And back again.

[GaT]

I didn't really understand most of this show, but when I watched the finale, this occurred to me. When Elliot & Joanna met, I got the impression she knew him, & was hoping he would recognize her. Joanna also said she hadn't seen Tyrell in 3 days, which is the amount of time that Elliot was missing. Then Joanna spoke Danish to him, just like she does to Tyrell. I think Elliot & Tyrell are 2 personalities inhabiting the same body, & Joanna knows it. When you meet someone, you just don't start speaking in another language in the hopes that they understand you, I think she was trying to bring out Tyrell by speaking to him in the language she always speaks to him in. 

 

As a side note, Stephanie Corneliussen needs to lay off the lip fillers before her lips explode.

[CheezyMuffin]

I was so excited to see the finale because I thought Tyrell and Elliot might be the same character ever since the Linux convo.   After the finale I would lean that Tyrell is the real one and Elliot is a personality. Although, I'm not sure who is real anymoe and after the post-credit scene with BD Wong the gender nondescriptive term of "that person" brings some more doubt in my mind as the what is really going on.

[Zoe]

Well you're not completley grasping at straws with the first question. There is an interview with Esmail where the interviewer asks him to respond to a Buzzfeed post where the writer felt Esmail whitewashed Elliot with the name. Esmail said there was a specific reason he named Elliot what he did. So it will be interesting to see if you're on to something with that. Good catch.

His original name was Elliot Rodgers (changed because of the murderer), so if there's a deeper meaning to his name it's likely on his first name, not last.

[Cardie]

His original name was Elliot Rodgers (changed because of the murderer), so if there's a deeper meaning to his name it's likely on his first name, not last.

 

Well, you can rearrange the letters in "Tyrell" to be EllytR.

[editorgrrl]

Elliot's not schizophrenic. The show has a psychologist as a consultant. And Sam Esmail chose morphine because he's used it before.

'MR. ROBOT' CREATOR EXPLAINS WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON IN ELLIOT'S MIND

http://www.popsci.com/mr-robot-creator-explains-whats-really-going-on-in-elliots-mind

Elliot’s break from reality, and creating this unreliable narrator and seeing visions, or hallucinations, is that a byproduct of his mental illness? Or his drug use? Or is it a combination of both? I think it would be a combination of both. That’s not very specific to dissociative identity disorder. That’s more paranoia, and another reason why people were misled to think Elliot was suffering from schizophrenia.… Elliot self-diagnoses himself with schizophrenia in the pilot, but I would not classify him as that.

[formerlyfreedom]

So, anyone else trying to figure out what happened there? You too? Oh, good. Glad I'm not alone.

 

Here's the spot to put together your season long theories/discussion/brain farts. Please note, this is about Season One; theories/discussion/brain farts on what you think might happen in Season Two? Those will go over in the Anticipation topic. If you do discuss your spec or thoughts on Season Two here briefly, it will be fine; if you have anything that is an actual spoiler for Season Two? PLEASE use Spoiler Tags.

 

Please note, however; if it happened in Season One? It does NOT need Spoiler tags.

[Avaleigh]

I'm going to consolidate a couple of the thoughts I made in other posts just to keep the Elliot = Tyrell stuff in one place. 

 

Thoughts from-- 

 

Episode one:

 

The main things I took away from the pilot were the first meeting between Elliot and Tyrell where Tyrell randomly chooses to approach Elliot and introduce himself. He mentions that he and Elliot started out in exactly the same place and confides to Elliot that 'his heart is still there'.

 

Shayla tells Elliot that she looked him up and saw that he isn't on FB or anything. Elliot is disturbed that Shayla is looking into him at all and I personally got the impression Elliot knows that there is a very specific reason that she isn't going to find anything about him.

 

Episode two:

 

The meeting with Elliot and the lawyers seems very much like a dream sequence. It's like it's how Tyrell wants to be but doesn't reflect the reality of what we see when we actually see him at work and dealing with various colleagues.
 

I speculated that Tyrell's offer to have Elliot "join him" over at E-corp was about wanting to find a way of making these personalities come together. Tyrell seems sad and disappointed that he wasn't able to sway Elliot but also seemed to expect it--IMO as though he already knew what Elliot was thinking. It's like they're in each other's heads. 

 

I think the strongest piece of evidence from the second episode is the way Elliot freaks out when he hacks into Tyrell. Elliot has no problems emotionally when it comes to hacking into anybody else but with Tyrell he's unable to deal. He even wonders to himself if Tyrell wants him to see this. He thinks to himself that something about Tyrell's life isn't right. He does his whole wipe routine after only getting the smallest glimpse into Tyrell's life. He also seems unnerved by the shot of Tyrell with Joanna. 

 

Episode three:

 

My first thoughts here are that Elliot's injuries don't seem serious enough for the kind of fall that he had. He's back in action very quickly considering how long of a drop it was and the fact that there were a bunch of sharp rocks rushing up to meet him. He basically got a freaking bump on the head.

 

Gideon comments on how Elliot has been missing a lot of work and then he comes in looking banged up. To me this is consistent with Elliot possibly putting in his time as Tyrell.

 

Elliot is very firm that he doesn't want Gideon asking about his personal life at all. He doesn't want people to know any details.

 

In Tyrell's conversation with Joanna before he goes to the club he has a line where he says "us is me". The idea is that he means himself and Joanna but I feel like there's a double meaning there.

 

Elliot is the one narrating as Tyrell picks up that guy at the club. It's like he has insight into what Tyrell's thinking here. I'm also not convinced that the timeline is the same as far as Gideon's dinner coinciding with Tyrell's time at the club. I would imagine the dinner was held a lot earlier than whatever time Tyrell ended up showing up at that club.

 

In the middle of Gideon's party, Elliot gets a text or maybe an email (who sent it?) and turns on the TV to see a story about Terry Colby. Elliot leaves the party shortly afterward. Plenty of time for him to to make it to Joanna and the club IMO.

 

During the last scene between Joanna and Tyrell, Joanna wants to know how work was and seems convinced that Tyrell isn't making enough progress. Next scene we have Elliot making progress with fsociety.

 

Episode 4:

 

Romero wants to know when Elliot and Tyrell had a chance to get chummy. Tyrell confides in Elliot even though they only just met and the others note how strange that is.

 

Shayla talks to Angela about how Elliot is very secretive and doesn't really tell her anything.

 

Elliot gets shot in his hallucination. It makes me think of how when he's having the hallucination where he falls into a bunch of rocks that he isn't injured in the way that you'd think he would be if that really did happen. 

 

There's an empty lot in the hallucination and Elliot talks to a little girl who tells them they aren't friends. The little girl wants to know who Elliot's monster is. She gives him a key and tells him that he dropped it. Elliot walks in the direction of the vacant lot and opens the door back into his apartment. The next shot is of Tyrell holding the key that Elliot just received from that little girl. (Maybe she's supposed to be a young Darlene? Maybe they aren't friends but siblings?) Tyrell is sitting in Elliot's apartment at his computer holding the key. It seems obvious when I look at it now but it's easy to forget about Tyrell being a presence in the scene because the main thing that stands out is the talking fish. The moment is played for laughs (at least it was for me) but now I almost feel like we're being knocked over the head with the idea that Tyrell is the key to all of this.

 

Now we get to the part of the dream/hallucination where Angela enters the picture. She's eating the fish that was his friend and she offers him a piece of it but he declines. A server gives Elliot a pie that has that same key in it and Angela suddenly things this means that Elliot wants to marry her. They kiss, everyone starts clapping, and Elliot looks happy.

 

Angela asks him if he's really going to change the world and says that she knows Eliot is afraid of his monster. She wonders if Elliot knows who his monster is. She also says that the key doesn't fit. Angela's voice then gets weird and she tells Elliot that he's NOT Elliot. When she goes to tell him who he is it suddenly cuts to black.

 

When Elliot wakes up and sees that he's alone, he freaks out and starts repeating that he's alone. I strongly got the impression that Romero and glasses guy are figments of his imagination. I don't think it's impossible that they're real but I think some part of Elliot was recognizing that he was hallucinating again and Mr. Robot came in to make him feel better about everything. Mr. Robot is like a security blanket for him when he's dealing with his issues of abandonment and loneliness.

 

So far I think Darlene and Trench are the only other ones from fsociety who are real.

