Control

=== Setting ===
Control revolves around the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC), a clandestine U.S. government agency that investigates supernatural Altered World Events (AWEs). These AWEs affect the human collective unconscious and have "paranatural" effects, including manipulating reality through extradimensional spaces called Thresholds, and the creation of archetypal but powerful items called Objects of Power. Objects of Power are connected to the Board, a black, pyramid-shaped entity that exists within the Astral Plane, an alternate dimension. The individual chosen by the Board to wield the Service Weapon, an Object of Power, is considered by default to be the director of the FBC. Control takes place within the Oldest House, a Brutalist skyscraper in New York City that houses the headquarters of the FBC. The Oldest House is a Place of Power with several paranatural characteristics: it resists being noticed by anyone other than FBC members and individuals with an innate sensitivity to the paranatural, its interior is larger than its exterior, and its internal architecture is prone to shifting and rearranging in unpredictable ways. The FBC can stabilize portions of the Oldest House for its use by harnessing nexuses of resonance called Control Points.
The protagonist of Control is Jesse Faden (Courtney Hope), whom the Board has chosen as the director of the FBC to replace the recently deceased Zachariah Trench (James McCaffrey). Seventeen years prior, Jesse and her younger brother Dylan (Sean Durrie) were involved in an Altered World Event in their hometown of Ordinary, Maine. After discovering an Object of Power in the form of a slide projector, the two children accidentally unleashed paranatural forces that caused Ordinary's adult population to vanish. Jesse and Dylan were rescued by Polaris, a mysterious telepathic entity. Shortly thereafter, the FBC arrived in Ordinary, capturing Dylan and the slide projector, while Jesse fled with Polaris. In the present day, Jesse arrives at the Oldest House seeking her brother.
Other notable characters in Control include missing Head of Research Dr. Casper Darling (Matthew Porretta), research specialist Emily Pope (Antonia Bernath), security chief Simon Arish (Ronan Summers), Head of Operations Helen Marshall (Jade Anouka), Panopticon supervisor Frederick Langston (Derek Hagen), and a mysterious Finnish janitor named Ahti (Martti Suosalo).

Plot

In October 2019, after receiving a telepathic message from Polaris, Jesse Faden arrives at the Oldest House in search of her kidnapped brother Dylan. Inside the building, Jesse discovers Trench's deceased corpse and Polaris instructs her to pick up his fallen Service Weapon. The weapon translocates Jesse to the Astral Plane, where the Board appoints her the new director of the FBC as Trench's replacement. Exiting Trench's office, Jesse is attacked by FBC agents possessed by an entity she dubs "the Hiss". Jesse learns the Oldest House is under emergency lockdown following the Hiss's spread, and that the Hiss has possessed everyone in the building except those wearing Hedron Resonance Amplifiers (HRAs), devices built by missing Bureau scientist Dr. Casper Darling. Jesse agrees to help the surviving agents reclaim the building and contain the Hiss in exchange for information on Dylan's whereabouts.
Using an Object of Power known as the Hotline, Jesse communicates with the deceased Trench and learns his former management team knows the secrets of the Bureau. After lifting the building's lockdown in the Maintenance Sector, Jesse enters the Research Sector in search of Helen Marshall, one of Trench's management team, whom she helps secure the production of more HRAs by reactivating Dr. Darling's HRA machine and later retrieving Black Rock Prisms from the Quarry. Marshall reveals Dylan, known to the Bureau as Prime Candidate 6 (P6), was being groomed to succeed Trench as the Bureau's director due to his immense supernatural abilities. After killing several Bureau agents, however, Dylan was deemed too dangerous and locked in the Containment Sector. Jesse rushes to the sector to find Dylan, only to learn he has escaped and surrendered to the Bureau in the Executive Sector. Dylan reveals to Jesse he has embraced the Hiss, and that the Hiss infiltrated the Oldest House through the slide projector, an Object of Power the Bureau recovered from Ordinary.
Searching for the projector in the Containment Sector, Jesse discovers the Bureau had been conducting experiments to recreate the AWE in Ordinary, while tracking her whereabouts as a potential candidate for Director of the Bureau. After finding the projector had been moved by Dr. Darling to Dimensional Research, she seeks the aid of Ahti, a paranatural entity who manifests as the Oldest House's janitor, and he gifts Jesse a cassette player that enables her to navigate an elaborate and shape-shifting maze protecting the projector's location. At Dimensional Research, Jesse discovers the power source of the HRAs to be an enormous, hexagonal entity dubbed Hedron by Trench and Dr. Darling after they discovered it in an alternate dimension known as Slidescape-36 via the projector. Jesse recognizes it as Polaris but her attempts to free it inadvertently invites Hiss attacks that destroy Hedron. With Polaris defeated, Jesse's mind is invaded by the Hiss, where she learns Trench too had been possessed by the Hiss during expeditions to Slidescape-36 and manipulated into releasing it onto the Oldest House. Discovering parts of Polaris still remained in her being, Jesse successfully repels the Hiss and chases down Dylan, who attempts to enter the Astral Plane through the slide projector and overtake the Board. She deactivates the slide projector and seemingly cleanses the Hiss from Dylan, closing the portal but leaving Dylan in a coma. In the aftermath, the Oldest House remains infested by the Hiss and under lockdown to prevent its escape, but Jesse has come to terms with her new role as director and decides to find a solution with the FBC's surviving personnel.