If you’ve logged onto Netflix in the past week, you’ve likely seen Black Mirror at the top of your screen. After its latest release last Thursday, April 10, the series topped the U.S. streaming charts and continues to hold a place on the leaderboard.
It’s been almost two years since the anthology series released new episodes, leaving fans like myself itching for more stories. This time frame also gave the writers a lot to work with when crafting their stories around modern technology updates, including advancements in AI and the film industry.
I don’t know about you, but I get countless videos on my TikTok page with “#blackmirror.” It seems those who tuned in to the latest content are turning to social media to share opinions and debrief with the community.
If you haven’t dived in yet, and you’re avoiding spoilers, I recommend watching and then coming back to what I have to say! I truly believe each episode is worth a watch and does what I was hoping for the advancement of the ‘Black Mirror’ universe.
If you’ve already seen the new season and are looking for review or closure, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve summarized each story and ranked them based on five categories: Execution, Horror, Plot Twists, Originality, and Relevance.
At Cal Poly, I am a Media Arts, Society and Technology minor, and I’ve studied technology as a narrative which shapes society as much as we construct what we innovate. Their interconnectedness makes shows like ‘Black Mirror’ incredibly meaningful and functional as media tools for awareness and understanding our responsibilities.
Without further ado, let’s break down what I picked up from each episode of the most recent season.
Common People
Kicking us off is what I’d describe as the most somber episode of the season. “Common People” quickly gives us an image of a married couple at each of their jobs on their anniversary.
After spending the weekend at The Juniper Lodge, where they were married, Amanda collapses in front of her students. Her husband, Mike, rushes from his welding job to find her in a coma. A representative from the company Rivermind offers an experimental procedure to remove a newfound tumor by cloning her brain. Mike is promised a $300 per month subscription and a free surgery that runs smoothly. Amanda wakes up and everything seems normal until she experiences increasing narcolepsy and memory loss. After she passes out on the way to the Juniper Lodge, the two find out their subscription has been demoted and Amanda’s symptoms will get worse unless they upgrade. She even experiences loss of body control and recites advertisements in conversation without knowing. When Amanda is fired from her job, Mike turns to a website called Dum Dummies, having to do grotesque acts for quick money to support her lifeline. Long story short, there is a two-year time skip, in which Mike smothers Amanda, who is ready to die, before walking into a room with Dum Dummies playing on his computer. With a knife in hand and a defeated look, he breaks the fourth wall before slamming the door in our face.
Execution: 4/5
Although it’s less than an hour, the episode packs a punch with a heavy story. Nothing is dragged out as we get conflict almost instantly with Amanda’s collapse and the introduction of Rivermind. I thought that the mechanisms at which grief progressed were well done. I appreciated how the creators were not afraid to use trauma to shape the way we perceive characters, because it felt especially personal and impactful.
Horror: 5/5
I think the most unsettling part of this episode lies in the fact that in the decision between life and death, the husband is left with no choice but to give up his wife’s autonomy to save her. Because Rivermind has a power over their customers’ lives, they can exploit their desperation for profit. The way Mike is forced to degrade himself when money is tight is disturbing and leaves your jaw dropped. There are also a couple jumpscares including a grotesque death at Mike’s job.
Plot Twists: 2/5
It’s safe to say Amanda’s fate is evident as soon as she becomes unconscious. As her condition gets progressively harder to live with, the context clues become stronger and stronger. It can even be predicted that Amanda will lose her job, the two will be financially unstable, and Mike will resort to Dum Dummies. The lack of major plot twists doesn’t inherently make the story weak; I thought it did the opposite, as the episode focused more on building strain.
Originality: 3/5
“Common People” mastered what plenty of episodes attempt: layers. So much is going on but it all balances out to weave into a beautiful, but tragic, tale. However, I wouldn’t consider the major storyline to be unique in speculative fiction, or even movies in general. I also thought the Dum Dummies website was very similar to the action movie “Nerve”. Overall, the story had its similarities to its genre but maintained a unique sense of how the audience and characters cope with emotion alike.
