Remember the pilot where everyone on the show congratulated Elliot for "saving the company" (Allsafe) and "stopping the [first] hack" (ecorp)? Elliot was heralded as being a savior for stopping the big hack, when in fact he was starting another hack that would later end Allsafe and severely damage ecorp. Elliot's trip to the Dulles server farm for the big hack was the cover he used, and that is where he actually planted the .dat file, right in front of us, under our noses, that would later be exploited.
https://www.usanetwork.com/mrrobot/timeline-gallery/mr-robot-season-1-easter-eggs
This kind of deceptive loop of Elliot taking action to "save" something, and TELLING US he is saving something, while he is doing something entirely different is a pattern for him, and is augmented by the fact that Elliot TELLS US he hacks everyone and lies to us, so we do know that is one truth of the show....Elliot LIES. We see Elliot do this with Stage 2, where only he knows the whole plan and Tyrell/Darlene are left wondering what is happening, even though they are both working for Elliot. We see it with Elliot's Stage 3 fakeout to own the Dark Army.
To continue that pattern, though we haven't received the explicit reveal/confirmation yet (coming S4), we see Elliot take control of the ecorp logistics system under the guise of creating a "paper record mirage" to keep the paper records from being blown up by his own work (allegedly as Mr. Robot) in Stage 2, in which Elliot ended up "failing". But that isn't what really happened.
Remember that at the fancy dinner attended by Zhang/WhiteRose and Price in S3E6-7, Zhang/WR assigned a task to Price: shipping her project to the Congo using ecorp's logistics system. The very same logistics system we saw Elliot own when he started working at ecorp.....and STILL OWNS in the S3E10 finale. Elliot needed to own ecorp's logistics system and make it seem like he had a purpose for it other than his goal later on, much like his trip to the Dulles server farm in the pilot, for a later move and payout. In the case of the logistics system, Elliot needed it as the first part of his plan to get to the side of WhiteRose, since he is the ONLY PERSON who can bust through the logistics issue of getting her project to the Congo. But this move only gets Elliot one-third the way there.
Unfortunately, this means Elliot has to produce another set of circumstances that will challenge the shipping of WR's project to the Congo. What is that block? MARTIAL LAW. Martial law circumvents a lot of current DA operatives and bribes because there are a new set of players/rules/circumstances put into effect that are too new and numerous for the DA to get control of quickly enough to overcome this obstacle.
Why is there martial law in effect? Because the 71 buildings blew up. Unpleasant as it is to think about, Elliot needed those 71 buildings to blow in order to create the martial law situation, so I believe that no matter what any form of Elliot told us, we were witnessing a loop similar to the pilot hack. I believe that Elliot was NOT trying to actually stop the buildings from blowing at all, but had another agenda that needed to be started under cover of the hoodie-clad rioter chaos (and I don't think those rioters in HOODIES were any coincidence, especially on the only ecorp workday where Elliot NEVER took his hoodie off....) in the main ecorp building completed in the 2nd ecorp building that he snuck into after the chaos of the bomb threat that he called in, after he was fired and his access to ecorp allegedly revoked (providing a cover story and plausible deniability for Elliot should anyone suspect or try to pin things on him). What Elliot did there has yet to be revealed, but I strongly suspect that he owned ECOIN and perhaps something else that we haven't yet seen...possibly the new technology prototype that Tyrell spoke of in his "prep for Price pitch" that we saw in S1E3", possibly WHITEROSE'S PROJECT. Whatever it is, I believe we are due for another big hack reveal in S4.
So while Elliot kept our confidence and sympathy, and earned the sympathy of Darlene and Angela in his apparently valiant attempts to stop his own Stage 2 plan, I believe that Elliot NEEDED Stage 2 to happen exactly as it did....with the full force of the Dark Army taking out the 71 buildings....because this series of events facilitated martial law being imposed and allowed Elliot to own one or more things that haven't yet been revealed. Without the martial law blockade, Elliot cannot get to the side of WhiteRose with his "miraculous save" that he offered - and apparently delivered - at the end of S3. And creating a plan that one DELIBERATELY SABOTAGES is an EXCELLENT way to trace power pathways/players and test loyalties along the way, which is exactly what Elliot did in S3. Sam Esmail and the cast mentioned over and over that loyalty was a key theme in S3, and indeed it was. In the end of S3, Elliot has much more information about players, pathways, and the bottom line of the desires/motivations of people in his realm, including Angela and Darlene.
There was one more component to Elliot's solution to WhiteRose, which was the Stage 3 deception that he already admitted to us was a ruse to use to own the DA. Elliot still owns everything DA at the end of S3, they have no time/way to recover before the end of the season, and he impresses WR enough that she sacrifices Grant to keep Elliot around, which is exactly where Elliot wants to be.
