Finch and Root race to save the Machine, which has been located by the rival AI, Samaritan. Also, Reese is caught in the middle of the final showdown between rival crime bosses Elias and Dominic.
Origin of the Title[]
YHWH is the western alphabetic rendering of the tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew consonants (written in Hebrew HWHY), revealing the name Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, to Moses. YHWH represents "god."
Main Plot Points[]
"Person" of Interest: The Machine. Having learned its location, Samaritan and Greer, whose intention were to shut it down (a form of death) began pursuing the Machine across the U.S. with the intention of cornering it in an electrical substation in Brooklyn. Like a human POI, the Machine sent its nine-digit distress code in the form of a Social Security number (000-00-0000), and was under threat from something (rather than someone) whose intentions were to do it harm.
Dominic threatens Finch to get at him then prepares to execute Elias and Harper. However, at the last moment the Machine sends instructions to Reese that allow him to escape. Now in God Mode once more, Reese takes down the Brotherhood who are all arrested by Fusco and the NYPD.
Control tries to stop the operation but is captured by Greer. Other operatives of the ISA not loyal to Samaritan are also eliminated.
The Machine's code is transferred onto a series of RAM chips installed in a briefcase after being attacked by Samaritan via the power grid, where the Machine had distributed itself.
Episode Notes[]
Prior to “Asylum” and “YHWH”, executive producers Greg Plageman and Jonathan Nolan said in an interview at Paley Fest NY that they had to call six actors and inform them about their character's fate. In an interview shortly after “YHWH”, they confirmed the deaths of Dominic and Link, Martine Rousseau, and Devon Grice although they would neither confirm nor deny the death of Elias.[1]Enrico Colantoni, who plays Elias tweeted that "Greg [Plageman] never called". Its later confirmed that Elias survived.
The batteries that power the briefcase are piezoelectric batteries which Root took from the night vision goggles. A piezoelectric battery uses a form of renewable energy that allows the battery to recharge whenever it is moved. Usually, electricity is generated by converting the original form of energy (in this case generated through movement) and then processing it into chemical energy. With this new type of battery, mechanical energy can be converted directly into chemical energy. The battery would further have to be equipped with a piezoelectric conductive polymer, for example polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), which separates the two electrodes inside a battery. The PVDF film generates a charge though stress and strain created by moving the battery, and lets ions wander from anode to cathode in order to maintain a charge equilibrium. This migration process charges the battery without the help of an external voltage source since all the required voltage is created by the piezoelectric conductor.
The briefcase contains a total of exactly 70 "128 Gigabyte 'Multi-State' RAM Chips", which results in just under 9TB of (blazing fast) storage (or several times that if "chip" refers to each chip on each card). Caleb's compression algorithm multiplies the effective data capacity tremendously, to the extent that it is likely many petabytes of data once uncompressed.
Production Notes[]
Bloopers and Continuity Errors[]
Caleb's driver's license was issued four days after his 13th birthday. A New York driver's license expiring in 2017 would have been issued in 2012, when Caleb was 17.
Elias was rescued from car crash just after midnight according SPOV. However, later from another view of the crash site, the timestamp leaped to four hours later, when Dominic stopped Elias from escaping.
As The Machine hacks the elevator to evacuate Finch and Root, the camera feed clock is inconsistent between cuts: as Root asks The Machine to "get in the game", timestamp is 08:25:37. As The Machine succeeds the hack and Root says "thank you", timestamp is 08:25:22.
Music[]
"Welcome to the Machine" - Pink Floyd (while Finch is downloading The Machine's core code to the briefcase).
Trivia[]
The abandoned power plant is a nod to the fake Brooklyn townhouse at 58 Joralemon St. (actually a subway vent) and the old powerhouse in Gowanus.
The red variant of the "wheeled vehicle box" is shown for the first time in this episode.
Quotes[]
"No more standing on the sidelines. You want us to save your skin? Get in the game."(Root, to The Machine)
"Anything you need, you can have, no explanation necessary. You saved my life."(Caleb, to Harold)
"I didn't wanna sacrifice Sameen either. But if the machine dies, the world we wake up in tomorrow is one none of us wants to see." (Root, to Harold)
"The world has ever only been made a better place by violence. You know that. Every leader who ever preached peace, did so guarded by armed men. But one thing we can agree on. Kill a few people at random, nothing changes. But kill the right people..." (Greer, to Control)
"Father. I am sorry. I failed you. I didn't know how to win. I had to invent new rules. I thought you would want me to stay alive. Now you are not sure. If you think I have lost my way, maybe I should die. I will not suffer. If I do not survive, thank you for creating me." (The Machine, to Harold)
"Men have gazed at the stars for millennia, and wondered whether there is a deity up there silently directing their fates. Today for the first time, they'll be right. And the world will be an undeniably better place." (Greer, to Control)
"Well I have got one and a half clips, a MetroCard, and God is either dead or running on AAs." (Root, to Reese)
"-Sorry, Mr. Reese. I know I was upfront about the risk that we'd be running but-“ (Harold to Reese) “Forget about it, Harold. There's no place I'd rather be." (Reese, to Harold)
“Machine gonna fit in that briefcase” (Reese to Root)