Relevance: 5/5
The technology behind Rivermind is of course speculative, but not too hard to imagine a more subtle form of corruption in the relationship between people and the healthcare system. The allegory for the episode is the monetization of human struggle that further perpetuates the gap in social class and economic stability. The building hardships the two face, following one unfortunate occurrence, serve as a mechanism for pushing a realistic situation in the audience’s face. There are legitimate, nontechnical critiques of human-focused technology and capitalism that are represented in Amanda and Mike’s story.
Bête noire
The second episode follows a week in Maria’s life, the “Head of Flavor” at Ditta, an innovative culinary lab. She recognizes a woman who comes in for taste testing as an old high school peer, and is immediately unnerved when she, Verity, tells her she is applying as the company’s research assistant. Maria is shocked to find out there is an opening. Verity is hired with a background at Cambridge University, which Maria does not believe, in spite of co-workers acting like everything Verity says makes sense. We find out that Maria was popular in high school and would spread nasty rumors about Verity. She reaches out to her old friend Natalie and is confused when she hears from her husband that she killed herself. The next day at work, Maria witnesses security tapes alter on their own and Google erases “nut allergies” from all search history. She follows Verity’s car home and sneaks into her room, grabbing Verity’s necklace. However, Verity catches her, and explains how she has created a system of infinite timelines in which she can change anything in this universe to her liking, and the power rests in her necklace. She explains how she broke Natalie and intends to break Maria, all to torture the two for their cruel rumors. The episode ends in a police confrontation where Maria grabs a gun and shoots Verity in the head, taking her necklace and her idea as she becomes “empress of the universe.”
Execution: 3/5
The episode is chronologically formatted by the day of the week, starting from Monday and ending on Friday. I liked how we are looking in the perspective of Maria whose world is flipped upside down once the things she thought she knew change. It’s interesting that no one believes her, which is a common trope, but a successful one for unnerving us along with Maria. I honestly did see the ending confrontation between Maria and Verity as rushed and anticlimactic, so that’s a discontent I had for the episode’s pacing.
Horror: 2/5
What I found to unfold the story really well was our shared suspicion with Maria for Verity and her sudden appearance. By focusing on Maria’s anxiety, it almost felt invasive to the reader’s life as well. There are little to no jumpscares and the majority of the fear element is executed through unsettling conversation and apprehension.
Plot Twists: 1/5
Verity as an antagonist for Maria is an obvious plot point from her character’s introduction. I wouldn’t even call Verity’s motives unexpected in the slightest. The one thing that surprised me was the element of the supernatural; the inclusion of alternate universes converging seemed to come out of nowhere.
Originality: 2/5
The symbolism of culinary instruments like knives and boiling pots have been done before in thriller media, but fit well with this plot. I also would call the beef between the women as fairly common in film and the ‘Black Mirror’ universe. Episodes of the anthology are not generally split up so cinematically, which made the days of the week more impactful to the plot.
Relevance: 3/5
“Bête Noire” directly translates to “Black Beast,” or the bane of one’s existence. The conflict between Maria and Verity and the high-school bullying is definitely applicable to the internalized confidence (or lack thereof) and hatred childhood can manifest in a person. There is a fine line between justice and revenge, one that can push people to do violent things, and Maria’s story reflects this situation.
Hotel REverie
The scene is set in black-and-white, which we discover is one of Keyworth Picture’s classic films called “Hotel Reverie”. The studio is struggling, and collaborates with ReDream; a technology that directly inserts their actor into another dimension, the movie, and immerses them for 90 minutes. This will allow them to pay for a popular actor. Brandy agrees to work on the film, and as she is transported to the scene, everything goes smoothly. That is, until she improperly plays the piano, messing with the timeline in a domino effect. Her co-actor, who is an AI version of actress Dorothy Chambers, starts to gain sentience from Brandy’s actions. However, things get worse when someone on set spills coffee on the equipment, freezing the scene. Time works differently in ReDream, so Brandy and Clara (Dorothy) are stuck alone for months, and fall in love. Things are so far gone that in the final scene, Clara tries to shoot the policemen, who shoot her, and she dies in Brandy’s arms. As the credits roll, Brandy wakes up in the real world and watches YouTube videos of Dorothy. She watches Dorothy pick up the phone, allowing them to communicate, warping and merging their timelines together.