 

Hopefully I'll get to the fifth episode tonight or tomorrow. I'm really having fun with this rewatch. 

Edited September 9, 2015 by Avaleigh

[wisteria]

For some silly reason I can't quite articulate, the idea of Tyrell=Elliot or vice-versa really bothers me. (And I'm not targeting you, Avaleigh, as I've seen lots of spec on this topic both here and elsewhere!) I've been 100% on board with all the twists and turns so far, but this one would feel like Esmail pushing things too far, especially after the Mr. Robot and Darlene reveals. Aside from the fact that other characters who know Tyrell don't recognize Elliot, it just seems like we're meant to take some aspects of the reality of the show's world at face value. Every hero -- even if Elliot definitely doesn't fit the hero or antihero mold -- needs a foil, and Tyrell has been set up as that. I definitely believe that Joanna is far more complicated than the show has even hinted at so far, but her scene with Elliot is another that I want to take at face value. Plus, Esmail has said that season one is meant to be the first act, setting the stage for everything to come. I think that all the pieces are in place now, and I don't think he's going to change the game in that particular fashion.

 

I can see Esmail setting up Tyrell as a psychological mirror of all of Elliot's issues, but I just have a gut feeling that them actually being the same person is NOT part of that mirroring. Maybe I'm wrong. Season two could open with another huge twist that blows everything we think we know out of the water. But this particular twist would just feel like overkill, and this show is much smarter than that.

[Zoe]

Esmail has gone on record saying he doesn't want everyone to second guess what they're seeing on screen:

 

http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/mr-robots-creator-did-everything-in-my-power-to-telegraph-the-big-twist/2

Now that we know what Mr. Robot is, how much are we meant to keep questioning the reality of things? We have other people referring to Evil Corp in scenes that Elliot isn't in. Where do you draw the line so the audience doesn't just question everything? Or should they be? Is that what you want?

Sam Esmail: No. It's not what I want. That could get really frustrating. I want us to be tethered. For me, it's about the authentic experience of what Elliot is going through. For example, when we make the reveal to Elliot that Mr. Robot doesn't exist, that hits home to him, and the goal was for that to hit home for the audience, and we accept it and believe it. When Darlene comes out and says she's his sister, that hits home to us, and if we go back and rewatch the episodes, hopefully that all makes sense. Those are things we can grab onto and believe. Yet there are still more questions. Hopefully, we've been very good about showing where those questions still linger. Not just the reality of things, but the loyalties of people, where people might go left instead of right. Those are things that we definitely hope to direct the audience in. And I've noticed that, too. For me, if I were an audience member, and I couldn't buy into anything or hold onto anything, and that would get extremely frustrating, and you wouldn't be able to connect or relate or engage with any of the characters if that were really indeed true. We definitely do not want that.

Edited September 9, 2015 by Zoe

[Avaleigh]

I have some more thoughts and speculation from my rewatch. I thought some of the strongest evidence in support of the idea of Elliot being Tyrell was in episodes 5 and 8. 

 

Episode 5:

 

I think Tyrell got into Steel Mountain and the Elliot part was a hallucination. I think Tyrell is imagining how Elliot would be able to come with him in this situation because for some reason he thinks he needs the personality of Elliot in order to pull this off. I think the other personalities are being thrown by Tyrell's presence. The personalities are in "Elliot's" head but Elliot is in Tyrell's head.

 

Elliot doesn't eat but Tyrell does. (Now I'm curious to know if we've seen Elliot eat food.) Tyrell signs for the food. Tyrell ends up being in the bathroom with Elliot. They go to the same places in the Steel Mountain building. Elliot wonders if he could be Tyrell's malware, another indication that he sees them being linked. 

 

Tyrell says that Elliot's father worked for Evil-corp before he died and Elliot doesn't contradict this.

 

Tyrell says he is joking when he tells Elliot that everyone is driven by human emotion except himself.

 

The explanation for the secretary not recognizing Elliot is that the scene only took place in Tyrell's mind.

 

We've seen that Elliot interacts with Darlene as Mr. Robot. I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that Tyrell interacts with Darlene as Elliot.

 

I'm also starting to think that one of the reasons Elliot forgot that Darlene is his sister is because Darlene isn't Elliot's sister. She's Tyrell's sister and when he gets completely lost in the personality he gets confused.

 

Shayla has the dog and it's been staying at her apartment. This is another indication that Elliot/Tyrell doesn't spend that much time there and likely spends more time at the place he shares with Joanna.

 

Episode 6:

 

Nobody in the restaurant reacts to Shayla being grabbed like that. Elliot looks around and people are just eating like it's any other day. I'm not sure that scene actually happened the way he imagined it.

 

Mr. Robot advises Elliot to let Shayla become a memory and tells Elliot not to help her.

 

Episode 7:

 

Gideon advises Elliot to "find somebody you can be your honest self with" and in the next scene Elliot is talking to Darlene as Mr. Robot.

 

I'm putting the following in parentheses because I want to disregard it for now but it did occur to me so I just want to put the possibility out there.

(I really, really, really hate to consider this but I wonder if it's possible that Tyrell killed Shayla and had Elliot envision the backstory of breaking that guy out of jail and everything. There's something about the scene that feels surreal and there's the creepy way the drug guy says that Shayla was with Elliot the whole time it's just that Elliot didn't realize. Elliot later blames himself for Shayla's death. He reduces what she is down to a single disc and admits that he's cold enough that he'll forget about her within the year.

 

When Elliot did his whole wipe routine and burned Shayla onto a disc it made me think of Dexter and his blood slides. I really hope that this part of it isn't true but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to it occurring to me.)

 

Tyrell is in a funk and loses his shit on those executives. Maybe he's upset about what happened with Shayla in addition to being annoyed by the CTO stuff and the cock jockey comment.

 

Elliot is MIA for a big chunk of the episode but Tyrell is around. After Tyrell kills Sharon, we finally return to Elliot and the scene is Elliot waiting outside of Krista's office before she's even arrived for the day for an unscheduled appointment. Elliot then makes his (incomplete) confession to Krista.

 

Episode 8:

 

Tyrell almost seems surprised when his assistant tells him that the police are there. It made me wonder if one of this other personalities killed Sharon.

 

Joanna specifically asks Tyrell not to unravel.

 

Elliot says "I wish I could be an observer like you so I could think more calmly." I think it's possible that this is a tactic he uses with his other personalities when things become overwhelming for him. 

 

Elliot has a few thoughts about his imaginary friend. If Elliot is acknowledging that he creates imaginary friends (we officially know of two), why would there necessarily be a cap on the number of them?

 

The whole thing with Gideon's phone reminds me of Tyrell getting that guy's phone.

 

Gideon calls Elliot out in this episode on his appearances and disappearances.

 

In the next scene with have Tyrell talking to Mr. Robot telling him that they're allies.

 

Tyrell goes home and starts downing a bottle of vodka. Tyrell starts babbling to Joanna about God and says that she pushed him to this point. The police show up and Joanna already seems to know that Tyrell is guilty.

 

Elliot kisses Darlene and he's forgotten who she is. He gets her identity right on the first try though. She's Darlene and she's his sister so why is he confused? My guess is that he got confused with his identity and not Darlene's.

 

Elliot starts to realize that he's crazy. Elliot asks "What else am I not remembering?" He looks into a mirror and says, "I avoid myself. Why? I'm afraid. Okay. Afraid of what? Finding too much. Too little. Nothing at all. Do I even exist? See me, Elliot Alderson. I am here. Now I'm gone." All of this is happening while he's seeing different faces flashing in front of the mirror as though they're all parts of him. He smashes the mirror because he doesn't want to see.

 

Elliot comes to the conclusion that he has to hack himself. He says "We have to hack me." He searches and searches and doesn't find anything. He has no identity and wonders if he's a ghost.

Edited September 10, 2015 by Avaleigh

[GaT]

Esmail has gone on record saying he doesn't want everyone to second guess what they're seeing on screen:

 

http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/mr-robots-creator-did-everything-in-my-power-to-telegraph-the-big-twist/2

 

For me, if I were an audience member, and I couldn't buy into anything or hold onto anything, and that would get extremely frustrating, and you wouldn't be able to connect or relate or engage with any of the characters if that were really indeed true. We definitely do not want that.

