That one scene from Mr. Robot nobody talks about

Mr. Robot is a show with lots of philosophy and uncomfortable truth bombs, often just shoved away in small tirades through Elliot’s monologues.

For those who aren’t up to speed, I’m about to spoil almost everything about the show (you should watch it first - it’s really good). Great. You have been warned.

Elliot is a vigilante hacker who creates a plan to take down the world’s biggest conglomerate: E-corp. He does it not only to change the world, but because he loves the thrill of control, of power. Throughout the show, we see him run not only from his physical demons - drug addictions, murderous Chinese hackers, FBI - but also his mental demons like his multiple personality disorder.

We see him rant about society, about how people are forced to work a job they hate every single day just to stay alive. He directs his anger towards controlling companies who commercialize peoples’ struggles, turning every movement into a movie or merchandise.

Those are the scenes everybody talks about, but my favorite was all the way in the last episode.

In Elliot’s mind (or in Whiterose’s vague machine, as he believes), there are two Elliots living in the same world - classic doppelganger problem. Elliot decides to figure out who he would’ve been if his life had been perfect. If he was never disadvantaged with sexual abuse, child abuse, and social anxiety, who would he have become?

The answer baffles Elliot. The ideal Elliot is the exact opposite of the nerdy, ruthless hacker we’ve come to love over the past 50+ episodes.

Idealliot (that’s what I’ll call him - corny, I know) is the CEO of Allsafe, is engaged to Angela, and has enough friends to fill a football stadium.

He’s the exact antithesis of Elliot. Idealliot posts pictures of his happiness on Instagram, plasters it for the world to see how happy and fulfilled he is. This time, Elliot becomes skeptical. He’s always tried to find the fatal flaw in others, the one sign that all was not lost. After all, if other people could be flawed, it was okay for him to be scarred as well. It’s the one thing he could trust, the one sign that his life wasn’t all messed up.

And this was always my favorite part about Elliot. I know it sounds cruel and douchey, but it would be not only unfair, but unjust for a person to have never experienced a negative emotion in their entire life. Imagine if such happiness existed in this world, and while other people enjoyed it, you could never have it?

Elliot calls us out for what we are. He’s busted pedophiles, gamblers, heavy drinkers, adulterists, criminals - all normal, happy people on the surface. His vigilante hacking was always just a device to show what lies beneath the surface of every person - secrets. Behind the Instagram photos we hide our insecurities, and behind wealth we hide our need for validation.

But Elliot can’t find Idealliot’s demons. Is it really possible for someone to be so happy, for someone to unironically post 8 pictures of their dog and friends every day? His beliefs almost crumbled … until he found something.

In probably the weirdest meta twist this season, Idealliot has drawn out the exact story and characters from Mr. Robot, which he should have no knowledge about. Elliot is Idealliot’s demon.

When they confront each other, Idealliot admits that while he loves his success, his friends, and his normal life, he often fantasizes about being Elliot, the competent hacker who leads an exciting - yet undeniably tragic - life.

Out of all the scenes in the show, this moment is the one that really spoke to me. Here you have a guy who has it all: the girl, the success, the family, the friends, the respect. He lives the perfect normal life and is the poster child of how to be an asset to society. All Elliot has ever wanted was to be like Idealliot.

But like they say, “the grass is greener on the other side.” Idealliot’s perfect routine leaves him bored, longing for something greater. You could have all the friends and happiness in the world, but you can never live an exciting life without danger. We read about people who do the impossible, who lead tragic yet epic lives, both fictional and non-fictional. We can have everything yet still feel like something is missing.

From Elliot’s point of view, his own life is unbearable. He’s gotten thousands of people killed, and has a debilitating mental condition that can never let him be a normal person. Yet most of us in the audience admire him. We might even come away from the show daydreaming of what it’s like to be a competent hacker, taking down conglomerates and giving back to the poor.

It’s just proof that no matter where we are in life, we’ll always want more. Elliot created a perfect mind palace where Idealliot could live out his ideal life, but even then, Idealliot felt something was missing. I could brute-force my way into telling you the moral of this scene, like how we’ll always be jealous of other people, and they’ll envy us too, but that takes away from the beautiful subtlety of this scene that I’m not sure I can explain yet.

It’s a scene that gives me hope. We all think sometimes, “if only I had this,” or “if only I were like this,” that we’d be happy, but if anything, the dual Elliot encounter clarifies how the true pinnacle of happiness doesn’t exist. Of course, Mr. Robot is only fiction, but we can look at reality to see how true this concept really is.

Businessman don’t stop after their first success. They keep going and going, wanting more and more dinero. At a certain point, it’s not about the money, greed, or the success. They just want to see how far they can go.

We chase the perfect significant other, the one person who’s our better half - until 20 years later, when you fall into a nasty fight, get a divorce, and everything falls apart. Hollywood blatantly lies to us when 90% of their movies always have a happy ending. Forgive me for my naivety, but I’m pretty sure most people have sad endings.

40,000 people were killed in the Turkey earthquake, thousands of people a year die from car accidents and multiply that death toll by a hundred to get the kill/death ratio of cancer. At least Mr. Robot keeps it real.

Nobody’s life is perfect, no matter how much we think it is. We already know social media is just a highlight reel of people’s lives, like picking out ripe fruits to place them on the countertop while shoving all the rotten apples in the catacombs of the refrigerator. It can be hard to see that sometimes. But we have to try anyway.