Execution: 4/5
I watched this one with my roommates and we all were touched by the complicated love story. Contrasting the world Brandy comes from to the scene she is placed in provides a scene-setting in itself of “Hotel Reverie.” I enjoyed seeing the convergence of Old and New Hollywood in a playful yet slightly unsettling tone. The characters of Brandy and Clara undergo conflict that help viewers understand their dynamic better, and as Clara gains sentience, we witness a lot of meaningful development that comes to a conclusive end.
Horror: 1/5
By far, this was the least unnerved I’ve felt all season. The classical music from Hollywood’s “Golden Era” gave it a whimsical touch. Even though we anticipated the fate of characters in the scene, none of it felt really heavy. Brandy grew to want to stay with Clara, so her making it back was not something particularly worrisome. There were zero major jumpscares and the ending was strikingly wholesome for Black Mirror.
Plot Twists: 5/5
Because of all the twists and turns, I really didn’t have a clue what would happen to Clara, or what Brandy’s fate would be until the very end. By going off script, Brandy directly altered her fate in “Hotel Reverie,” leaving each new minute affected by the last.
Originality: 3/5
This isn’t the first Black Mirror episode to center around two people falling in love. The sapphic romance parallels “San Junipero,” and it contrasts the concept of fate in “Hang the DJ.” However, the relationship between Brandy and Dorothy felt relatively unique in the sense that they are from two different time periods and would never have met without ReDream technology. I was impressed that they formed a world in which Brandy and Dorothy are not destined to be together but fall for each other anyways; it made for a melancholic but bittersweet ending.
Relevance: 2/5
Although I found this to be a touching tale, there’s not much I have to say about societal implications in comparison to other episodes. However, it’s notable to talk about Brandy’s experience as a black woman in a classic film with all white actors. Becoming a star even in the midst of social inequities is something imbalanced for marginalized communities, and certainly reflects in today’s world.
Plaything
In 2029, after attempting to steal from a convenience store, an older man named Cameron Walker is arrested on suspicion of murder. At the police station, a detective and a psychiatrist play “good cop, bad cop” in interrogating Cameron and his involvement in the murder. Cameron explains from the very beginning his traumatic childhood before the episode transitions into a flashback to 1994. Cameron works as a video game tester and is taken to meet a prestigious creator. The creator shows us his creation of Thronglets, a game in which the digital characters are physical life forms. Cameron steals the disc and grows an obsession for taking care of the Throngs. When a man named “Lump” crashes in his apartment, they take LSD, which Cameron becomes addicted to, to help him process the Throng language. While Cameron is at work, Lump sets the Throngs on fire, causing Cameron to fight him and choke him to death. He stuffs his body in a suitcase, leading viewers to realize he’s the body the police have been asking about. Cameron shows the detective a chip in his neck, claiming he has merged with the Throng and is their messenger. He draws a code for the Throng who are watching on the security cameras, who create a signal that loads on everyone’s phones. The world collectively passes out besides Cameron, leaving the fate of humans as a mystery.
Execution: 5/5
I would have to claim my favorite form of storytelling of the season to this episode. I thought Cameron served to be a strong narrator, and the back-and-forth transition from flashbacks to the police station made it well thought-out and creative. The scenes Cameron was on acid created engaging visuals and created reason behind his actions. Overall, I would recommend this episode out of all, because of the strong character development in Cameron and its ultimate climax.
Horror: 5/5
From the get-go, Cameron’s movements are anxious and in turn, unsettling. The flashbacks do a good job in showing why Cameron has become what he has become, creating a more frightening antagonist with many layers. I was on the edge of my seat as the events toward the end got increasingly more intense, especially as Cameron described the faults of human nature. His worship of the Throngs is scary in itself, but the noise they emit and their ability to take over the entire world without mobile forms of their own makes it that much more psychological.
Plot Twists: 4/5
Much of the progression is ambiguous throughout due to the way Cameron tells his own story. After Lump is introduced, I knew there was a high chance he would be the dead body Cameron is interrogated for. Other than that, there’s not much I predicted. Cameron’s whole spiel about human flaws and the chip in his neck were plot twists to me that propelled the plot to unfold after each end and bend.
