This Rami Malek Episode Was Filmed in Reverse — Viewers Didn’t Even See It Coming (Photo Credit – Hotstar)
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I remember watching the Mr. Robot season two finale back in 2016, and feeling like I’d just finished a prologue instead of a climax. After how episode 11 went, shot entirely in reverse, I expected the finale to be off the rails. That reverse episode wasn’t just a gimmick, man. It felt like we were unraveling Elliot’s mind in real-time, like Esmail was showing us how backward everything had become in his world. So yeah, going into episode 12, I thought it’d build on that madness. But what I got was something colder, slower, more surgical. It didn’t blow up. It simmered.
Season 2’s Slow-Burn Chaos & Joanna’s Stone-Cold Manipulation
I won’t lie: season one had me hooked because it felt like a complete ride. Tight arc. Big reveals. That clean sense of an ending. But season two was chaos in slow motion. It dragged in places, but once I got what Esmail was doing, I started seeing it differently. It was like Mad Men, where you think nothing’s happening, but the tension’s actually choking you.
Joanna messed with my head. The gifts, the mysterious calls, I was sure she had some wild plan up her sleeve. But it turned out she was just spiraling over Tyrell. Clinging to the hope that he was alive. And technically, she was right. But when the twist dropped, that it was Scott Knowles behind the calls, guilt-tripping himself into a breakdown, I was floored. And then Joanna did what she always does – used his pain against him. Pinned Sharon’s death on him. Stone-cold.
Darlene surviving that diner massacre was brutal enough, but when she got dragged into that FBI room, it all flipped. Santiago tried playing her like she was cracked. But she stayed solid. Then Dom walked in and dropped the bomb – this whole time, they’d been tracking society. Every face. Every thread. That wall of connections? That got to me. Made me realize how small Darlene really was in the big picture. And maybe she realized it, too.
Then Tyrell popped back into the frame like he hadn’t just disappeared for the whole season. Calm, creepy, almost robotic. I could tell Elliot didn’t know what to believe anymore – if Tyrell was real, if he was dreaming, if this was another hallucination cooked up by Mr. Robot. But nah, it was real. Tyrell had locked in Stage 2. The whole plan? Blow up the E Corp building holding all the paper backups. No more debt. No more undoing 5/9. Elliot tried to stop it, wrestled with Mr. Robot, begged Tyrell to stand down. But Tyrell said he loved him, and then shot him. Just like that. Mr. Robot knelt next to him like it was all going according to plan.
When it cut to black, I wasn’t mad. Just kind of stunned. No clean answers. No high. Just dread. After that reverse-shot mind trip in episode 11, I thought I understood the game. But Esmail wasn’t playing for applause, he was playing the long game. And I was all in, even if it left my brain twisted.
Mr. Robot, starring Rami Malek, is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video in India.
