This article contains spoilers for Season One.

Season One of USA Network’s acclaimed hacker series Mr. Robot ended with a twist of sorts,as it became clear that a round table of elites, including Phillip Price, the CEO of E Corp, were seemingly on good terms with Whiterose (BD Wong), the occasionally transgender hacker affiliated with The Dark Army. Price tells Whiterose in the final moments of the series that they know who was responsible for the hack that created global chaos. This doesn’t bode well for Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), whose life we have already heard from the horse’s mouth is going to get a lot harder in Series Two.

As for what happens next, well, it is almost certain that Alderson is going to stay in the series for the long run in spite of what befalls him. Unlike shows such as The Wire, in which your favorite characters are wiped out every season, Mr. Robot needs its loadstone hacker. Peripheral players are almost certain to perish, adding to the misery and guilt of Alderson.

Series creator, Sam Esmail, and actors from the show recently sat down with journalists and guests to discuss the series at Comic Con in New York. When Esmail was asked if he could give us a clue about how things might pan-out and how Mr. Robot ended-up on USA Network, he seemed to glide past the former and discuss the latter. What is interesting, however, is that Esmail seems to have kept the plot of Series Two a secret from even the stars in the show. This is evident when Christian Slater, who plays Alderson’s imaginary father, talks about the next season.

“For us as much as anybody else it’s going to be interesting to see where Sam takes it and where it goes,” Slater said.

Esmail did give a little bit away, saying that Season Two will be somewhat of a “reboot,” adding, “But it’s very much a continuation of what happened in Season One and really a reaction and consequences and repercussions of what happened in Season One.”

Longevity

We also know that Mr. Robot has a lifespan, according to Esmail in an interview with Entertainment Weekly this week. The show will last about four or five years. “The problem is that our episodes are really long sometimes. I always have to recalibrate. It’s a hard thing because to figure out 40 more hours versus 30 more hours; it’s difficult. It could even be somewhere in between that,” said Esmail.

Esmail goes on to say that he didn’t want the show to peter-out, whereby after a certain amount of time the ratings drop because people get bored. He has focused on the ending and seems to have the four or five years of Mr. Robot already planned. He told EW, “I really wanted the narrative to have a purpose. We are heading toward that ending. Along the way, there are going to be other characters and storylines that collide and expand and take us into different paths, but all of this will be the building blocks to that initial ending.”

Rome burns and demons revisited

In the Hollywood Reporter, Esmail gave us another hint at what we can expect in Season Two when he discussed the end of Season One in which consumer-debt has been erased. “What are the economics of that?” Esmail said, “What would the world look like? Would there be a revolution? Would governments take over? Would businesses take over? To me, that canvas was something I was interested in exploring, so, for me, that’s what that last scene sets up. We’re about to watch Rome burn. That’s the world Elliot’s going to enter next season.”

He goes on to say that the show is concentrated more on how Alderson deals with what he’s done emotionally. First and foremost, says Esmail, the show is about Alderson’s internal conflicts. We will visit Alderson’s demons many more times in the next series and likely the following series after that.

This is evident when in an interview with Variety, Rami Malek said that things are going to get harder for him, so much so that Esmail had actually told him to say something if it all got too difficult for him. It’s likely one of those returning demons will be his addiction to morphine, given that Mr. Robot is very realistic and addicts usually relapse at least a couple of times. It’s even more likely that wiping consumer debt is going to have many unexpected consequences for Alderson that he must take on the chin. Whatever happens, from what we’ve heard, we can expect the upcoming series to be pretty dark, twisted, and hopefully at times just as difficult to understand or comprehend as Season One.

Mr. Robot Series Two should air in July 2016.

Photo credit: USA Network