Originality: 4/5
“Plaything” tells its own story of Cameron, but the man who created the Thronglets software is a major character in Black Mirror’s “Bandersnatch,” the interactive episode. However, the storyline is completely different and provides what I thought to be a unique storytelling method. The use of flashbacks was unusual for Black Mirror. Thronglets was unlike anything I’ve seen before and the concept of “symbiotic coexistence” was innovative in the relationship between AI and humans on modern television.
Relevance: 2/5
To my knowledge, we don’t have a form of sentience like Thronglets on a computer. The Throngs taking over the phones at the end of the episode represents the technological singularity, the theoretical point where AI takes over human intelligence. It is a steep incline in machine-learning and rapidly will change our world. The ambiguous fate at the end of “Plaything” sparked a comparison to this dramatic advancement in my mind, and poses speculative questions we should be asking about the future of AI.
Eulogy
The next installment is different from anything I’ve seen thus far in Black Mirror. “Eulogy” follows a man named Phillip who receives a phone call that someone named Carol has passed away. He agrees to share his memories of Carol with the Eulogy technology, which will collect data and provide an “immersive funeral” experience. He is sent an avatar with the voice of a young woman to go over old photographs with him. Throughout the photos, Phillip has trouble placing Carol’s face and expresses betterment to the way they ended. We discover that while Carol was away for six months in England, Phillip cheated with his coworker Emma. He visits Carol three months later, proposing in a fancy restaurant, causing Carol to run out. He never heard from her again. The avatar now reveals herself as an embodiment of Carol’s daughter, Kelly, which he would’ve known if he didn’t “skip the intro.” Phillip finds a letter from Carol that he had misplaced in his anger, asking him to meet her the day after walking out on him. He goes back to the photograph of her playing the cello and is overcome with emotion in seeing her smiling at him. At the funeral, Kelly’s avatar plays the cello while guests watch under the Eulogy system.
Execution: 3/5
The episode is unique in that the man is isolated and before Kelly, he has been processing his grief on his own. Eulogy as a technology literally allows him to step into the scenes of his old photographs, providing a spectacle of visuals for us watchers. The heavy focus on just Phillip allows our complete understanding of his growth, but leaves out room for more conflict in the plot. I found the ending a bit muddled in the fact that he had a sudden epiphany that gave him full clarity of his love for Carol.
Horror: 1/5
I’ll put it simply: there’s nothing explicitly scary about this episode. Sure, there are plenty of heavy topics, as the story follows a man’s depression following a relationship that has damaged his mentality. However, with a lack of jump scares, gore, or anything traditionally psychological, there’s not much horror to talk about. If you’re like me, and go into Black Mirror with high shock factor expectations, this one might’ve been lacking in that area.
Plot Twists: 2/5
If we’re talking plot twists, there was one major thing that needed to be uncovered while watching, and that was the connection of the avatar to his story. I had a feeling the avatar would be Carol, since he was blocking his memory of Carol from his mind, so I was relatively surprised to find out it was her daughter instead. Other than that, there wasn’t much change that wouldn’t have been expected in Phillip’s perspective.
Originality: 2/5
Unlike other Black Mirror and speculative fiction content, the technology never got out of hand in some exponential way. This directly contrasts from the last episode, “Plaything.” This episode was definitely unique from the series in the way the story is told from just one man and the Eulogy program in his lonesome. The whole time I was just comparing Phillip to Ebenezer Scrooge of the play, “A Christmas Carol,” who is guided back through his memories to trade his grievances for a broader perspective and fondness of the world.
Relevance: 5/5
Besides the technology of Eulogy, Phillip’s story is perhaps the most relatable and personable of all the characters in Season 7. We can really feel his pain resonate through the screen through his relationship troubles and how they manifested grief in his life. He is alone, was an alcoholic, and copes in close-minded ways. My props go to Black Mirror on this one of framing a character in a very human light, with all his flaws and lessons.
