The thriller series “The Consultant” on Amazon Prime Video is based on the same-named book by Bentley Little. It follows Regus Patoff, who joins the video game publisher CompWare after the death of its founder, Sang-woo. Tony Basgallop made the show, which follows CompWare employees Craig and Elaine as they try to figure out who the new consultant is and why he is making big changes to the company and how it works. The series, which stars Christoph Waltz as the title character, a consultant, looks at what it’s like to work in a modern office where competition is more important than ethics. The first season of the show ends with a series of shocking reveals, and if you’re trying to figure out what they all mean, you’re in the right place. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Consultant Season 1 Recap
At the start of “The Consultant,” a group of middle school students on a study tour meet Ah Sang-woo, the founder of CompWare. One of the kids, Tokyo, kills Sang with a gun that he has hidden. While the employees of CompWare are sad about the death of their respected boss, Regus Patoff, a consultant, moves into Sang’s office. He has a contract signed by Sang that gives him full control over the company. Elaine is the place’s creative liaison, and Craig is one of the senior coders. They work together to figure out who the consultant is. They find out that Viktor Kulzer, Patoff’s former boss, was killed just a few days after signing a contract with the consultant. This makes them suspicious.
Elaine and Craig watch the CCTV footage from the day Sang signed Patoff’s contract. They see that Patoff met Sang without even making an appointment, and Sang signed the contract in less than an hour. They also see Sang and Patoff having oral sex. The two people still don’t understand why the consultant never leaves the office or goes to bed at night. Elaine finds out that the company has a room where all the employees’ personal files, including her own, are kept. At the same time, Sang’s mother comes to Los Angeles to visit the business. Patoff tries to make the woman feel better, and he offers to drive her to a hotel. “Mother Sang” never makes it to the hotel, and Elaine is worried that the consultant might have killed her.
Craig’s ideas are taken seriously when Patoff is in charge. He shows Patoff a demo version of a game he’s been making, and Patoff tells the coder to make the same game. He goes with Patoff to a secret pub, but while they are there, Patoff takes a woman named Milani away. Craig gets her back from the consultant, and she asks him to talk to Frank Florez about the consultant if he wants to know more. Patoff tells his worker that he “took” Milani as part of a plan to help her. When the coder goes back to the pub, he finds that it has been turned into an office with no sign that it used to be a pub.
Scenes that show the past show that Patoff met Sang when Sang was losing control of the company because of money problems. The consultant told Sang that he knew Sang had thought about killing himself. After the founder died, Patoff offered to run the business and protect Sang’s legacy. Sang was thinking about killing himself, so he signed the contract because it would protect his name and legacy without costing him anything. Then, Patoff told Sang that he was going to die soon. In the present, the consultant meets Tokyo in prison and tells him that he is the one who killed the child.
Craig meets Florez, who tells him that several doctors used to give him checks signed by Regus Patoff and tell him to make human bones out of gold. He tells the coder that Patoff doesn’t really exist and that the name Regus Patoff is short for “Registered U.S. Patent Office.” Patti, who is engaged to Craig, thinks that he likes Elaine, so she goes to Patoff to get back at him. He puts her in the record room and makes Patti work for him as if she were under the consultant’s control. Elaine and Craig find Mother Sang with Patti’s phone in Los Angeles. Craig thinks that Patoff has taken his partner away.
The Consultant Season 1 Ending: Is Regus Patoff a Human or Robot?
When Craig finds out that Patoff has locked Patti up, he sends Elaine to get her out while he talks to Patoff. He learns from the game he made and breaks the glass Patoff is standing on, causing him to fall and cut off one of his toes. Craig picks up the toe and later cuts it open. Inside, he finds a golden bone that looks like it was made by Florez. This shows that Patoff is not human. A group of doctors asked Florez to make 206 bones out of gold, which is the average number of bones in an adult person. To make Regus Patoff, it seems like the doctors or even people who pretended to be doctors put together the parts they bought from Florez.
Patoff has shown enough signs that he is a robot for someone to correctly guess that he is one. His inability to climb the stairs and understand information right away, as well as the fact that he repeats some sentences, show that he isn’t necessarily a human when he first gets to CompWare. Because Patoff is a robot, he also doesn’t sleep. He eats, which is the only thing he does that he shouldn’t have to do as a robot. Patoff must have been trying to get closer to the people around him, which is why he wanted to share a beer with Craig and eat sushi with Patti. He must be taking the food out of the old toilet on top of a hill that Craig finds and destroys.
In the end, Patoff can be seen as a representative of business leaders who run their businesses without caring about people. As a boss, the consultant doesn’t mind seeing his employees compete and try to beat each other to get better results. In fact, he finds it funny. He doesn’t even think twice about firing people for reasons that aren’t important. This makes the company an authoritarian place to work, which is similar to many real-life corporate offices. Patoff doesn’t have a moral code either. He is excited about letting out an elephant in Los Angeles to promote a game for the company and about gamers hurting themselves in the same game when they can’t move forward.
Patoff isn’t that different from business tycoons who built their empires on the backs of people’s suffering. The fact that he is a robot shows how business tycoons are really just machines without any humanity or compassion.
Why Does Patoff Leave CompWare? Where Does He Go?
When Patoff decided to become a consultant for CompWare, his only goal was to get the company back to a place where it could pay its bills. The success of “Mr. Sang’s Jungle Odyssey” helps him do the same. He leaves CompWare after he has changed its whole way of life. Under Sang, the company was a friendly place where the needs of the employees came before the business or financial needs of the company. Patoff changes the same by making his employees competitive and making them not care about their coworkers. He sees his employees fight, which makes him feel like he’s in a competition.
Patoff doesn’t need money because he is a machine. After he has reached his goal, he has no reason to stay at CompWare any longer. So, he leaves the company to work for Pterodactyl Robotics, which is also in trouble. Before he leaves CompWare, he goes to see the boss of the robotics company. A few days later, the boss dies, just like Sang and Viktor Kulzer did. Patoff must be trying to keep the robotics company from going bankrupt by putting in place drastic business practises like competition, subjectivity, lack of equity, etc.
Does Elaine Become the New CompWare Boss? How?
Yes, Elaine does take over as the new boss at CompWare. Elaine goes to the office the day after the launch party for “Mr. Sang’s Jungle Odyssey” and finds Patoff’s office empty with her name on the door. She gets the job by becoming another Patoff, which means she has to kill her compassion and care for people. Elaine was a very kind person when Patoff started working at CompWare. She speaks out against the consultant for firing people for silly reasons. But over time, she starts to act like another version of the mean consultant. She starts by fooling Iain into giving her his office, and then she uses Craig’s game to make the new boss happy.
When Patoff says he wants a wild elephant to cause trouble on the streets of Los Angeles to promote his game, Elaine changes her mind and makes the same plans. She doesn’t feel bad or regretful when the wild animal causes chaos in the city and is killed by the police. When her ex-boyfriend Patrice tries to tell the truth about the same thing, she plans to have him arrested by giving an anonymous tip to the police. In the end, Elaine starts to put the best interests of the business ahead of ethics and empathy.
Patoff must have looked for his replacement at CompWare as soon as he got there. He may have also thought about Craig, but he doesn’t like him because Craig frees Milani even though the consultant didn’t want him to. Patoff must have decided that Elaine is the right person for the job because she doesn’t show the “weakness” of compassion.
