Who Is Mr. Robot’s Landlord? Recap of Season Four “408 Request Timeout”

Hello friend...

I have been writing about Mr. Robot for a very long time. You can read all my earlier writing about the show using this guide.

We have finally come down to this one final season, hopefully, we will get answers to many pressing questions (I put together this list of questions in advance of the final season)

You can also follow me on Reddit (I am ypsifactj48, I usually hang around r/Mr.Robot and the Black Mirror and Orange Is the New Black rooms.

If you have not watched every episode of Mr. Robot or read Red Wheelbarrow this could contain spoilers *Spoiler Alert*

I See You Butthead

I was so close to being 100% right, but sadly, only 50%

Remember back to my recap of 402 Payment Required:

“Elliot’s friend has never been us, it has been the child version of himself from his surreal dreams, the kid at the desk. There are MANY times where Elliot has said he will need or needs his friend to do things which he will not be able to do alone. The trick is that we see  Elliot with his father, just like we have seen Elliot with his friend (see the trip to the beach). The “trick” was assuming the friend was t ”US.” It was not us.

One final option, his third personality is Magda (his Mom).

I would put the odds:

Mohammed <Young Elliot> 40%

Magda 40%”

So, I was half right, the third alter was young Elliot (not Magda).

I was also right about something else: 

I mentioned that “the other one” was Tyrell and not an alter (which has been proven to be true). I mentioned this on Reddit:

"The Other One" is a classic Sam Esmaill misdirection. "The Other One" is not an alter, it is Tyrell (notice Magda wants young Elliot to get out of Tyrell's chair from the end of S1 E1”.

Of course, I mentioned that in an article going on and on about my Magda theory (and she still has to be an alter or have some reason to be there, since she was in the scene with young Elliot). So, yes, I am kind of an idiot too (they were both hiding in plain sight but I didn’t make the right choice).

It was not a mystery, but I picked wrong, young Elliot was literally sitting in Tyrell’s chair when Magda told him to move (because the chair belonged to someone else).

Okay, anyway, the third alter is Young Elliot. He was hiding in plain sight and the “other one” was most likely Tyrell (as Magda mentioned in the scene).

Elliot also hid a key when he was a kid, that key, which was kept in a Beavis and Butthead wallet, allowed young Elliot to explain to Older Elliot that he was not actually a passive victim and that he had always been fighting back to the best of his ability.

Fifteen Minutes

Dom figured out a way to beat Janice.

As near as I can piece it together, she knew Deegan McGuire from back in the day and made a deal with him to take out the Dark Army folks watching her family and also to take her family to a safe house.

Unfortunately, her plan came to fruition only after Janice stabbed her in the lung in order to pressure Darlene into telling the Dark Army where Elliot was. Darlene did flip on Elliot (but didn’t know where he was) but that wasn’t good enough for Janice. And this whole scene brutally explained how a ruthlessly efficient and driven “norma;” person like Janice would make this situation nearly impossible to escape from. Incredible work all around during these scenes between Darlene, Dom, and Janice,

I am not sure many people have played a better psychopath or gotten the difference between our perception of ourselves as a society and the reality of who we really mostly are. There is a particular moment when Janice laughs at Dom claiming no desire to be part of killing anyone. Janice mentions she works for the “United States government.” There is always a question of when direct agency begins and indirect agency ends in terms of ethical responsibility but since we are citizens in a democratic society and at some level, we are all complicit in the things our government does in our name.

But there is also something false about all of this, Dom is also heroic, she has always been working to do the right things, and she, like so many other people on this show keeps struggling to make up for her loneliness and pain by doing what she can to make the world a better place. Is it possible we are often both the hero and the villain no matter what we do because we are locked in unjust and often brutal systems where even our heroic actions create great pain and suffering? Even our justice is often corrupted with the injustice that surrounds us. Elliot wanted to liberate the world from debt and ended up hurting millions. Can we change injustice or are all the actions we take corrupted by our dirty hands?

As I mentioned many years ago, it is possible Sam is responding to the end of Fight Club where the towers come crashing down. Was Tyler Durden a hero? Is Dom? Is Elliot? Or is this even the right question, is heroism just a dodge, a set of fictions we engage in to justify making the world more comfortable to us?

Let’s suspend the speculation, Dom did get the best of Janice and that was unexpected and kind of awesome.

The Cradle Of Modern Civilization

Mr. Robot and Elliot finally understand and accept each other. 

As I said last week, Mr. Robot is Elliot’s idealized father.

As Elliot put it this week:

“You’re nothing like him that's why I created you you are the father I needed not the father I had”.

Unfortunately, Elliot is also admitting that he just doesn’t have it in him right now to go after the Dark Army and the Deus group (which is going to put quite a crimp in the ability for the series to come to a conclusion). 

But, it is totally understandable, it is amazing Elliot is anything but catatonic right now.

The scene between Mr. Robot and Elliot was pretty perfect. 

To be honest, I almost don’t care about how the rest of this ends or if Elliot stops the Dark Army in time. 

I am mostly just happy he has Krista again, has made peace with Mr. Robot, and can finally start to heal from all of his trauma.

In an odd way, I almost hope ‘whiterose’ can create a magical pathway back to Elliot’s dream of dinner with all the people who he cared about the most.

Okay, that’s all for this week.

Fun Society

Every week, I will write another recap until we finish this journey together.

If you have any interest in criminal justice reform I am also the host of the Decarceration Nation Podcast

If you like Orange Is the New Black, you can read my recaps of that series using this guide.

If you like  Black Mirror, you can read my recaps of that series using this guide.