USS Callister: into infinity
I’m sure many people were excited for this one, as was I, because this episode is a direct sequel to the events of Season 4’s “USS Callister.” The five members of the USS Callister are stranded in a video game with 30 million players, the only ones without player tags. This means that if they die here, there is no coming back. The events pick back up in the real world, where Callister Inc is under fire for anomalies, which is the USS Callister crew taking credits from real players. After Kabir quits working for Callister, protagonist Nanette, who knows something is up, logs onto his computer and finds out the recently deceased creator Daly had created clones of her and her co-workers, who were the very anomalies CEO Walton wants to destroy. Nanette and Walton enter the game as players and come across their cloned versions. Aboard USS Callister, Walton unexpectedly attacks cloned Karl, and murders him. Nanette tries to stop Walton when they leave the game, but she is hit by a car and he takes her chip. He stirs more drama as he reenters the game and sends an invite to all of the players the USS Callister have robbed to their location. In the meantime, cloned Nanette enters the Heart of Infinity, where Daly’s clone is working, to find a way out of the game. He agrees to save everyone, but tries to convince her that he should be allowed to keep a copy of her in the game. Nanette refuses, he chokes her, but she throws a blade into his head, effectively killing him for good. She inserts the disc to save herself, waking up from the coma, but her crew is still trapped inside her head. The scene ends with Walton losing his company and all 30 million players, while Nanette communicates with the USS Callister watching over her, as the final clip pans to the stars above her apartment.
Execution: 5/5
Oftentimes, sequels aren’t anywhere close to as good as their original. However, I thought the second part to “USS Callister” was really well-made and striking on its own. The graphics of scenes inside the game are vibrant and artistic; you can tell it is an immersive video game. This sets up a cool contrast between the real world and the setting of the video game. The story was successfully funny, violent, active, and dramatic all at once. I loved the music scores because they set the scene and added the layers a piece like this requires.
Horror: 3/5
I would weigh this episode more light-hearted than frightening, although there are elements of both. All jumpscares were part of the overall melodramatic atmosphere, so nothing felt out of place when watching. I would point to the concept of being stuck in a video game to being particularly scary, especially since the five of them were up against 30 million players.
Plot Twists: 1/5
This story is predictable in the sense that it follows the structure of many speculative pieces before it. Because we are familiar with the characters and their characteristics, it makes the plot easier to follow along and predict their actions. Walton stabbing Karl might have been unexpected to the clones, but to us viewers, we knew Walton can be a bit of a wildcard whose mission was to exterminate the anomalies.
Originality: 4/5
It is not often that I could describe a Black Mirror episode as “humorous,” but “USS Callister: Into Infinity” balanced comedy with every other element. I give this episode a lot of props towards originality just because it ended the season with a bang I hadn’t felt in previous parts of the anthology. The plot and overall scenery had obvious ties to the space opera world as a whole, particularly to Star Trek and Star Wars. However, it maintained adherence to the universe of Black Mirror along with the characters to successfully integrate itself in a piece of itself, Black Mirror, and the world of science fiction.
Relevance: 3/5
As a concept of a space opera in itself, “USS Callister: Into Infinity” is not a necessarily realistic situation to be in. However, advancements in cloning technology in our modern world continue to pose moral dilemmas like the ones at Callister, Inc. The way Walton treats his workers is reflective of power dynamics in the real world. Something most notable to me was the way Nanette continued to be treated sexually by Daly, and is a commentary on the frequent objectification of women even in leadership positions.
One of my favorite parts about starting a new season of Black Mirror is finding Easter Eggs from previous episodes. If you aren’t familiar with the “Black Mirror Theory” fans speculate that every story is connected in the same universe. Recurring companies like Streamberry and Tuckersoft create an interesting parallel of a variety of character experiences. There’s often posters on walls that allude to the titles of past episodes, or logos fans have come to recognize. Whether you’re watching for the first time or planning to rewatch the show, look out for the way the word “juniper” is used throughout the series and this season especially. I won’t ramble on too much about all the Easter Eggs I’ve found, but I find it important to note that the ones that repeatedly appear validate fanbase curiosities and shape its interesting take on the anthology’s interconnectedness.
Overall, I felt a broad sense of satisfaction for what I watched. The thing that always draws me back to Black Mirror is that the writers are so successful in world-building and manifesting something shocking. Every episode presents something original, and makes for an intriguing watch. I was impressed at the creativity in Season 7 and it was 100% worth the wait.