Carly Chaikin as Darlene in Mr. Robot: The White Rose Episode

Carly Chaikin as Darlene: the White Rose episode, recapped

Since Shayla’s murder, Mr. Robot has seemed to follow an unspoken rule: at least one jaw-dropping moment a week. In the episode that followed, Tyrell murdered Sharon in a very unusual move, considering what FSociety had been up to. The eighth episode, “eps1.7_wh1ter0se.m4v”, written by Randolph Leon and aired on USA on August 12, 2015, raises the stakes again. Its reveal changes the game and answers some nagging questions about Mr. Robot himself.

The episode opens in a ballet class. Angela and Darlene are students there, and Angela is worried about Elliot. Darlene tries to reassure her. “He’s had a shitty month,” she says, and Angela replies, “Or last 20 years … take your pick.” Darlene notes that she and Angela always pay, mentally and emotionally, for Elliot’s issues, while Angela only has her commute to complain about. “The silver lining,” Darlene says, “is that you get to see moi.”

It is an unusual moment, and it foreshadows everything. The audience should already know the answer. Darlene, played by Carly Chaikin, is no longer confrontational, and she is not trying to manipulate Angela. Angela smiles and giggles with her like a long-time girlfriend. Something is not right here, and the show wants viewers to feel it before they can name it.

A second hint follows. Elliot stares at a painting of a farm with a figure leaning over a fence, looking down at the valley beyond. He says he hurt Krista, his psychiatrist, by revealing everything to her, and he is sorry but thinks it was necessary. “She’s like everyone else,” he says, “afraid to peek over their walls for fear of what they might see.” He then catalogs her life and files it in a disc binder, aptly labeled with the Talking Heads album Speaking in Tongues.

FSociety, the Dark Army and White Rose

Business is booming. FSociety’s big Evil Corp hack is back on. Mr. Robot has managed to get the band back together, and the Dark Army has left an incognito message for Darlene on the subway: White Rose is ready to meet. Elliot’s Raspberry Pi hack is still running, and he has been updating the backdoor program in Steel Mountain’s temperature core, even though he has not been an active member of the group.

Darlene is afraid. She has stolen a gun from Cisco, the man she met the previous week in the park who helped arrange the meeting, and she wants Elliot to bring it. She hugs him hard. Mr. Robot is not having it and tells Elliot that Darlene is a distraction.

White Rose, played by B.D. Wong, turns out to be an androgynous figure obsessed with time and little else. Elliot gets three minutes to convince them that the Evil Corp hack is still feasible. White Rose has lost faith in FSociety. The malware disc that Angela used to infect Allsafe was a test from the Dark Army, a way to learn whether anything at all could stop the axe headed for Evil Corp’s neck. Unfortunately for FSociety, the hack also exposed Gideon’s plan to catch the hackers. White Rose gives Elliot two days to remove the honeypot, or the Dark Army moves on for good.

Elliot and Darlene take down the honeypot

Gideon has set a trap by building a decoy server. If FSociety hacks this honeypot, the game is up for everyone, Tyrell Wellick included. Elliot and Darlene team up. Darlene hacks Allsafe’s meeting room screen with a video that sends everyone into the room to watch it, and Elliot uses the time to slip into Gideon’s office, get his email passcode and call off the trap. He barely succeeds, but he does.

The cost is high. Gideon now all but knows Elliot is behind the recent trouble, so Elliot declares his time at Allsafe finished. That also strains things with Angela. The person who bribed her with the infected disc has released private information anyway, including nude pictures of her. Elliot is angry, but Angela does not wallow. She pushes back, telling him he was never there for her, so there was nothing he could do about it.

Elliot tries to deflect, citing Shayla’s recent death. “It’s so strange,” Angela tells him. “I really miss ‘us’.” When he asks why that is strange, she answers, “Because I never thought I’d have to.” In voiceover Elliot says he has become the other side of the fence Angela does not want to look over. The trust is gone.