Sorry to break the news to you Esmail, but you've already hit this point.

[Chicago Redshirt]

I wanted to do my own rewatch focusing on Tyrell and his relationship with Elliot. I'm going to refer to the notion that Tyrell and Elliot are the same person as the Tyrelliot theory, and anything that is Just Elliot's Damn Imagination as JEDI moments.

 

Here are some of my thoughts during a rewatch. Feel free to chime in!

 

Episode 1:

 

We have the "first" meeting between Elliot and Tyrell during a meeting at Allsafe.

 

A number of Evil Corp executives come in as Elliot is musing about how Evil Evil Corp is and how he has to help them. Tyrell appears to be among them. Elliott VOs about how Terry Colby is no techie, but a moron because he still has a BlackBerry and looks like he doesn't hang out with computers. Tyrell then introduces himself, as the senior vice president for technology. Elliott introduces himself as "just a tech." Tyrell tells him to not be so humble and that "I started out exactly where you are. My heart is still there." The rest of the Evil Corp tour group has walked off. Tyrell proves himself to be the opposite of the arrogant moron that Colby is, babbling computer gibberish at Elliott and impressing him that he's on Linux. He goes on to say "I know exactly what you are thinking..." and says it'll be fun working with him. Tyrell also wishes Elliot "Bonsoir," even though it's the middle of the day, and joins the rest of the group.

We also have a second meeting. After the hack, there is a meeting at AllSafe with FBI agents and EvilCorp people, including Tyrell. Colby whispers to Tyrell, and Tyrell says "Yeah." Tyrell talks to Gideon, and then Gideon boots Angela. The next thing that happens is Angela gets kicked out. It's also worth notiing that Tyrell seems to notice Elliot's doing some sleight of hand with the discs.

 

Finally, we have a third meeting in which Elliot gets dragged from Times Square to meet about a dozen Evil Corp execs, including Tyrell who once again says, "Bonsoir, Elliot."

 

Pro-Tyrelliot elements: It takes some suspension of disbelief that Tyrell, if he were his own person, would fixate on Elliot out of all the nameless techs. Or that he would leave the rest of the group to do so. Or that the rest of the group doesn't notice Tyrell doing so. There's no apparent reaction from anyone from either Allsafe or Evil Corp to the back and forth. It also is perhaps a clue that Tyrell claims to know "exactly" what Elliot is thinking, and that he started out "exactly" where Elliot is. (Or it could just be a coincidence). Even on seeing the scene originally, it struck me as strange that Tyrell wished Elliot "Bonsoir," which is French for "Good night." One possible interpretation: He is telling Elliot to go to sleep. There is sort of a potential mirroring in that Elliot meets Mr. Robot for the "first" time as well in this episode, even though with the benefit of having viewed the entire season, we must accept that Elliot has been Mr. Robot for some time prior to the encounter depicted in the pilot and has gotten fsociety moving. It's also on retrospect that I notice that the names "Tyrell" and "Elliot" fit into each other nicely as "Tyrelliot" or "Elliotyrell." (I picked the former because it sounds better to me. Sue me. :) It also only makes  sense that the Evil Corp people could track Elliot down if he is in fact Tyrell. How would Evil Corp be able to find Elliot while he's randomly walking around Time Square? Why would they deploy four muscle guys to get him if the purpose is to recruit him? It makes more sense if Tyrelliot has told his own minions that he has some version of the psych issues  he as and that he occasionally needs to be retrieved.

 

Anti-Tyrelliot elements: It doesn't necessarily make the most sense that Tyrell could have risen to his Evil Corp rank while being Elliot at least some portion of the time. Presumably each of them is putting in at least 8 hour days, plus Elliot is spending time as a cybervigilante. I'm not sure what we are supposed to think about whether he is supposed to be in his Tyrell persona and attends the meeting or his Elliot persona. Also, Colby in a later scene acknowledges Elliot as "the one who stopped the hack." He also whispers to Tyrell while Elliot is there, and Tyrell tells Elliot to apparently boot Angela from the meeting. It seems like you have to cheat and make a lot of this JEDI moments for that to work.

 

Other noteworthy moments: As Gideon and Elliot are flying back after stopping the attack, Gideon confides that Evil Corp is thinking about leaving them, and says that although someone at Evil Corp likes them, Terry Colby isn't a fan. Who is it at Evil Corp likes them? Tyrell could be a good candidate. Why? Could it be because he's also Elliot?

Edited September 10, 2015 by Chicago Redshirt

[Avaleigh]

Another small thing I forgot to mention is this. We've seen how ultra competitive Tyrell is so does it seem likely that he would want to recruit a brilliant young hacker who could potentially take credit and attention away from him? 

[Chicago Redshirt]

Before I get into Episode 2, it's worth noting we're talking about Elliot Alderson and Tyrell Wellick. I may be overanalyzing this, but I don't think those names are accidental. As you may remember, one of the episodes has Shayla's creeper boss/boyfriend talk explicitly about the meaning of names. 

 

Tyrell apparently means "thunder ruler" and is derivative of Tyr, the Viking god of war. "Wellick" can be broken down into an oxymoron of sorts --well plus ick. 

 

Elliot means, according to my Googling, "God is on high," or "My God is Jehovah" or some such. "Alderson" could be meant as Alter-son. Because, of course, he has at least one alter personality, and at least as portrayed, one of the most important aspects to him is being the son of Mr. Robot, his chief/only alter.

[Avaleigh]

I was thinking Alderson was supposed to be 'older son' but I like the idea of 'alter son' better. 

[WentMissing]

Avaleigh, whether this Elliot = Tyrell business means anything, I appreciate the work you're putting in to make your case. You too, Chicago Redshirt and anyone else who’s weighed in in other threads - I can't wait to see if it means anything.

 

I wondered early on if it meant anything that Tyrell seemed to randomly stop to talk to Elliot at that first visit or if it was just an easy way to have the two characters meet in the story, obviously that can go either way. I also wondered about the "Bonsoir". I don't think we're necessarily supposed to think that Tyrell is stupid, so it must mean something that he used the wrong word and spoke French at all.

 

Before I get into Episode 2, it's worth noting we're talking about Elliot Alderson and Tyrell Wellick. I may be overanalyzing this, but I don't think those names are accidental. As you may remember, one of the episodes has Shayla's creeper boss/boyfriend talk explicitly about the meaning of names.

I mentioned in the Anticipation thread before this one was created, that I found your original post on the meaning of Elliot and that I saw on rewatch that Vera mentioned the importance of names. There is also an interview with Esmail where he specifically says he named Elliot what he did for a reason, so I don't think you are overanalyzing. I just hope we won't have to wait until a third or fourth season to get the answer to some of the questions we have.

[shapeshifter]

Elliot asks "What else am I not remembering?" He looks into a mirror and says, "I avoid myself. Why? I'm afraid. Okay. Afraid of what? Finding too much. Too little. Nothing at all. Do I even exist? See me, Elliot Alderson. I am here. Now I'm gone." All of this is happening while he's seeing different faces flashing in front of the mirror as though they're all parts of him. He smashes the mirror because he doesn't want to see.

Elliot comes to the conclusion that he has to hack himself. He says "We have to hack me." He searches and searches and doesn't find anything. He has no identity and wonders if he's a ghost.

I think you're right, sad as it is, because Elliot is so likeable and Tyrell is not. Still, maybe if he gets his dissasociated personalities together (sort of a pun), Elliot can be the one that we see. But right now, he does have the last name of "Alderson," which seems to be "alter son," and we know now that "Mr. Robot" is the father. Upthread or elsewhere (on an iPad so I can't easily see where the importance of names to Esmail was discussed) I mentioned "Elliot" meaning savior, so we have The Savior who is The Alter[nate] Son of Mr. Robot, who is The Father, whose life (as well as many others' lives) was sacrificed by Evil Corp. Oh. And "Corp" is like corpse, which The Body. Sorry to take your very cogent theory out on a limb like this, Avaleigh. My excuse is that my 91-year-old father was checked into a hospital last night. Anyway, now I'm wondering if Esmail has any Catholic or Evangelical Christian indoctrination in his past. --off to Google it, and, ironically, prepare to teach college students how to do research on religious culture in Chicago.

ETA: Love this:

I'm going to refer to the notion that Tyrell and Elliot are the same person as the Tyrelliot theory, and anything that is Just Elliot's Damn Imagination as JEDI moments.

