It’s been four years since the last new season of Black Mirror, but finally, the cautionary sci-fi horror anthology series is back! Season 6 boasts some of the most ambitious and star-studded episodes of the series to date. Black Mirror has long had a reputation for edgy, mind-bending storytelling that puts everyone who watches it on edge. Has season 6 delivered yet another win for the series?
Join us on a journey into the terrifying depths of creator Charlie Brooker’s imagination as we review and explain all five episodes of Black Mirror season 6. There will be SPOILERS from this point on.
Episode 1: “Joan Is Awful”
Black Mirror season 6 starts out strong with “Joan Is Awful,” which is easily the most meta episode of the season (and, in my opinion, the best). The episode stars Schitt’s Creek alum Annie Murphy as Joan, a businesswoman who returns home from work one day to discover that Streamberry, Black Mirror’s analog for Netflix, has created a documentary about her life. And we’re not talking about a broad-strokes documentary, but a creepily accurate, if exaggerated, recreation of Joan’s day minute by minute, starting with the very day she discovers the program.
This episode is packed with chaotic joy. Not-Joan is portrayed by Salma Hayek, who is the first of many actors referred to by their actual names in the series. The first episode covers the awkward firing of an employee, Joan’s therapy session, private texts and a secret meeting with an ex-boyfriend; needless to say. How could all of these things appear on a TV show? Joan is furiously curious.
Of course, everyone in Joan’s life watches Joan Is Awful (the in-world program), and of course it leads to all sorts of issues, like her fÍance Krish (Avi Arad) leaving her after finding out about her secret rendezvous with her ex. The worst part: when Joan tries to pursue legal action, she’s told that the Terms and Conditions she signed for Streamberry permit them to use her image, likeness, and any data they gathered. They gathered data through her phone, thus the real-time recreation of events.
And the kicker: the company is also using Salma Hayek’s image in a similar manner. The entire program is CGI-generated. And because Joan did the thing most people do and just clicked through all the terms and conditions on her various devices, there’s legally nothing she can do to stop it.
“Joan Is Awful” is a rotating door of gloriously hilarious celebrity cameos
While “Joan Is Awful” has a bit of a slow-burn opening that relies heavily on Murphy’s performance, things soon shift into high gear when she decides to take action. Her idea is that if she does something incredibly embarrassing that then appears on the show, Selma Hayek will be mortified and personally intervene to keep Streamberry from using her likeness. To this end, Joan dresses up like a cheerleader, draws a d*ck on her forehead with lipstick, chugs a bunch of liquor and laxatives, and then barges into a church in the middle of a wedding and poops in the aisle. It’s a standout scene, for obvious reasons.
The episode then shifts to Salma Hayek’s perspective, where we discover that she is similarly wrapped up in a legal battle which prevents her from stopping Streamberry from using her likeness however they want. Hayek gives an absolutely brilliant performance, using her celebrity status to badger her lawyer into submission and commanding the scene whenever she’s onscreen. When she arrives unannounced at Joan’s house and realizes that she hasn’t even approved the TV show, the two then team up to go to Streamberry headquarters and trash the servers.
It’s all just as outrageous as it sounds; the buddy cop dynamic between Hayek and Murphy is amazing. They discover the dark secret of the Joan Is Awful show: there’s no big reason that Joan was picked for the program, she’s simply a normal enough person that Streamberry deemed her to be a good test subject for their new AI-driven programming. It’s revealed that they could generate a similar program for anyone using their service, and that they’re skewing the programming negative using descriptors like “awful” because it drives more engagement. It all hits pretty close to home.
After a run-in with Michael Cera, we get the episode’s last big twist: Annie Murphy herself is a CGI likeness of the real Joan (played by Kayla Lorette). She realizes at this point that all of her actions are things which are already done by the actual human Joan, who we’ll call “Source Joan” as the show does. With that in mind, Murphy shatters the quantum computer (goofily referred to as the “quamputer”), setting Streamberry back millions and destroying their hopes for this sort of AI-fueled programing.
