Keep in mind that this is completely my personal opinion. Mr. Robot is a series that has "kind of" held my attention but also one that I feel as though was dragged on too long and the latter seasons are a bit boring as it seems there really isn't much story left to tell when things get bogged down in backstory rather than progressing towards the final objective.
Although it won't be intentional there are likely spoilers ahead
In season one and to a lessor degree in season two, there is a real ambiance of mystery as it is quite difficult for anyone to really predict where the story is going. The big reveal at the end of season one as far as Christian Slater's character is concerned was a really clever move on the part of the writers and director, and even though it was strange and kind of difficult to believe, it had a sort of 6th Sense way about it in that up until that point we had never really noticed that lack of interaction that Mr. Robot actually has with any characters other than Elliot
I feel as though this was artfully done and at least for me, I had no idea that Mr. Robot was merely an alternate personality for Elliot until it was seriously put right in front of us and was obvious. I personally love it when directors are able to trick me and then a shocking moment happens to reveal something that was right in front of me but I never noticed just like with Bruce Willis' character in 6th Sense.
However, I really feel as though as the seasons carried on that this series went down a bad path of stretching the series out too much just like so many others have done in the past. In order to keep things fresh new characters have to be introduced and some of them were good, others were not so good. I think the worst character that we are introduced to in the series final season would be the Dominican drug-dealing gangster, Fernando Vera.
While he is considered a "main" character he isn't in much of the show until much later on. Vera is merely a drug dealer that gets Elliot and others certain prescriptions that first help Elliot work and later the drugs are used to keep Mr. Robot (Slater) out of Elliot's head. I don't know what inspired the writers to include him as a major character in season 4, but I feel it was a bad choice.
He and his two gangster friends come to the forefront in the latter episodes of season 4 and their entire presence is seriously unnecessary. We spend 1.5 episodes using them merely to bring out Elliot's difficult past with his father and I really think there could have been a lot of ways that this could have been handled better.
For one thing, I don't think that Elliot Villar's portrayal of Fernando Vera is a very realistic impersonation of a high-level gangster or even any living human being. His street-talk method of doing basically anything is over the top and while I have never been a gangster, I have a difficult time believing that anyone would follow him or look up to him as a leader yet that is exactly how he is presented in season 4.
I actually left the room during episode 7 or 8 I think it was where Fernando goes on this excessively long story about a character he calls "little bitch" and how this person had gotten fed up with bullies at a young age. I guess this is supposed to be a retelling of his own past but it also doesn't have much bearing on the actual main story and therefore it gets lumped into the "filler" section in my mind. Honestly, there are a number of ways that the true meaning behind the real "Mr. Robot" could have been brought to the forefront without involving this guy at all.
I don't want to call him a horrible actor, but I believe he was out of his depth in this role. I had never heard of Elliot Villar prior to this but as it turns out he is a stage actor and I guess that kind of makes sense about how his performance is so exaugurated because that is quite common with stage actors that try to get involved in TV and films.
I don't think I am alone in this feeling that unnecessary characters were introduced into the series in order to stretch it out over many seasons and if you look at the dramatic drop in viewership I think we can successfully discern that a lot of other people lost interest in the series altogether over time. This happened at the same time that Rami Malek's career was seriously taking off too. I guess he didn't have enough star-power to carry the show.
There was a bullshit explanation as to why they were wrapping the series up permanently after the 4th season but the real reason is probably because just over 400,000 viewers isn't enough to justify the existence of a large-scale production.
There are some good characters, even great characters that were introduced to keep the series going but the sad reality of this once great series is that they did the same thing that so many other series do: They kept it going too long and because of this the viewers wandered away. Why so many series do this remains a mystery to me because they don't benefit from it either. I think the producers should have seen the writing on the wall in season 2 when their viewership was nearly halved.
In a way I kind of feel bad for Elliot Villar because he might have thought this was his big break but in the end his portrayal of Fernando has more than likely hurt his career. Back to the stage with you I guess!
On a side note I can't in good faith recommend this series for anyone. It's entirely too long and if they had just kept it at 2 seasons the way it was looking like they might (and should have) it might have had a decent legacy. Greed has once again ruined a pretty fantastic story.