Edited September 10, 2015 by shapeshifter

[Chicago Redshirt]

Avaleigh, whether this Elliot = Tyrell business means anything, I appreciate the work you're putting in to make your case. You too, Chicago Redshirt and anyone else who’s weighed in in other threads - I can't wait to see if it means anything.

 

I wondered early on if it meant anything that Tyrell seemed to randomly stop to talk to Elliot at that first visit or if it was just an easy way to have the two characters meet in the story, obviously that can go either way. I also wondered about the "Bonsoir". I don't think we're necessarily supposed to think that Tyrell is stupid, so it must mean something that he used the wrong word and spoke French at all.

 

Thanks.

 

As for "bonsoir," the notion that Tyrell is Swedish and multilingual means (to me, anyway) that he is smart enough to know that "bonsoir" is inappropriate. I am liking, if I do say so myself, the interpretation that it denotes Tyrell putting his Elliot-self to sleep. As I go through episodes, I'll be curious to see when else he says it.

 

Another small thing I forgot to mention is this. We've seen how ultra competitive Tyrell is so does it seem likely that he would want to recruit a brilliant young hacker who could potentially take credit and attention away from him? 

I would say that bringing in the guy who saved Evil Corp from the most vicious hack in its history would earn Tyrell props, and that it would secure him his "rightful" place as permanent CTO. I would also say that given Tyrell's often bizarre attempts to climb the corporate ladder, one can't expect that his moves would always be rational.

 

Onto Episode 2!

 

We continue with Tyrell offering Elliot the chance to join him, and they will rule the galaxy…sorry, wrong franchise. Seriously, Tyrell says that offering Elliot a job would be illegal because of a noncompete between Evil Corp and AllSafe so that is why he has surrounded himself with 11 of Evil Corp’s most annoying lawyers so he could do just that. Elliot asks for a chance to think about it. Tyrell then asks the lawyers to leave the room. After one starts to protest, they leave. Tyrell brags that he’s interim CTO, he will soon be permanent CTO and he should thank the hackers.  Tyrell then goes into Evil Corp soon bringing its security stuff in-house, dooming AllSafe (just as Gideon worried in the previous episode) “I want you to be where you belong. Here with me.” Elliot says “I think I’m happy where I am,” with music and his facial expression undermining that. Tyrell sort of nods and walks away, and says “Well, I thought I’d ask.” Elliot walks out with a confused look on his face.  He is dropped off by some Evil Corp minions. One of them says if he wants to get in touch with Mr. Wellick to call the number on a card. He jokes that Elliot can call him Mr. X, from Oliver Stone’s JFK. When Elliot doesn’t get it, he says Elliot can call him Mr. Sutherland and that they’re always close by.

Elliot then quickly hacks Tyrell, noting that his password is his wife’s maiden name (Olofsson, in case you were wondering) and Sweden’s independence date). Looking at some of the early stuff that comes up, Elliot sounds envious of his life, and then veers into paranoia about whether Tyrell knew Elliot was going to hack him and if Tyrell let him. That leads to Elliot frantically wiping his system.

 

There is also a point where Elliot worries about what Tyrell would think if he found out about Elliot’s involvement with fsociety.

 

Pro-Tyrelliot elements: The whole sequence with Tyrell  offering Elliot a job is surreal. So much about it does not make sense at face value. Even with Elliot’s recent heroics, he can’t be that valuable a prospect. Nor would Evil Corp need to go through the lengths to recruit him that they do. Having literally 11 presumably high-priced lawyers sit in just doesn’t make any sense from a money or time perspective. Nor does the notion that there is some sort of “non-compete” that would make it illegal for Evil Corp to try to poach Elliot. For those who might not know what a non-compete clause is, it’s a part of a contract that would prevent an employee from working for a competitor for a certain amount of time and in a certain geographic area.  So first of all, a non-compete clause wouldn’t make sense in this context. Evil Corp is not a competitor with AllSafe. It is one of AllSafe’s clients. Second, a noncompete clause would normally be something that an employee would sign as part of a contract with his company, not something companies would sign.  Elliot conceivably might have as part of his contract with AllSafe a clause that says he can’t work in cybersecurity elsewhere, but it seems unlikely. Another point I would raise is that a noncompete clause would probably be pretty easy for a single high-powered super annoying attorney to break, let alone nearly a dozen of them. The next point would be that given that Angela goes over to work at Evil Corp, seems to illustrate there isn’t a global non-compete such as this episode suggests exists.  Moreover, how would anyone try to recruit someone the way Elliot was recruited? We see that Tyrell is, at least with his wife’s help, a pretty good reader of people. He would have to know that it would be an overwhelming show of force rather than just calling Elliot up and arranging for a coffee or something like that. One would think that he’d do a better job on that. The notion that Tyrell argues that Elliot belongs "with me" is strangely personal if you are to accept the premise that they met for the first time just days ago. So long story short (too late!), it makes more sense if  this is some sort of mental tug of war between two parts of Tyrelliot rather than Tyrell making Elliot a heavy-handed job offer.

 

The whole thing with Mr. X/Mr. Sutherland is something I don't know what to make of it. I don't remember JFK at all, but looking up info about it on the interwebs shows that the character was helping the lead role in the movie sort through the conspiracy to kill JFK. He was also played by Donald Sutherland. I think one interpretation is that Mr. Robot's Mr. Sutherland is performing some sort of analogous role for Tyrelliot.

 

The hack of Tyrell also potentially supports Tyrelliot. That Tyrell, a non-moron who uses Linux and has his heart in being a cybertech, would have such a hackable  password, doesn't fit. Elliot's extreme reaction to the possibility that Tyrell was anticipating Elliot trying to hack him, trying to find information about him, matches up with the notion that Tyrell is a part of Elliot that he's in denial about.

Even as a fleeting thought, the notion of Elliot being concerned about what Tyrell would think about his involvement with fsociety as opposed to Evil Corp generally, or AllSafe, or Gideon or Angela, seems like that might be a clue as well. 

 

Finally, the notion that Tyrell was the prime beneficiary of fsociety's hack suggests to me that Tyrelliot engineered the hack that way on purpose.

 

Anti-Tyrelliot elements: You do have at least one of the annoying lawyers try to talk to Tyrell in Elliot's presence, albeit briefly. Contrast this with Mr. Robot/Elliot interactions. I do not recall a scene in which other characters acknowledge Mr. Robot and Elliot simultaneously. Although to be fair, it's possible that the writers may not have conceived of Tyrelliot at this point and that is just a slip.  A simpler explanation for the whole recruiting deal is that much of it is just a JEDI moment. I would also say that Tyrell's never bringing up the subject of getting Elliot to work at Evil Corp again suggests it didn't happen. Tyrell is not the sort of person to give up on something he wants after just one time.

[WentMissing]

I am liking, if I do say so myself, the interpretation that it denotes Tyrell putting his Elliot-self to sleep.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I like the interpretation too.

 

 

...he has surrounded himself with 11 of Evil Corp’s most annoying lawyers...Having literally 11 presumably high-priced lawyers sit in just doesn’t make any sense from a money or time perspective.

 

And with Tyrell at the table, that makes 12 people. I've never been the least bit religious or spent any time learning about religion but I do remembering hearing about the 12 Apostles. More than one person has noticed some religious aspect or another in the show and Tyrell made some comment about god being above them all when he was talking to his wife after something happened happened at Evil Corp. I do think that number is symbolic and the first google result for 12 Apostles leads me to this:

 

 

12 men from among his early followers to become his closest disciples...to fan the flames of the gospel that would spread across the face of the earth and continue to burn bright throughout the centuries to follow...men who helped ignite the light of truth that still dwells within our hearts today and calls us to come and follow Jesus Christ.

Were there all men at the table? When Elliot enters the room he would be facing his 12 Apostles.

 

[Avaleigh]

So Mr. Robot, Tyrell, and Elliot are the father, the son, and the holy spirit? Or is Tyrell the holy spirit? Or maybe this isn't supposed to be anything. I do like the idea that the names were chosen very deliberately. Joanna, Angela, and Gideon's names fit the religious theme too. 

[Avaleigh]

Thanks.