The scene then shifts, and we see that Lorette’s Joan went through with this in her own life, aided by none other than actor Annie Murphy in the place of Salma Hayek.
It’s a lot to process, and it’s just the first episode!
The episode ends with the real Joan picking up the pieces of her life and finally feeling like she’s “the main character in her own story.” It’s a surprisingly heartwarming ending for Black Mirror, and I thought it fit with the lighter tone of the episode. Annie Murphy (the actor) shows up in the ending too, showing how both of them have remained connected despite being under separate house arrests for their infiltration of Streamberry.
“Joan Is Awful” exemplifies the type of timely storytelling which has always been one of Black Mirror’s biggest strengths. It’s a fantastic way to start the season.
Black Mirror Bullet Points
- It’s nice to see Annie Murphy make the leap from something light and comedic like Schitt’s Creek to Black Mirror. She still leans into comedy, but she also portrays the crushing anxiety of her character’s life spiraling out of control.
- Annie’s fÍance Krish is played by The Walking Dead’s Avi Nash. He just appeared in Silo as a love interest, so it feels a little like he’s being typecast. Don’t hate it! He does it well.
- I also loved to see Ben Barnes pop up as Joan’s ex Mac in the Joan Is Awful show. Because of course he would be the actor whose likeness is used for a steamy tryst.
- When Salma Hayek’s version of Joan logs onto Streamberry in the TV show, the Joan in that version is played by Cate Blanchett. There’s a pretty hilarious line later in the episode where Annie Murphy’s Joan asks Hayek how Cate Blanchett would feel about some of their actions, to which Hayek snaps, “Fuck Cate Blanchett!”
- And speaking of hilarious lines, “That wasn’t me, that’s Salma Hayek!” is up there too. There are so many funny lines in this one.
- Salma Hayek’s contract says Streamberry is allowed to use her likeness “up to and beyond defecation,” which is why they can keep the church-pooping scene.
- Speaking of that church scene, if you stick around until after the credits, you’re treated to a brief clip of “Source Joan” going through it. The scene with “Source Joan” is nowhere near as triumphant as Murphy’s version, due to how the AI tweaked things to be more dramatic for TV.
- It’s a little weird that this cautionary tale of a streaming company abusing AI for profits is produced by Netflix. Streamberry could only exist as it does in the series with Netflix’s blessing, even as the show takes some very pointed shots at the company.
Verdict
“Joan Is Awful” is classic Black Mirror, a story about the intersection of technology and morality in modern society with some wonderfully mind-bending twists. But a huge part of what makes it so good is the sheer chaotic glee of the A-list cast involved, and the razor-sharp writing. The timeliness of this episode is stunning given all the recent AI discourse. It deserves to be counted among the show’s finest hours.
Episode grade: A+
Episode 2: “Loch Henry”
“Loch Henry” ditches the sci-fi ideas for a more down-to-Earth true-crime story about a pair of indie filmmakers who discover a dark secret in an idyllic Scottish town.
The set up for this one is relatively straightforward: boyfriend-girlfriend filmmaking team Davis (Samuel Blenkin) and Pia (Myha’la Herrold) go to Davis’ hometown of Loch Henry in order to make a documentary. Once there, they decide to focus on a dark story from the town’s past: the tale of local serial killer Iain Adair. Dare murdered a slew of tourists (including Davis’ police officer father, who succumbed to his injuries later) before taking his own life.
Davis is initially reluctant to dredge up such painful memories. The rest of the Loch Henry residents are similarly divided about it; Davis’ childhood friend Stuart (Game of Thrones alum Daniel Portman) hopes it will bring more tourists to the fading village. Stuart’s father Richard (John Hannah) is upset at having to relive it all, and Davis’ mother Janet (Monica Dolan) hopes it will give her dead husband the closure his story deserves.
At the heart of the episode is the idea of exploiting horrific crimes for profit. “Loch Henry” is a nerve-wracking tonal shift after “Joan Is Awful;” while that episode leaned heavily into comedy, this one is like a slowly unraveling murder mystery.
