We're Pretty Sure This Is What Mr. Robot's Complicated Ending Actually Means

Let's be honest: we're not 100 percent sure about how Elliot's story actually ends, because there's a lot of ambiguity. Here's what we (think we) know: the Elliot we know is only one part of the "real" Elliot, who is living with dissociative identity disorder. The Elliot we know is yet another personality created as a defense mechanism. An imagined version of his therapist Krista addresses vigilante-Elliot directly, calling him "a personality created to carry Elliot's rage, the vigilante hacker Elliot always imagined being, the one who sought vengeance, the personality that had gained so much control he forgot he was only just a personality: the mastermind. And now it's time for you to give that control back to the host: the real Elliot."

Elliot apparently wakes up in a hospital after the explosion of the Whiterose project, with his sister Darlene by his side. Inside his head, he literally watches all the personalities he's created on a movie screen, then opens his eyes as his sister greets him.

Darlene seems to play a key part in Elliot's "awakening" in the finale. She arrives at the hospital and, when Elliot confesses the truth about his identities, she admits that she knew all along that he wasn't the same person she'd grown up with, but she hadn't know how to handle the trauma and ran away instead.

Near the end, though, it's Darlene who reassures Elliot that all of this world is real, even if his identity is more complicated than real vs. not real: "I was there with you through all of it: fsociety, our hack on E Corp, Five/Nine, you going to prison, the cyber bombings, us robbing those evil motherfuckers after what they did to Angela. Angela, she's gone. Same with Romero, Trenton, Mobley, Shayla. Elliot, I wouldn't lie to you: this isn't in your head. This is real." Darlene even gets the last line of the series, walking into his room and repeating the show's first line: "Hello, Elliot."

Elliot's therapist helps him (and us) unpack the mystery of Elliot's identities and actions. An imaginary version of her "sits down" with Elliot inside his head and spells out what's been going on, explaining the formation of his different identities, stemming from his traumas. She even breaks the fourth wall to reveal that the audience, too, is part of Elliot's inner world, another "friend" he's created. Finally, she tells the vigilante/hacker Elliot that he needs to let the "real" Elliot take control again.

We don't get as much closure as we'd like on Whiterose's schemes. We learn that there was an explosion at the Washington Township power plant, which is what puts Elliot in the hospital during the finale, and Whiterose's machine didn't work. Whiterose and the Deus Group also got robbed of their immense wealth through the long-gestating bank hack planned; their money was redistributed courtesy of Darlene.