 

As for "bonsoir," the notion that Tyrell is Swedish and multilingual means (to me, anyway) that he is smart enough to know that "bonsoir" is inappropriate. I am liking, if I do say so myself, the interpretation that it denotes Tyrell putting his Elliot-self to sleep. As I go through episodes, I'll be curious to see when else he says it.

 

I would say that bringing in the guy who saved Evil Corp from the most vicious hack in its history would earn Tyrell props, and that it would secure him his "rightful" place as permanent CTO. I would also say that given Tyrell's often bizarre attempts to climb the corporate ladder, one can't expect that his moves would always be rational.

 

Onto Episode 2!

 

We continue with Tyrell offering Elliot the chance to join him, and they will rule the galaxy…sorry, wrong franchise. Seriously, Tyrell says that offering Elliot a job would be illegal because of a noncompete between Evil Corp and AllSafe so that is why he has surrounded himself with 11 of Evil Corp’s most annoying lawyers so he could do just that. Elliot asks for a chance to think about it. Tyrell then asks the lawyers to leave the room. After one starts to protest, they leave. Tyrell brags that he’s interim CTO, he will soon be permanent CTO and he should thank the hackers.  Tyrell then goes into Evil Corp soon bringing its security stuff in-house, dooming AllSafe (just as Gideon worried in the previous episode) “I want you to be where you belong. Here with me.” Elliot says “I think I’m happy where I am,” with music and his facial expression undermining that. Tyrell sort of nods and walks away, and says “Well, I thought I’d ask.” Elliot walks out with a confused look on his face.  He is dropped off by some Evil Corp minions. One of them says if he wants to get in touch with Mr. Wellick to call the number on a card. He jokes that Elliot can call him Mr. X, from Oliver Stone’s JFK. When Elliot doesn’t get it, he says Elliot can call him Mr. Sutherland and that they’re always close by.

Elliot then quickly hacks Tyrell, noting that his password is his wife’s maiden name (Olofsson, in case you were wondering) and Sweden’s independence date). Looking at some of the early stuff that comes up, Elliot sounds envious of his life, and then veers into paranoia about whether Tyrell knew Elliot was going to hack him and if Tyrell let him. That leads to Elliot frantically wiping his system.

 

There is also a point where Elliot worries about what Tyrell would think if he found out about Elliot’s involvement with fsociety.

 

Pro-Tyrelliot elements: The whole sequence with Tyrell  offering Elliot a job is surreal. So much about it does not make sense at face value. Even with Elliot’s recent heroics, he can’t be that valuable a prospect. Nor would Evil Corp need to go through the lengths to recruit him that they do. Having literally 11 presumably high-priced lawyers sit in just doesn’t make any sense from a money or time perspective. Nor does the notion that there is some sort of “non-compete” that would make it illegal for Evil Corp to try to poach Elliot. For those who might not know what a non-compete clause is, it’s a part of a contract that would prevent an employee from working for a competitor for a certain amount of time and in a certain geographic area.  So first of all, a non-compete clause wouldn’t make sense in this context. Evil Corp is not a competitor with AllSafe. It is one of AllSafe’s clients. Second, a noncompete clause would normally be something that an employee would sign as part of a contract with his company, not something companies would sign.  Elliot conceivably might have as part of his contract with AllSafe a clause that says he can’t work in cybersecurity elsewhere, but it seems unlikely. Another point I would raise is that a noncompete clause would probably be pretty easy for a single high-powered super annoying attorney to break, let alone nearly a dozen of them. The next point would be that given that Angela goes over to work at Evil Corp, seems to illustrate there isn’t a global non-compete such as this episode suggests exists.  Moreover, how would anyone try to recruit someone the way Elliot was recruited? We see that Tyrell is, at least with his wife’s help, a pretty good reader of people. He would have to know that it would be an overwhelming show of force rather than just calling Elliot up and arranging for a coffee or something like that. One would think that he’d do a better job on that. The notion that Tyrell argues that Elliot belongs "with me" is strangely personal if you are to accept the premise that they met for the first time just days ago. So long story short (too late!), it makes more sense if  this is some sort of mental tug of war between two parts of Tyrelliot rather than Tyrell making Elliot a heavy-handed job offer.

 

The whole thing with Mr. X/Mr. Sutherland is something I don't know what to make of it. I don't remember JFK at all, but looking up info about it on the interwebs shows that the character was helping the lead role in the movie sort through the conspiracy to kill JFK. He was also played by Donald Sutherland. I think one interpretation is that Mr. Robot's Mr. Sutherland is performing some sort of analogous role for Tyrelliot.

 

The hack of Tyrell also potentially supports Tyrelliot. That Tyrell, a non-moron who uses Linux and has his heart in being a cybertech, would have such a hackable  password, doesn't fit. Elliot's extreme reaction to the possibility that Tyrell was anticipating Elliot trying to hack him, trying to find information about him, matches up with the notion that Tyrell is a part of Elliot that he's in denial about.

Even as a fleeting thought, the notion of Elliot being concerned about what Tyrell would think about his involvement with fsociety as opposed to Evil Corp generally, or AllSafe, or Gideon or Angela, seems like that might be a clue as well. 

 

Finally, the notion that Tyrell was the prime beneficiary of fsociety's hack suggests to me that Tyrelliot engineered the hack that way on purpose.

 

Anti-Tyrelliot elements: You do have at least one of the annoying lawyers try to talk to Tyrell in Elliot's presence, albeit briefly. Contrast this with Mr. Robot/Elliot interactions. I do not recall a scene in which other characters acknowledge Mr. Robot and Elliot simultaneously. Although to be fair, it's possible that the writers may not have conceived of Tyrelliot at this point and that is just a slip.  A simpler explanation for the whole recruiting deal is that much of it is just a JEDI moment. I would also say that Tyrell's never bringing up the subject of getting Elliot to work at Evil Corp again suggests it didn't happen. Tyrell is not the sort of person to give up on something he wants after just one time.

I too like the idea of "bonsoir" being about putting one of Tyrell's personalities to sleep. I'm going to keep an eye out for this too because I've definitely been getting the impression that Tyrell does try to control the personalities and that it doesn't work for him to just have them randomly pop up out of nowhere. I think he constructs scenarios so that the appearance of certain hallucinations makes sense to him. It gets all messed up for him if it doesn't seem logical on some level. I strongly felt this in episode 5 especially but I think there are other examples. 

 

Re: Tyrell wanting to bring Elliot in--

 

I agree that a normal person would see the benefit to recruiting Elliot but Tyrell seems like a crazed ego maniac who is super impressed with himself. He tells Phillip that he's the youngest tech exec in the company and seems very proud of this. I can easily see him being threatened by somebody like Elliot even if he were the one responsible for bringing Elliot in. 

 

Re: episode 2

 

"I want you to be where you belong. Here with me." I definitely think that Tyrell was trying to unite the Elliot part of his personality and I suspect it's because he feels he needs Elliot to be better at his job not to mention his probably concerned about his state of mind and is trying to reel Elliot in before he gets too out of control. I think it's possible that Tyrell has been down this road before hence the reason why he/Elliot is seeing Krista. We still have no idea why Elliot is officially seeing Krista but my guess is that Tyrell did something to wind up there not Elliot. 

 

Elliot's freak out after hacking into Tyrell is some of the strongest evidence to me that they're the same person. Elliot looks into so many other people and finds all kinds of bad shit but it's only from seeing some happy and harmless info about Tyrell that he can't deal. He knows there's something big about this guy's life that he's totally missing and he's obviously scared to find out what it is. 

 

I totally agree about how Tyrell's phrasing of Elliot being with him seems strangely personal especially since they've supposedly only just met. Good point too about how Angela didn't seem to have the issue of the non-compete clause. 

 

Agreed about Tyrell being the one to benefit from the fsociety hack. 

Edited September 13, 2015 by Avaleigh

[Chicago Redshirt]

So Mr. Robot, Tyrell, and Elliot are the father, the son, and the holy spirit? Or is Tyrell the holy spirit? Or maybe this isn't supposed to be anything. I do like the idea that the names were chosen very deliberately. Joanna, Angela, and Gideon's names fit the religious theme too. 

I like the idea of a Trinity in theory, with Mr. Robot the father, Elliot the son, and Tyrell the Holy Spirit.