Elliot's attempts to "save" something literally blow up....but I believe those were the intended consequences the whole time. We hear Elliot and Mr. Robot occasionally comment over the 3 seasons about casualties, persistence, the losses, and the cost to get to that point, especially in their last subway conversation of S3, when Elliot says that he literally was doing all this "for ME...I'm doing this FOR ME." That line is classic Mr. Robot, because even though Elliot tells us that he did all this for himself, the context used to frame up what he did and why he did it, and the brilliant acting of Rami Malek that imbues those words with such pained sincerity, leave us feeling like Elliot really wants to try to fix things by undoing the hack. So at the end of S3, we see Elliot send the encryption key to some general ecorp address. But, as many posters here have written about, and the Parsons-educated prostitute notes in the post-credit scene of S3, undoing the hack will likely not be all it will be cracked up to be, and will likely make things worse. As smart and thorough as Elliot is, I think he already knows this. Not sure exactly what he has in store, but I'm guessing it isn't exactly what he told us.
Side note - I also think that between Elliot's "metadata" hack of the FBI of S3E4 and the access to FBI's Sentinel that Elliot was literally given as a way to get the encryption keys, which he had the whole time (and I believe he knew it), I believe Elliot now owns SENTINEL, which is a key database not just for the FBI, but NSA and the CIA as well. And let's not forget that last we knew, Elliot still owned Vera's whole operation, we never saw him actually turn anything over to the authorities, and Vera also showed back up in the post-credit scene of S3, so will be very interesting to learn what actually happened in S4.
So by the end of S3, Elliot STILL owns ecorp, as he has since S1, and has increased his access there, and he likely owned Ecoin before S3 ever ended right under our noses. Elliot still owns the DA. Elliot may well still own Vera's operation, maybe he has also procured funds/resources from other criminals he turned in before he turned them in (I think he was creating the problems for Ray's site/hot-cold wallet system that caused Ray to seek out Elliot's help in prison, and I'm betting Elliot might still have some of that bitcoin). And Elliot managed to own ALL OF THIS while telling and/or showing us he was doing something different, or for a different purpose than he said he was doing it, just like he did in the pilot. So Elliot is repeating his loops and starting new ones, going back to the beginning.
On to HOT CARLA. In the companion book RED WHEELBARROW, Hot Carla heralds and admires Elliot, writing about how he changed the world for the better, essentially "saving" it (in the past tense). We don't know yet exactly what Hot Carla defines as changing the world "for better" or why she regards Elliot as a savior, and it might actually line up with something Elliot did. It is possible that Hot Carla might want to see the world burn since she is a pyro who has apparently led a life filled with challenges. But if the pattern Elliot has demonstrated time and time again holds true, then it is likely that Elliot's "changing the world for the better" or "saving the world" is similar to Elliot "saving Allsafe", which resulted in Allsafe's total destruction, and "stopping the ecorp hack", in which Elliot was doing something different and just getting started....
I have written before about things related to these ideas in other posts and comments, but I wanted to pull it together here. I know thinking of Elliot doing these kinds of things can be very upsetting (going to apologize in advance to u/The_Firmament and u/yeswithanh) because they are NOT attractive prospects. This character who is so near and dear to us, whose pain and loneliness we see - and which I do think is real, BTW, because you can't be that calculating of a person and take all those actions and be mentally healthy - seems to still be hacking the world and hacking us, and, as Elliot told us, "even if it's him (Mr. Robot), it's ME".
I have also had to grapple with the though of Elliot as Villian more with respect to things I recently read about how closely Sam Esmail relates to the character of Elliot. While I can't be sure, I do suspect that Sam was/is trying to tell a bigger cautionary tale, especially with his comments about how technology opens the world up to more vulnerabilities than we are prepared to recognize/combat, and how that kind of hacking could affect the world (which ended up being utterly prophetic by the time the show was released). And since Sam was also inspired by the events of Arab Spring, in which a sense of hope for so many people and nations tragically didn't work across the board, leaving many with worse circumstances in the end than they started with, I think this could line up. After all, in this world of virtual reality, one often has to experience things personally to truly be able to relate and metabolize them. I don't know if this is what Sam is trying to say with this beautiful show, but I think at least part of his message must want us to come away as more aware, more decent, and better prepared humans.
So whatever Elliot's definitions of "undo", "restart", or "save" actually are, they will likely be complicated and create more chaos and undesireable results that only Elliot might understand or want. Elliot is certainly sitting with a lot more power going into S4, and even if he takes down WR and the other 1%, which I think he will, he has become the monster he told us that he allegedly sought to destroy in the process, and in the end he might have to "save" us from himself.
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