Mr. Robot officially returns with its much-anticipated second season tonight in a two-episode premiere (although, hardcore fans of the show have likely already seen the first episode, which USA leaked online Sunday night), and we can’t wait to see what’s next for our favorite fsociety crew.
Last we saw them, Elliot (Rami Malek) and Darlene (Carly Chaikin) were dealing with the aftermath of putting their epic hack into effect. While Darlene was busy celebrating success by throwing a party at fsociety’s headquarters, Elliot grappled with his unstable mental state. With no memory of the past three days, he tried to piece things together and search for the seemingly-MIA Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallström), which brought him face-to-face with Tyrell’s wife, Joanna (Stephanie Corneliussen), for a tense conversation. Meanwhile, Angela (Portia Doubleday) had taken a new job with Evil Corp—the very company she’s been trying so desperately to take down—and realized that the world isn’t as black-and-white as she once thought it to be.
After witnessing the show’s key characters go through drastic changes in only 10 hour-long episodes, we can’t even begin to imagine what creator Sam Esmail has in store for us in Season 2. To get a sense of what’s to come, we asked Chaikin, Doubleday, and Corneliussen what to expect from their characters this season—here’s what they said.
Carly Chaikin
“Last year, we had to keep Darlene more on the sideline in order for the reveal to pay off—but now, who she is in regard to fsociety and the world is out there,” Chaikin told InStyle. “We get to dive into her and find out why she’s doing what she’s doing. This season picks up a few weeks after where we left off, and we’re dealing with the aftermath [of the hack] and the battle between right and wrong. When you do something that pretty much destroys the world, the only option you have is to stand behind what you’ve done—otherwise you’re just a monster. So Darlene is in this battle of needing to finish what they started. They all are.”
Portia Doubleday
“Angela is very unpredictable, which is why it’s so fun to play her,” Doubleday told InStyle. “There’s such a huge twist with this character that I never could have predicted—and I tried! I looked at Sam [Esmail] at the table read and said, ‘What?!’ We dig much deeper into who the women on the show are this season, as well as the consequences of the first season and how they’ve changed everyone."
"There’s something very obsessive about Angela now—she is obsessed with her need for control and need to control her emotions. It can make you robotic, which is a very dangerous mindset. It can get you more power and respect, but what are the consequences? Even though she wants to lose her sense of morality, it seems that she can’t," Doubleday said. "Angela is in a constant push-pull. Everyone thought she was evil because of the Prada shoe scene in the first season, [but] if you take what has happened to her previously into account, it’s justified. Change is a slow process. It’s a lot darker this season. You start to really learn how troubled these people are and why, and the audience starts to understand them in a completely different way.”
Stephanie Corneliussen
“Joanna is in for a ride this season,” Corneliussen told InStyle. “I think people who were fans of hers from Season 1 are going to be very happy to get a much stronger, much better, much clearer inside look into what kind of person she actually is and where she comes from. There were a lot of loose ends in Season 1, and they’re all going to tie together in Season 2. Many of those unanswered questions are going to be answered for them in this season. However, it’s going to open up even more new questions.”
—With reporting by Christina Shanahan