 

But one of the problems with that to me is that the Trinity is one, all working toward the same goal. And at least till the end of the season, it doesn't seem like they are. Mr. Robot cares about anarchy and creating the grounds for equality for all (at least theoretically), while having basically no attachments to any individual person or thing that I saw. Elliot cares deeply for Angela, and in his own way, for Krista and Shayla and Darlene. He also has some interest in being a global savior. Tyrell cares about basically four things as far as we've been shown: himself, Joanna and their child, and his position at Evil Corp. I'm not even sure he cares about Evil Corp itself, or the actual power and money he might be able to have.

 

What I was thinking was more along the lines of the id/ego/superego type division.

 

Mr. Robot is id -- just planning crazy shiznit including literally blowing up a pipeline and killing hundreds of people, seeking chaos, drinking delicious appletinis and so on.

 

Tyrell is superego -- doing what society expects of him by climbing the corporate ladder and providing for his wife and child.

 

Elliot, as the ego, is the balance between the two.

[rue721]

I can see Esmail setting up Tyrell as a psychological mirror of all of Elliot's issues, but I just have a gut feeling that them actually being the same person is NOT part of that mirroring. Maybe I'm wrong. Season two could open with another huge twist that blows everything we think we know out of the water. But this particular twist would just feel like overkill, and this show is much smarter than that.

 

I agree, I think they're supposed to be parallels or mirrors, not literally the same person. Tbh I don't think this show is very literal in general.

 

What I think is most interesting about Elliot's relationship with Tyrell and Joanna is that he finds them so opaque, and that he's so afraid that they can get into his head. That's the reverse of his relationship with pretty much everyone else, even himself.

 

He says he's good at reading people, and his confidence that he's a solid judge of character is pretty well supported imo. Yet he seems bewildered and lost when it comes to figuring out Tyrell or Joanna. When he tried to hack Tyrell, he couldn't figure out what he was seeing, whether it was a facade or real or what, and practically had a meltdown over it. When he ran into Joanna, he couldn't grok her, he couldn't figure out what she wanted him to say or what she thought of him, he literally couldn't understand some of what she was saying, and he finally got so spooked that he ran off.

 

Elliot also finds himself (as Elliot) so opaque that he's not even sure he exists, yet he's afraid of Tyrell being able to hack him and of Joanna being able to hear his thoughts. If Elliot can't even understand himself, why is he so terrified of Tyrell finding his "bug" (or his monster, or whatever) or Joanna being able to get into his head?

 

I wonder why Tyrell and Joanna are so strange and frightening to Elliot? They seem like overly intense social climbers to me, nothing special. But I think that Elliot as a character might see them as mirrors for himself. Maybe because they're always watching and judging and trying to get into other people's heads, like he is?

 

Or maybe because they don't have real, fundamental "selves"/souls for him to see or figure out, like he's afraid that he doesn't either? Maybe he can sense that there's no "there" there, so all he sees when he looks at them is his own self reflected back at him, and that freaks him out?

Edited September 10, 2015 by rue721

[fastiller]

During the season, I was curious about Malek's age and looked it up and saw that he's only 12 years younger than Slater and wondered how they could square that with them playing son/father.  Now that we know that Slater's Mr. Robot is actually in Eliot's head it's makes total sense.  They weren't trying to square the ages and the characters' relationships. I don't know how old Eliot was when his father died, but I'd wager it's around 12 years old, or near enough.

[Avaleigh]

Another small thing I wanted to add. 

 

The way Elliot hears other characters saying Evil-corp instead of E-corp. I'm pretty sure he even reads Evil-corp on television. Obviously no company is going to go by the name Evil-corp but we frequently hear characters saying it even under unlikely circumstances. 

 

I bring this up because it makes me think it's entirely possible that Tyrell/Elliot is choosing to hear Evil-corp as opposed E-corp. If he can choose to do something like this, is it really that much of a stretch that he could choose to hear the name Elliot as opposed to Tyrell? 

[Cardie]

is it really that much of a stretch that he could choose to hear the name Elliot as opposed to Tyrell?

 

I don't think that's even necessary. Whichever one is the alter would just go by the alter's name when interacting with those who did not know him in his other personae. We've yet to discover if anyone calls our protagonist Mr. Robot. We also can't be sure what Elliot looks like, since I don't believe we've ever seen a photo of him as an adult. Still, Malek's the star of the show and I would imagine our protagonist has his face. If Tyrell is an alter, then that face is how Elliot imagines him, just as he imagines Mr. Robot with the face of his father. What are we to make of the scene with Mr. R and Tyrell. Is it like the Elliot/Mr. R. and Elliot/Tyrell scenes but with the core personality asleep and the two alters interacting?

Edited September 10, 2015 by Cardie

[tvshowobsessed]

Hello Everyone, 

 

New here and I just wanted to sign up. I'm still getting used to the layout and finding everything, but I hope to get active shortly. I have been telling everyone I know to watch Mr. Robot!!! It is insane and has me thinking deeply about the show even long after it has been over. I can only say that about a number of shows and I do watch a lot of television. My thoughts about season one can be summed up like this: If the last episode of this show were to air and you find that it was really Elliot all alone in his room in a mental institution sitting and talking to himself while starring at the computer screen. One would breathe a sigh of relief. 

 

That being the case. I believe that there is something underlying about Mr. Robot that isn't talked about that much on the interwebs. The open view about sex or gender! Here is an interesting article from and interview with the amazing BD Wong, he plays the mysterious White Rose: http://www.vulture.com/2015/09/bd-wong-mr-robot-whiterose-playing-transgender.html, Now I may get into certifiably insane territory for suggesting that he could also be a figment of Elliot. This is again based off Mr. Robot's open exploration of sexuality Elliot's sexuality has not really been explored in the show as far as we know. All the more radical sex stuff being trans seems to fit right in, and all but I won't even think about that one. I don't know enough about him yet. If I am wrong, then let's just think for a moment about the character as a stand-alone for now... He is in prime position to rule the world post-zero day. He is in the shadows of both Evil Corp and the hacking groups. Like a good Drug Dealer he is cold, calculating, and plays both sides, but to what end? What does he want to do to Evil Corp?

 

Another question I have which relates to the possibility that Tyrell could be a real person. If he is then, is Joanna Wellick, Tyrell's wife, another part of Elliot? I'm not sure if it could be a blood relation or something imaginary like Mr. Robot but hear me out. As she was starring at him I got the feeling that she really, really really looks like Rami Malek. A couple of things that might make this theory true:

Elliot waking up in Tyrell's car reminds me of a "fun night out" with Tyrell so what did they do together exactly?
I am having fun with this theory by watching out for more eye-popping sexual psychosis: We already know Tyrell is at the very least bisexual. So if Joanna is just another form of Elliot and he is actually sleeping with Tyrell it would mean Tyrell is actually really gay and not just Bi.
The baby is tricky and if I am right it's even more-mind blowing craziness that part of a guy's (Elliot's) crazy thoughts is about having a baby! It could explain why she was hiding and clutching the baby from Elliot during that scene. It was just weird all around. 

 

Angela is being groomed as the future Queen of Evil Corp and that will be awesome! Now that Tyrell is gone. Who will take his place? Honestly I didn't like her character at first, and now that I know where she was heading. I am positive I was supposed to be feel that way about her. She was doing everything a preppy ivy league millennial woman should do. Had a jocky boyfriend, worked a job in her field with reasonable hours, visiting her dad on weekends, caring about her friend's weirdo brother etc... Yet she busts into Phillip Price's world and she becomes his protege ordering Prada shoes right after some guy shoots himself on national TV right in front of her! She may change Evil Corp for the better, but right now it looks like she is getting sucked into the power of corruption.

 

Was Ollie catfished by Cisco AKA Elliot? The confusing scenes with the the webcam and pictures on Ollie's computer which eventually ends up wrecking his relationship with Angela. Only makes sense in the underground world of so-callled e-whoring. E-Whoring is the practice of selling people fake photos and blackmailing them to do your bidding. It is a very common hacking exercise. This would explain the CD and why Ollie feels compelled to do Cisco's bidding. Note Elliot was in the hospital at the time for injuries that only last an episode!!!!   

Edited September 11, 2015 by tvshowobsessed

[tvshowobsessed]

I agree, I think they're supposed to be parallels or mirrors, not literally the same person. Tbh I don't think this show is very literal in general.

