LOS ANGELES, March 25 — Actors from Fear the Walking Dead, a Power Rangers spin-off, and The Onion News Network have been signed up for a second season of Golden Globe-winning thriller Mr Robot, set to air later in 2016.

Elliot’s tangled web

The first season starred Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson, the troubled but talented corporate techie who would dig up private information on the people he met in order to try and get to know them truthfully.

That tendency led him into some morally tangled situations and, with the guidance of an underground hacker movement ‘fsociety,’ he became part of a plot to take down E Corp and eliminate onerous global debts in the process.

The show tackled issues of surveillance and governmental-corporate influence at a time when Edward Snowden’s CIA whistleblowing actions were fresh in the memory.

It also staggered away from the 2015/16 awards season with an armful of accolades, including recognition from the American Film Institute, Writers’ Guild of America, Broadcast Television Journalists Association, and from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in the form of two Golden Globes.

Cast members old and new

Core members of the original cast have been retained for a second season expected to debut mid-year — June, if season one was any indication — including Malek, Christian Slater (Mr Robot, leader of hacking group fsociety), Carly Chaikin (Elliot’s sister Darlene), Portia Doubleday (lifelong friend and colleague), Martin Wallström (ambitious E Corp exec), Michael Cristofer (E Corp CEO) and BD Wong (leader of another hacking group).

On top of that, we now have Sandrine Holt of Fear the Walking Dead and the first House of Cards season in as an E Corp lawyer identified by fsociety as a potential but unwitting ally.

Dorothi Fox (Nancy Fichandler on a dozen Onion News Network reels) will play mother to a key fsociety member, while Michael Maize (True Blood, Power Rangers in Space) is Lone Star, a friend of Elliot’s new friend Ray, and Luke Robertson has been tapped to play RT, an IT whizz also linked with Ray.

The quartet join a number of other new additions such as rapper Joey Badass, Craig Robinson of The Office as Ray and, most recently, Aasif Mandvi of Jericho and The Brink.

Season 2 will deal with themes of encryption and privacy, director Sam Esmail told SXSW earlier in March, at a time when iPhone giant Apple is tussling with the FBI over the very same; in January, it was announced for a summer 2016 debut on NBCU’s USA Network. — AFP-Relaxnews