Pictured: (l-r) Christian Slater as Mr Robot, Rami Malek as Eliot Anderson. Image via Peter Kramer/USA Network
The much-anticipated second season of cybersecurity thriller Mr Robot has dropped online suddenly, unbeknownst to all in the middle of a live Q&A on Facebook, as part of an impressive marketing stunt.
If you’re a reader of Siliconrepublic.com and you haven’t gotten around to watching Mr Robot yet, you’d be strongly advised to check it out, given it’s one of the best representations of cybersecurity and hacking you’re likely to find on TV at the moment.
Just as a quick recap, the show follows security engineer Elliot Anderson, who struggles with a series of mental health issues and finds himself lured by an Anonymous-like hacker group known as F Society.
Most importantly, there are no cringeworthy scenes of Anderson typing randomly on a keyboard as a ‘hacking’ loading percentage bar appears, or a cut-scene that follows wires from the keyboard to the hacking target.
Now, in true hacking style, TechCrunch reports that during a Q&A with the show’s creators, the live feed was ‘hacked’ by F Society, revealing the first 40 minutes of the episode three days before it was scheduled to air.
"You hack people. I hack time."
Watch the season_2.0 premiere on Facebook until 10:20PM ET: https://t.co/lvU2FzR6dY pic.twitter.com/dsa0cSPomh
— Mr. Robot (@whoismrrobot) July 11, 2016
What goes up, must come down
After the interruption, the masked character familiar to followers of the show – who looks like a cross between the Guy Fawkes mask and the Monopoly guy – proclaimed: “Why waste more time on pointless speculation? You deserve something new, something unexpected, something you’ve never seen before”.
Starting with a link found on the TV show’s Twitter handle, timed releases also began appearing on Snapchat and YouTube.
Although, good luck trying to find the clip now, as the network that owns the rights to the show, USA, is doing its best to now delete the released footage from the internet before its big reveal, possibly as a test for dedicated fans, or paranoia as a network about leaked content.
Viewers in the US will be able to watch the first two episodes on the USA network on Wednesday night, 13 July.