The cast, writing and cinematography continue to stand out. Blenkin and Herrold have great chemistry, and Portman is terrific. As much as “Loch Henry” is a cautionary tale about the danger of using human suffering to create content, it also feels like a love letter to indie filmmaking. The episode balances things well, pulling the viewer back and forth between empathizing with the characters and reacting in horror to what they uncover.
Following a pitch meeting where Pia and Davis try to sell their documentary to Streamberry, they go to actually investigate the house where Dare’s murders took place. It’s deeply unsettling. While they try to make light of the horrific things they discovered in the basement on their drive back to Davis’ house, they get into a car accident. Davis has to spend the night at the local hospital, where Hannah’s Richard also happens to be spending some time thanks to tripping down some stairs earlier in the episode. At the same time, Pia makes a horrific discovery: some of the video tapes they’d been using to film their documentary, which were labeled as old Bergerac episodes, actually contain footage of the murders. And Iain Adair wasn’t the person behind many of the murders: it was Davis’ parents.
Things spiral quickly from there. Pia is accidentally killed while wading across a river in an attempt to escape Davis’ mother Monica. Monica, believing Pia got away knowing the truth, takes her own life. Streamberry produces a truecrime documentary about Davis and Pia’s experience which hits harder since it’s about deaths which just occurred rather than several that happened decades earlier. While “Loch Henry: Truth Will Out” wins a BAFTA and brings tourists flooding into the town, Davis is left to suffer.
Black Mirror Bullet Points
- The script remains razor sharp. There are a lot of standout lines, especially in Stuart’s jokes. “Total wipeout. Farmicide,” was one of my favorites.
- Tourists in Stuart’s bar at the end of the episode are wearing masks similar to the one Davis’ mother used in the murders. The way the episode juxtaposes that with Stuart, staring at a mask-shaped BAFTA statue as he breaks down into tears, is a powerful note to end on.
- When Stuart and Davis are first telling the story of Iain Adair, they say that there were eight murders. But when Monica is taking out the tapes at the end to leave for Davis, there are a lot more than eight tapes. So they killed even more people, and some were covered up so well they were never even on the cops’ radar.
- Monica Dolan turns in an incredible performance as Janet. Especially during some of the later scenes when the truth comes out, her acting is terrifying.
- Streamberry basically sidelines Davis at the end; when someone comes up to meet him at the BAFTA party, the Streamberry producer literally steps in front of him to pitch the person on starring as Pia in a dramatic adaptation of the story. As horrific as the murders in this episode are, the leering nature of the documentary and how it’s handled by Streamberry are equally terrible in their own way.
- The episode does a great job setting up Pia’s eventual fate. Davis mentions early on that hikers die in accidents due to the unforgiving wilderness of the area, and we get multiple scenes establishing that Pia is out of her element there. When she slips and dies in the river, it’s completely believable, not some cruel coincidence meant to twist the knife.
- When Pia, Davis, and Stuart go to the room where the murders took place, they bring lemon juice to squirt all over the crime scene so that it looks like there’s blood everywhere under a black light. However, when they turn on the light there already is actual blood all over the room. While Davis and Pia are ultimately victims, they too were exploiting the situation.
Verdict
“Loch Henry” feels like a very different episode for Black Mirror, almost so much that it could have been part of a different show altogether. It isn’t quite the instant classic that is “Joan Is Awful,” but it’s still a top tier episode of Black Mirror.
Episode grade: A
Episode 3: “Beyond the Sea”
“Beyond the Sea” is an 80-minute epic that follows David (Josh Hartnett) and Cliff (Aaron Paul), two astronauts in the late 1960s who have robotic “replica” bodies on Earth. When they’re not working on pressing matters on their space station, the two astronauts can use a specially designed key to send their mind into their replicas while their physical bodies sleep.
It’s a heady concept, though not one we haven’t seen before in things like Avatar. If “Loch Henry” put the sci-fi side of the series on mute, “Beyond the Sea” hooks it up to the speakers. It’s also an extremely character-driven piece; the differences between Cliff and David’s family lives are explored fairly early on, with David and his wife having a more passionate metropolitan life together while Cliff and his wife Lana (Kate Mara) have moved out into the countryside and are experiencing some strain.