 

What I think is most interesting about Elliot's relationship with Tyrell and Joanna is that he finds them so opaque, and that he's so afraid that they can get into his head. That's the reverse of his relationship with pretty much everyone else, even himself.

 

He says he's good at reading people, and his confidence that he's a solid judge of character is pretty well supported imo. Yet he seems bewildered and lost when it comes to figuring out Tyrell or Joanna. When he tried to hack Tyrell, he couldn't figure out what he was seeing, whether it was a facade or real or what, and practically had a meltdown over it. When he ran into Joanna, he couldn't grok her, he couldn't figure out what she wanted him to say or what she thought of him, he literally couldn't understand some of what she was saying, and he finally got so spooked that he ran off.

 

Elliot also finds himself (as Elliot) so opaque that he's not even sure he exists, yet he's afraid of Tyrell being able to hack him and of Joanna being able to hear his thoughts. If Elliot can't even understand himself, why is he so terrified of Tyrell finding his "bug" (or his monster, or whatever) or Joanna being able to get into his head?

 

I wonder why Tyrell and Joanna are so strange and frightening to Elliot? They seem like overly intense social climbers to me, nothing special. But I think that Elliot as a character might see them as mirrors for himself. Maybe because they're always watching and judging and trying to get into other people's heads, like he is?

 

Or maybe because they don't have real, fundamental "selves"/souls for him to see or figure out, like he's afraid that he doesn't either? Maybe he can sense that there's no "there" there, so all he sees when he looks at them is his own self reflected back at him, and that freaks him out?

 

You might have something there. I went a little bit farther down the rabbit hole than you even!!! We'll see who's right. 

Edited September 11, 2015 by tvshowobsessed

[shapeshifter]

I bring this up because it makes me think it's entirely possible that Tyrell/Elliot is choosing to hear Evil-corp as opposed E-corp. If he can choose to do something like this, is it really that much of a stretch that he could choose to hear the name Elliot as opposed to Tyrell?

This post just made me notice that "Tyrell" is composed of the first parts of the names "Tyler" (as in Tyler Durden from Fight Club, which Esmail has openly paid tribute to in the show with the use of the song and which he acknowledged in the Grantland interview) and the first part of "Elliot." But what does that mean??!!??? Heh.

[Glade]

I don't buy that Elliot is actually Tyrell Wellick.  That is a huge leap beyond Elliot being Mr. Robot.  Tyrell leads a totally separate life with a full time job, a wife, and a home.  Tyrell's personal assistant in E10 does not recognize Elliot when he shows up at evilcorp asking for Tyrell, nor does Gideon ever seem to think 'gee, they look alike.'  So, they are different people IMO.  However, I'd be willing to believe that Tyrell, being a psychopath, is actually one of Elliot's abusers from his childhood/adolescence, and therefore he could exist as an alter in Elliot's mind in addition to being a separate, living person.  He could be manipulating Elliot in real time but also showing up in his mind when he isn't really there.

[Hecate7]

Anybody looked at the anagrams of the names Tyrell Wellick or Elliott Alderson?

[shapeshifter]

Anybody looked at the anagrams of the names Tyrell Wellick or Elliott Alderson?

No, but I just noticed the "Elli" in Wellick.

[Cardie]

^^Also the ell and the t in Tyrell.

[Hecate7]

Yep. Tyrelliott is a troubling possibility. If Elliott didn't recognize his own father, if he loses three days at a time, if he forgot he even had a sister, then what else is he forgetting? And what is he doing during all that lost time? I know part of the time he's going around being Mr. Robot, but what if he's also being Tyrell? The Shayla/Sharon thing really bothers me, too.

 

At his level of employ, Tyrell has plenty of time to wander around doing nothing. He can say he's in a meeting. People on his level are hardly ever at their desks, and most of them can get away with extraordinary levels of unavailability. Meanwhile people like Elliott are often allowed to telecommute, and they often have work that takes them onto a site, and so nobody would consider it odd for either one of them to be away from his desk or unreachable for a long time.

 

Oh, and I just realized that the personal assistant might never have seen Tyrell before. "He no longer works here." She's not HIS assistant, she's AN assistant, possibly brought in by Tyrell's replacement or temping until the replacement brings in his/her people.

Edited September 15, 2015 by Hecate7

[Cardie]

My gut instinct is that Esmail would not make his protagonist a murderer, even with all the excuses provided by his condition.

 

There's no doubt that Tyrell is Elliot's symbolic alter ego, someone with different goals and values who somehow ended up in the same alienated place. But I'd rather they be mirror images like Gideon and Price rather than two manifestations of the same actual person.

[shapeshifter]

Maybe Elliot is beginning to suspect/believe that he is Tyrell, and we are just seeing it through his eyes, but he isn't.

[Chicago Redshirt]

Onto Episode 3!

 

There aren't too many Tyrell/Elliot interactions in this one.

 

Tyrell begins by trying to psych himself up to make his pitch to become the permanent CTO. He uses the phrase "Don't be a cold robot" to admonish himself for being too formal. But the CEO blows him and their scheduled meeting off. Tyrell takes his frustrations out on some bum that he'd apparently beaten up before, chauffeured to the site by Mr. Sutherland and another minion. We meet Joanna, Tyrell's wife. They have a conversation in Swedish/Danish where he tells her that he's going to a club for work. She questions what he's up to. He says he's doing it for "us." She questions if he's really just doing it for himself. "Us is me," he replies. He goes to the aforementioned club, finds Anwar, the CEO's personal assistant, and seduces him so he can get his phone.

 

Elliot wakes up in the hospital. (Elliot's birthday is Sept. 17, 1986, according to his medical records. So happy day before his birthday! He's a Virgo for those of you believe in astrology.) He eventually goes to work, where Gideon has invited him and three others to dinner. He initially blows it off. Then he has a conversation with Mr. Robot where he gets essentially to think he can walk away from fsociety and live his own life. So he begins to think that he can lead a normal life that includes watching Marvel movies, hearting things on instagram and drinking Starbucks. He even starts being boyfriend-girlfriend with Shayla and brings her to the dinner. But things start to fall apart when the news breaks that the hack shows that Evil Corp knew about the leukemia risk.

 

Pro-Tyrelliot elements: There is an Elliot voice-over while Tyrell is picking up Anwar. Since the voice overs usually are reflections of what Elliot is doing and thinking and feeling, it seems that could lend support that it points to Elliot is experiencing what Tyrell is doing. I will have to check in future episodes if there are examples of Elliot voice-overs accompanying actions he himself isn't participating in or aware of.

 

Anti-Tyrelliot elements: Under conventional TV rules, the cuts between Tyrell's seduction of Anwar and Elliot's presence at the dinner party means the two events are happening more or less simultaneously. Tyrell cannot be pursuing and sleeping with Anwar at the same time Elliot is going to Gideon's if they are both the same person. 

[Hecate7]

^^Also the ell and the t in Tyrell.

Yep. He's just missing the o, and Mr. Robot has those.

[Glade]

Oh, and I just realized that the personal assistant might never have seen Tyrell before. "He no longer works here." She's not HIS assistant, she's AN assistant, possibly brought in by Tyrell's replacement or temping until the replacement brings in his/her people.

 

I'm pretty sure she was the one who Tyrell spoke to right after running into that guy in the hallway and getting coffee all over himself; he told her to cancel any/all meetings he had.

[Chicago Redshirt]

Episode 4

 

The episode I had the biggest mixed feelings about rewatching, because it's full of what are just JEDI moments and other moments, and it wasn't clear on first watch which necessarily was which.

 

It starts with Elliot with the rest of fsociety telling his plan: hack the thermostats at the Steel Mountain storage facility and then raise them enough to fry all Evil Corp's data. But there's a timetable because Evil Corp is about to back up its data and send it to 4 other similar facilities. Elliot muses aloud that this must be what Tyrell was talking about. Romero (the black fsociety hacker) asks about that, and then says, "Since when did you and the goddamn CTO of Evil Corp become, what, chums?" Elliot doesn't answer.

 

Elliot, Romero and the white guy fscoiety hacker all head to Steel Mountain to execute the plan. But along the way, Elliot goes into withdrawal. He has a series of hallucinations that include fsociety promising to restore memories, and Angela telling him that he was only born a month ago and that he's not Elliot. His hallucinations stop before she can finish telling him that he's "the ." Elliot gets a withdrawal cure, courtesy of Romero and is able to continue.

