Whatever Happened To ‘Mr. Robot’?

When Sam Esmail’s Mr. Robot premiered on the USA Network in 2015, the effect was transformative. Seeming to “just” be an eminently bingeable hacker thriller with an elevated, Stanley Kubrick-esque look, the series debuted on digital platforms first — a rarity for the time — and became a must-see series. Adding to the hype, the first season ended in an enormous twist: Mr. Robot (Christian Slater), the mysterious hacker teaming up with Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), was actually another personality existing entirely in Elliot’s head, part of his Dissociative Identity Disorder… And based on Elliot’s own, dead father.

Multiple awards wins followed including Golden Globes for the series and Slater, and an Emmy for Malek a year later. Yet when the second season premiered, the audience was far less than the Season 1 finale, and continued to drop off precipitously over the years. The second to last broadcast of the show (December 15’s “eXit”) got approximately 440,000 viewers to the initial broadcast, around a quarter of the viewers who tuned in for the series premiere.

So… Whatever happened to Mr. Robot? Why did a once strong show that ended last night (December 22) with a perfect finale that was satisfying on a plot and emotional level fizzle when it came to viewers? Obviously this is far from the only metric; Mr. Robot still has an extremely loyal fanbase, and critics have certainly stuck with the series. But understanding what happened to Mr. Robot is to examine a microcosm of what is still happening to TV as a whole.

In 2015, the world of entertainment was a very different place. Netflix had just started launching original series in 2013, with only House of Cards and Orange is the New Black causing any sort of cultural impact (sorry, Hemlock Grove). Stranger Things was still a year down the road, and overall the war still seemed to be between broadcast and cable. Or more specifically, between broadcast and premium cable networks like HBO, known for their high quality and huge budgets. In the middle were basic cable networks, and all of them were scrambling to catch up.

The model basic cable network, and the only one that had really broken through, was AMC. Not only had the former American Movie Classics launched critical hits Mad Men and Breaking Bad, but they also had a show so big, it was regularly beating broadcast ratings in The Walking Dead. Every basic cable network wanted to be AMC, but even AMC was having trouble replicating the formula with relative fizzles like Hell on Wheels (which churned along thanks to AMC’s still strong Western movie block), Rubicon, and frequent internet punching bag, Low Winter Sun.

Enter USA Network, which had made a name with breezy, easy to watch shows like Psych, Royal Pains, and Burn Notice. The so called “blue sky” shows, called that because they were calm and pleasant, defined USA — but by 2015 were either ended, or about to wrap up their run, like Royal Pains. The network semi-quietly decided to rebrand as a place for bolder, darker stories, starting with Mr. Robot in 2015, and Colony in 2016.

Mr. Robot, as mentioned earlier, was an almost immediate hit for the network, and seemed to be the clear way forward. Only problem, they didn’t have the other programming to back it up. Though alien invasion drama Colony debuted strongly six months after Mr. Robot, it wasn’t held quite as in high critical regard and certainly didn’t drive online conversation the same way the intricately constructed Mr. Robot had from its first airing. This was followed by the sci-fi dreamscape of Falling Water later that year, which tanked in the ratings and only ran for two seasons. Unlike AMC, which always had The Walking Dead to fall back on, USA’s new strategy seemed to be less “characters welcome,” and more “unwelcome characters.”

USA has since bounced back, thanks to a consistently strong performance by Queen of the South, which launched in 2016; The Sinner, which is about to enter its third season; and though the second season has lost luster in the ratings, the TV adaptation of The Purge debuted well in 2018. Despite the sci-fi trappings of The Purge, all three of these shows are easier to watch and less mind-bending than the challenging Mr. Robot. That’s not a knock, by the way, but its clear that USA pivoted away from the science fiction trappings of their “we the bold” era, and have leaned more into a darker version of “blue skies.” Call it “grey skies,” if you will.

In the midst of this, Mr. Robot, which was supposed to define the network’s identity going forward, started to seem like a lame duck. Without additional programming surrounding the series, it became less of a destination, and more something to check out later, if at all.

Compounding the issue, USA Network decided to stream all the episodes of the show on their own website, and sold the streaming rights to the show to Prime Video… Not Netflix. The strategy behind the scenes seemed to be to drive traffic to the USA Network website; but few, if any networks have seen success in that arena. Same with Prime Video, which is fine as a platform but hasn’t proven to drive viewers back to broadcast the way Netflix does, or at least used to do. In 2017, The CW put their series Riverdale on Netflix, and after fans had finished bingeing the series over the summer, watched the premiere in droves: it nearly doubled the audience when it returned for Season 2. Other series have seen the same “Netflix bump”; though in the past year that too has diminished as viewers have begun waiting to binge until a broadcast series hits Netflix in full.

