Hello, Friends. Just because Mr Robot has ended, that doesn’t mean there ain’t questions that need answering… like an impossible freak accident, a magic bullet and an inexplicable shell casing.

Besides, you really think Mr Robot Hacks would abandon you now?

Hell no! We’re in this together, brothers and sisters… until the end!

The Season Finale raised a collective noun of new questions while feeding us just enough answer-crumbs to keep us licking our lips for more…  but a few things stood out as warranting further investigation and as you know already, thinking about Mr Robot just raises more questions, like one of those MC Esher drawings with the lizards eating each other’s tails.

So join us as we wade on into some byte-sized questions and hopefully tie it all up in a neat little bow with some satisfactory answers.

So just to recap, as this goes all the way back to the season one finale…

Remember Darlene took the gun from Xander Jones’ safe, that Wall Street looking mofo with the swanky downtown roof apartment in Season One?

She offered the gun to Elliot (he refused it) so she stashed it in the popcorn machine… and the last we saw was Elliot reaching for the gun.

How did Elliot even know the gun was in the popcorn?

Since Trenton and Mobley were the only ones in the room when Darlene hid the gun in the popcorn (they can be seen in the background) how on earth could Elliot know the gun was there?

In any other show, this would be known as an “Impossible” – you know, like a character seeing round a corner or hearing something from a mile away. But, since that pesky Mr Robot was always sniffing around and helping himself to two-decade-old popcorn, Mr Robot must have seen the gun hidden in the popcorn…

If Tyrell wasn’t shot, why was there a shell casing on the floor?

Remember the FBI found the shell casing on the floor?

The shell casing that Dom DiPierro showed Darlene…

And the shell casing Mr Robot told Elliot he (Elliot) shot and killed Tyrell Wellick at the arcade. While we didn’t necessarily believe him, it would make sense from Elliot’s point of view.

Until, that is, Tyrell showed up alive and well in the Season Finale, blowing Mr Robot’s lie outta the water and leaving the show with some explaining to do…

Is showrunner Sam Esmail gonna have to write himself out of this corner? Or is this “plot-hole” a quite deliberate attempt to throw us off the scent?

Speaking of plot-holes, here’s the opposite of one:

Was Romero really shot by a neighbor’s stray bullet?

When Dom DiPierro told Darlene that Romero was not killed by The Dark Army, but took a direct hit to the temple as a result of a “freak accident” from a neighbor’s stray bullet, that was (for me) almost the moment Mr Robot jumped the shark. Not in the usual, Fonzie-on-jetskis way; this just created a plot-hole where there was absolutely no need for one.

Virtually any other line of dialogue such as “We believe it was the same Dark Army assassin as killed your boyfriend” or “He may have been killed by drug dealers” or would have provided a more satisfactory answer.

This stray bullet idea is the opposite of a plot-hole as it wasn’t really a plot-hole until the script brought attention to it. It’s like digging another, really big bullshit plot-hole that stinks to high heaven in order to fill a smaller plot-hole of slightly shitty-smelling manure.

In fact, it’s so lazy, so ridiculous that it insults the audience’s intelligence. I believe in Esmail, we all do, therefore, I cannot bring myself to believe this stray bullet is the real explanation. There has to be more to this.

There had better be!

What if these events are linked?

So, what do we know? We can be certain that a gun must have been fired in order for the shell casing to have been ejected. Plus, we know that no-one was shot at the arcade because no blood or bullet hole was ever found by the Feds.

So, I conclude there are two, maybe three possible answers:

1. Elliot fired the gun at Tyrell and missed.

The bullet flew out of an open window, hitched a free ride on the Coney Island Cyclone rollercoaster, turned west across Brooklyn Bridge, ricocheted off a testicle-less Wall Street Bronze Bull, took a Wicked deflection on Broadway, cut through Central Park, changed trains in Jamaica, Queens, flew across the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, into Romero’s neighbor’s yard, into the chamber of Romero’s neighbor’s gun, down the barrel of Romero’s neighbor’s gun and into Romero’s head.

Two birds, one stone. Nope? Okay then… how about:

2. Mr Robot shot and killed Romero, then placed the shell at the arcade.

This would explain why no bullet was ever found at the arcade.

“But Mr Robot/Elliot was in jail when Romero was killed”, I hear ye cry…

Good point, but when Mobley went to Romero’s mom’s house, he said “What the fuck is that smell?” before discovering the body. This would indicate that Romero’s body could have been there for some time, perhaps even since the night of the hack – before Elliot was arrested.

Plus, Elliot (as Mr Robot) had already visited and threatened Romero so he knew where he lived.

Why would Mr Robot do this?

So he could convince Elliot he had killed Tyrell. He maybe knew Tyrell would show up but needed Elliot to believe he was dead so he could gain his trust and make him listen.

3. Tyrell killed Romero.

After what he did to Elliot in the Season Finale, we know the cold-blooded, baby-faced Swedish bastard has it in him to pull the trigger.

Either way, any one of these explanations are a hell of a lot more plausible than the neighbor’s stray bullet theory, but what do you think? Do you have a better explanation?

Sam Esmail sometimes assumes he’s outsmarted the audience when he hasn’t. We’re just hoping that Season Three re-writes this one piece of bullshit.

Stray bullet! Pffft!