Tyrell, Joanna and the pickle fork

Elsewhere, Mr. Robot meets Tyrell Wellick, an unlikely pairing. Wellick calls himself a partner in Robot’s scheme to bring down Evil Corp and says he knows Robot’s dirty little secret. Robot dismisses it as petty, since what they are working toward will make it moot.

Wellick is slowly losing control. After the murder of Sharon, he walks into an Evil Corp office buzzing about it, cold but trembling, and blows up when a colleague spills coffee on him. Then Gideon is waiting in his office to reveal the honeypot. The camerawork on Wellick is close and personal for the whole episode. He seems to do things for the sake of doing them, and his only compass is his pregnant wife.

Joanna is the real go-getter. Tyrell goes to work, but she picks up the slack when he fails, and she does not seem to care what anyone thinks, which makes her dangerous. She practices BDSM, drinks wine at dinner parties and encourages Tyrell to sleep with anyone who helps them advance. At home she eats pickles from a jar with a fork and tells him that his behavior is not instilling confidence.

When the police arrive, Joanna invites them in and then works out that Tyrell killed Sharon, which means the trail of guilt will lead to their home. Her next move is a scream and a crash. Her water has broken, Tyrell tells the officers they must get her to a hospital, and he notices a bloody pickle fork on the kitchen counter. She evidently used it to induce labor. The question the scene leaves is how far Joanna will go to keep her hands near the levers of power, and whether her own husband is safe.

The reveal: Darlene is Elliot’s sister

After the honeypot is disabled and the Dark Army keeps its promise to start the final Evil Corp hack, Darlene is beside herself. She tells Elliot how important he is and that he is a great man. With the loss of Angela’s friendship and Shayla, Elliot kisses her, and the aftermath is not what he, or the audience, expected.

Darlene says Elliot has forgotten who she is again. He says he knows she is Darlene, and then slowly begins to remember: Darlene is his sister. The scene shows what Carly Chaikin has been doing with the role, as Darlene’s affection throughout the season takes on new meaning.

Back at his apartment, Elliot comes apart. He looks into a mirror and sees his reflection along with those of his friends and FSociety confidants. Then he sees Mr. Robot and gets an idea: hack himself. There is no data on him. He has no identity. In his disc binder he finds a blank disc, loads and decrypts it, and finds photos of Mr. Robot and of himself growing up alongside him. A family picture reveals that Mr. Robot is his father. A knock comes at the door, and Mr. Robot stands there, smiling, saying they need to talk.

Key reveals in “eps1.7_wh1ter0se.m4v”

• White Rose. B.D. Wong’s character is obsessed with time and gives Elliot three minutes and then two days.
• The test. Angela’s malware disc was a Dark Army trial of whether the Evil Corp hack could be stopped.
• The honeypot. Gideon’s decoy server nearly exposes FSociety and Tyrell before Elliot disables it.
• Joanna Wellick. She appears to use a pickle fork to induce labor just as the police close in.
• Darlene. She is Elliot’s sister.
• Mr. Robot. He is Elliot’s father.

Mr. Robot White Rose review: why the reveal works

This episode is brilliantly conceived on every level. It says something when a show reveals what nearly everyone suspected and still delivers a shock. The sister reveal is solid, since the black leotard Darlene wears at ballet while Angela wears white means so much more in retrospect. The idea that Mr. Robot is Elliot’s father is harder to reconcile yet, and the last two episodes of the season have a lot to explain.

It also helps that the episode puts Elliot and Wellick at opposite ends of the same collapse. Elliot comes apart quietly and fast, Wellick comes apart loudly and slowly, and somebody has to be left to pick up the pieces when Evil Corp goes down.

Beneath the plot, the episode toys with reality and with what counts as absolute truth. It is hard to know whether Mr. Robot is part of the ultimate problem or the solution, and whether Elliot is the heir to an empire. Few shows leave a question that open and still feel in control. As television, it is one of the best hours of the first season.

Sources

• Mr. Robot, Wikipedia — cast, season 1 episode list and air dates