This also wasn’t help by two internal factors from the show. The first was that the ending to Season 1 was too satisfying. Despite a post-credits sequence that implied a wider ranging conspiracy and a surprising connection between two characters, the story from the first season seemed to be wrapped up. We knew who Mr. Robot was, Elliot had beaten E Corp, and the world was changed. The end, basically, and no need to watch anymore.

The other thing that hurt the second season is that it wasn’t quite the same level of quality. The acting was there, the writing was solid, and Sam Esmail — who took over full-time directing duties — was phenomenal as always. But where the story was clear for Season 1, Season 2 headed in a number of different directions, to the point that it felt like the staff didn’t know where the show was going. The funny part about that, as was made clear from the series finale, Season 2 was actually a crucial part of the show’s journey. But at the time, puzzles compounded on puzzles; and without spending significant time on Reddit threads or AR initiatives, still-framing every moment of the show, watching Mr. Robot started to feel like a confusing chore; instead of the romp with deeper ramifications we had seen in Season 1.

Externally, by the time Season 2 debuted a year later, midway through 2016, there were more viewing options to check out, and frankly, the world was a different place. In 2015, society seemed… Pretty good? And watching an intense hacker drama that seemed to be based in part on the Occupy movement, for a lot of the viewing audience felt like a fun fantasy; dressing up in a black hoodie to play at being an anarchist, when actually anarchy was no longer necessary.

Mid-2016 we were deep in the throes of a transformative Presidential election. Donald Trump had become the presumptive Republican nominee in May, and mere days after the Season 2 premiere of Mr. Robot, the Republican National Convention was held, sealing the deal. That fantasy of the 99% railing against the 1% became starkly real, and Elliot Alderson’s reality a lot less fun of a place to hang out in.

Season 3 significantly rebounded in quality and coherence, but by then the damage had already been done. Debuting over a year after the end of Season 2, Season 3 lost nearly half its broadcast viewing audience, and more importantly to advertisers, had less than half the viewers in the crucial 18-49 demographic versus Season 1. The Christmastime-set Season 4, the show’s last, has perhaps been the best slate of episodes yet; but debuting nearly two years after Season 3 wrapped, most of the viewing audience other than the die-hard faithfuls have moved on.

The ratings only tell half the story. While television has become a much more crowded space over the past five years, Mr. Robot has held on to its acclaim on aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. And though it hasn’t won any awards since 2016, it’s been nominated dozens of times since, including a 2020 WGA Award nomination for the incredible “407 Proxy Authentication Required,” and a 2020 Golden Globe nomination for Rami Malek. Whether they’ll win (and of note, it’s still viable for next year’s Emmys) is anyone’s guess, but the kudos are still rolling in. Plus, it’s clear that it’s a show that viewers and critics will revisit for years to come, particularly in light of the eminently satisfying finale. Viewers hesitant to follow Esmail’s winding narrative path through Season 2 may find solace in knowing it comes to a solid end, versus the initial impulse to not stick around to see Mr. Robot fizzle like other mystery shows of its ilk.

That, more than anything, is the show’s legacy. As a snapshot of peak television, it’s a bell curve in and of itself, showing how networks can rise and fall on the back of one show; or how last year’s hotness can cool off so quickly, whether through its own fault or not. You only have to look at the near daily “best show you’re not watching” articles and round-ups to see how even the highest quality series get left behind in the glut of excellent television on right now. There’s simply too much to watch, and not enough time (or audience) to watch these shows. That’s why Disney Plus, HBO Max, Peacock and the rest are staking their reps on a “throw spaghetti on the wall method.” They can’t launch with one Mr. Robot, they have to launch with dozens and hope that at least one or two of them work.

But what will last past all of this is Esmail’s clarity of vision, and the pristine performances by the whole cast, from Slater and Malek, to Carly Chaikin and Grace Gummer, Portia Doubleday and Martin Wallström, and everyone in between. It gave us villains unlike anything we’ve ever seen: BD Wong’s serpentine and tragic Whiterose; Elliot Velar’s monologuing Fernando Vera; and Michael Cristofer’s blustering Phillip Price. It showed us new worlds and hilarious visions, like a sitcom inspired episode featuring puppet TV star ALF. But the message it ultimately ended on was that we are more than Netflix algorithms, or viewer data. Humanity is many things, but we are not controlled or dictated by robots. Far too few people stuck around to discover than extremely humanistic message. But those who did were well rewarded… And regardless of where the show lives on in streaming, chances are it will continue to be discovered, and inspire people to connect with others in a positive way, lifting each other up; to hope, and dream bigger and better. Blue skies, indeed.

Where to watch Mr. Robot