 

Note: Elliot's voice over here goes over both Darlene waking up with Trenton at fsociety, and Angela going into Allsafe in this episode. So I think it's fair to scratch the voice over from a previous ep as a pro-Tyrelliot element.

 

Pro-Tyrelliot elements: A lot depends on trying to decipher the various hallucinations that Elliot has. But when pseudo-Angela tries to tell him that Elliot was just born a month ago and he's really someone else, there are lots of potential meanings to it, including that he's really Tyrell and he created the "Elliot" persona just a month ago. The Romero line about Elliot and Tyrell being chums or something also could have some greater meaning. And when it comes to what Tyrell told him previously, at least as what we were shown, it didn't really seem to hint at anything like the duplicate backups. What Tyrell told Elliot -- at least as far as we were shown -- was in summary that Evil Corp was taking its security inhouse, and that when that happens, Allsafe was dead, so Elliot should come over to Evil Corp, where he belonged, with Tyrell. Could Elliot be confusing some other conversation in his head with Tyrell?

 

Anti-Tyrelliot elements: I didn't notice anything that would tend to actively disprove that Tyrell and Elliot are the same person, other than we would have to believe that Tyrell was unaccounted for for more than a day.

Edited September 17, 2015 by Chicago Redshirt

[Cardie]

Angela and then Darlene talk about knowing *Elliot* since they were all children; is he (and we) hearing "Elliot" when they are actually saying Tyrell, as we hear everyone say "Evil" Corp, even when Elliot isn't in the scene. Otherwise, even if Tyrell is an alter, I think we have to accept that the protagonist was born as Elliot Alderson. At most I'd go that he looks like Tyrell and doesn't realize it, just as he doesn't realize that Mr. Robot looks like his dead father. 

[Hecate7]

Or that sequence was telling him he created the Mr. Robot persona a month ago, and Tyrell has been going on a lot longer.

[Avaleigh]

Another small clue in favor of Tyrelliot--

 

When we meet Darlene at Elliot's she's showering in his apartment. We know that she's comfortable because she's his sister. When she decides to borrow clothes she ends up putting on a white collared shirt of "Elliot's". Of all the clothes that she borrows (we've seen how she dresses) she ends up grabbing a shirt that easily looks like something Tyrell would wear not Elliot. 

[Cosmosgravitation]

Elliott can't be Tyrell because Gideon met and interacted with both of them separately.  Gideon spoke with Tyrell alone at E-Corp in episode 8, he would definitely have recognized him as Elliott.

[Hecate7]

Did he say anything to him that showed he thinks they're two different people? Or could everything just as easily have been said to one as to the other?

[Cosmosgravitation]

Yes, he clearly treated Tyrell differently then Elliot.  Gideon met with Tyrell in Tyrell's office at E-corp and warned him about the server he suspected Elliott of tampering with, that conversation makes zero sense if Tyrell and Elliott are the same person.  Gideon would also have wondered why one of his employees was living a double life as the E-corp CTO.

Edited October 5, 2015 by Cosmosgravitation

[truthaboutluv]

Just did a binge-watch of this show and while I enjoyed it a lot, shows like this frustrates me particularly because of a lot of the comments in this thread. I feel like it basically becomes a game of "figure out what is real or not" and pretty much everything becomes a "well did that even happen or was that in the character's head?" I mean I've seen the theories that Elliot is even Darlene as well. So Darlene, Mr. Robot and Tyrell are all alternate personalities of his. And I can see the appeal of that kind of mind-fuck but personally, I cannot enjoy a show where I question every single thing.

 

And so, maybe I'm too simplistic in my view and I'll be proven wrong in Season 2 but for right now, I'm choosing to believe that Tyrell and Darlene are both real. Honestly, for me the only suggestion that Elliot might be Tyrell is that it would explain why we were even following his story. Because that more than anything confused the hell out of me. I mean everyone else was tied to Elliot in some way so it made sense but it just seemed like we were seeing this creepy guy with his creepy wife's story for no real reason. At first, when they first met, I thought he would be a nemesis to Elliot and company's plan to take down E-Corp but then he wasn't given the CTO position and then his story took a really weird and batshit crazy turn so I was even more confused. 

 

That said, I just feel like making Tyrell an alternate personality of Elliot's will require a little too much suspension of disbelief and manipulation that will just turn me off. Elliot as Mr. Robot was obvious in my opinion and always so. As others have noted, we saw Gideon talk to Tyrell alone, similarly Elliot was present in the meeting with Colby that Tyrell was also at, unless I'm mistaken. And I disagree that the scene with Joanna indicated she knew him. Joanna walks up to her house where Elliot is knocking and asks if she can help him. He says he's looking for Tyrell and she immediately seems guarded and like she's trying to pry into his soul because we know now that Tyrell has been missing for three days.

 

She says something in Danish that I read was apparently interpreted by Danish speaking viewers to be "if you did something to him I'll kill you". To me that all seems like the action of a woman who knows something is wrong with her husband and naturally suspects the stranger she's never met who just showed up to look for him. I also don't find the fact that Elliot couldn't find anything about himself when he tried to hack himself so strange because I would think it stranger if he did. What kind of hacker leaves an online footprint of themselves? Of course he's a ghost online.

 

That said, there were two specific things that bothered me with regards to Darlene being Elliot's sister. I know it was clearly indicated that F-Society was pretty much Elliot's brainchild but I guess I don't understand Darlene being so focused on this knowing her brother's mental state. Like it just seemed like something that would be a bad idea all around. But the bigger issue for me was when they went to Steel Mountain. Elliot was CLEARLY high as a kite and hitting bottom to the point that the other guy basically called it out and called him a junkie. And yet she just let her brother go off on this thing, knowing also that he was supposed to be on his meds, so his doing heroin was clearly not a good idea. Like I just didn't see concern you would have expected from a sister who again has seen this history with her brother, to the point that he even forgets who she is. 

Edited October 23, 2015 by truthaboutluv

[WentMissing]

At some point Angela asks Darlene why she's doing something because she and Elliot weren't even that close. Maybe Darlene is involved with Fsociety to get close with her brother and she wasn't really aware of how bad off he was.

[TyrelliotAlderson]

I just rewatched the entire season and I'm still undecided on if Elliot = Tyrell. In the first episode when Tyrell happens to walk up to Elliot and starts talking to him. And says exactly what Elliot was thinking about the Linux computer. This made me really think he was actually inside his head.

 

When Joanna told Tyrell "Don't unravel now" it could have multiple meanings. It's possible she said knowing he has psychotic/anger issues. But, it could also mean she knows he has split personalities and she doesn't want him to lose his Tyrell personality. The scene in the finale with Eliott and Joanna was beyond creepy. The way she paused and said his name "Ollie" at the end of the scene makes me truly believe she knows Elliot.

 

One of the episodes that really confused me was when Gideon went to Tyrell's office and talked to him about Elliot tampering with one of the servers. This really could disprove the Tyrelliot theory. Like others have said he would have recognized he was Elliot. But then he tells Tyrell about the honeypot and Tyrell was very interested about it. I just thought it was very strange that Elliot has the meeting with White Rose and "she" tells him that there's a honeypot on the infected server. Then right after that scene Elliot "Fast forwards" to exactly where he was at work before that entire scene sequence. Which makes me think it might have all happened in his head.

 

We know for a fact that Mr. Robot is a delusion that can take control of him and Elliot cannot remember what happens when he takes over. Elliot is struggling to remember who his sister is and can't even remember when Fsociety was created. It's also possible that Elliot is just one of our main character's split personalities. As a previous poster stated, when Elliot had that dream Angela told him that he was just born a month ago. He did however remember who Darlene was before she said it. So somewhere in his mind he has the ability to remember stuff that he has forgotten.

 

I am going to rewatch a few more episodes in hopes that I can uncover some more proof to my theories. I am convinced that Mr. Robot is not Elliot's only delusion.

 

 

 

 

[Mrkabro]

Anyone else see a major plot hole in the fact that the year is 2015 where everyone has cameras and snapchat and everything goes viral and not one person ever recorded Elliott talking to himself or attacking no one (slater)?? This sort of behavior would definitely entice some kid with a camera to catch him during an episode and post it online.