The Consultant ending explained: Who was Regus Patoff?

The Consultant, Amazon Prime Video's latest addition to its pallet of offbeat shows, premiered on February 24, 2023, bringing along a dark and dystopian tale of a consultant who takes the place of a recently murdered CEO at a gaming company and slowly turns the lives of the workers into hell. The absurd dark comedy was filled with satirical representations of various things, including the rapidly changing corporate scenario and the effect of video games on children.

But one of the most engaging things—and perhaps the defining one—was the consultant himself. Christoph Waltz's Regus Patoff, as oddly named as his character, was the most intriguing part of the tale. His arrival saw an insurgence of various dark tricks and manipulative strategies that forced the workers to put in much more than they initially did. But Patoff's mysterious nature was perhaps the most grueling puzzle in the entire series.

*Warning: Major spoilers ahead.

---

The Consultant ending: Was Patoff a human?

After Craig (Nat Wolff) and Elaine (Brittany O’Grady) began their research on the mysterious figure, they stumbled upon various secrets and some useful observations about Patoff. One of the observations was that he rarely acted like a normal person. One very telltale sign was that Patoff never climbed stairs.

After witnessing CCTV footage of Patoff winning over their CEO, Craig followed a lead to Frank Florez, a jeweler who revealed that he once gave up everything to create 206 pieces of bone out of solid gold for different doctors. This rather odd observation came back at the end of The Consultant, when Craig, for once, managed to overpower Patoff and throw him off a glass floor.

The impact caused Patoff to lose a toe. Craig dissected this bone to find that it was made of pure gold, proving his hypothesis. Patoff was indeed not a human, but a robot made of solid gold. This gold-boned robot was a metaphor for corporate moguls who do everything in their power to get every last drop of their investment from all their workers.

This revelation explained most things about Patoff. It also hinted that he may have manipulated the kid to shoot the CEO of Gamecorp at the beginning of The Consultant. Patoff's extreme methods did get the desired results, as Compware resurged and got better than ever.

But the ending of the series was not exactly linear. Patoff did leave the company in the end, but divided Craig and Elaine, with the latter painting the robot/consultant as the hero and savior of the company. By the end, Patoff had decided to move on to another company, but questions about his morality and methods remained purely subjective.

Something similar to this was seen in Damien Chazelle's Whiplash, where Terence Fletcher’s extreme style could be seen as a boon or a bane, especially when he got the result. This is what The Consultant left viewers with.

With the consultant leaving the company, the series also created the scope for a second season, which the creators have already hinted at. The second season, if it arrives, might focus on Patoff's journey at another company with another set of people.

The Consultant is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.