The way Black Mirror explores the replica concept is pretty cool; it’s an idea that makes sense in the context of astronauts, giving them a way to still see their loved ones while they’re up in space for years at a time. Paul, Hartnett, and Mara all bring their acting A games, and the performances are a big part of what makes this episode work. What holds it back from being quite as good as it could be is the length. “Beyond the Sea” feels like it’s about 20-30 minutes longer than it needs to be.
Following the brutal murder of David’s family and the destruction of his replica by an anti-robot hippie cult, he and Cliff eventually come to an agreement where Cliff allows David to go to Earth using his replica. It starts out as a one-time thing, but David keeps asking for more and more…up to the point where he becomes obsessed with Cliff’s wife and tries to seduce her.
While the near-affair was somewhat predictable, it goes in a far darker direction than I expected. Lana turns down David; she and Cliff may have a strained relationship, but she has no interest in being seduced by another man who is clearly playing her. The viewer sees David use some of the exact same moves with Lana that he used with his own wife during the episode’s opening, and it is skin-crawlingly creepy.
Cliff eventually finds out that Davis has been trying to put the moves on Lana after discovering a bunch of naked drawing that David has made of her on the space station. Cliff and Lana reconcile and Cliff cuts David off from using his replica.
It doesn’t take. Hartnett goes to dark depths as he convey’s David’s dark side; David tricks Cliff so he’s trapped outside the space station, allowing allow David one last trip to Earth where he murders Cliff’s wife and son in an attempt to teach him about the pain of loss he’s endured since losing his own family.
It’s a horrific, dark, somewhat ambiguous ending. After discovering the bodies of Lana and his son, Cliff returns to the space station, where David invites him to sit. The episode ends with them having a staredown as the space station continues drifting through space. Since it is a two-man vessel, neither can kill the other without sacrificing their own life. Instead, they’re stuck up there together.
While “Beyond the Sea” was plenty compelling, its long run-time feels excessive. There are elements of greatness here, but it doesn’t have the thematic ambition and tight plotting of the previous two episodes. But it makes up for that with sheer horror; this is one of the more disturbing episodes of the season.
Black Mirror Bullet Points
- In one scene, Lana is reading Valley of the Dolls, a book about three cosmopolitan friends trying to make it as actors in the big city. David takes this as evidence that he was right about her being a social butterfly. But Lana rebukes him, saying it’s a guilty pleasure read. This is a good analogy for their relationship, with David making possessive assumptions that aren’t quite accurate.
- Speaking of books, at one point David is reading Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, which is a collection of short stories that deal with the intersection of technology and human psychology. He also recommends a Robert A. Heinlein book called The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress to Lana. Have to love sci-fi books sneaking into a sci-fi show!
- Aaron Paul needs a special shout-out for his acting; since his replica is inhabited by multiple different characters, he really had to pull out the stops. He nails it. The scene where he breaks down in tears as David is a particular showstopper.
Verdict
“Beyond the Sea” is ambitious, but it drags. “Beyond the Sea” is a character study about transferring trauma and jealousy; it isn’t as high concept as this show often gets. It’s still excellent by any standard, but the preceding two episodes blow it away.
Episode grade: B+
Episode 4: “Mazey Day”
The fourth episode of Black Mirror season 6 is a tight, expedient affair that’s barely over 40 minutes long. It has the opposite problem of “Beyond the Sea”: the twists and turns don’t land as well as they might had the episodes given them more time to breathe.
This one’s all about the paparazzi! Bo (Zazie Beetz) is a struggling photographer taking pictures of celebrities to help make ends meet. She begins having second thoughts about her chosen profession after she photographs a soap opera star having a scandalous gay love affair; he takes his own life when the photos get out.
We then skip over to the Czech Republic, where we’re introduced to the other main character of the episode: Mazey Day (Clara Rugaard). Like Bo, Mazey is struggling with what she’s doing in life. She also causes a death of an innocent person after she takes a bunch of magic mushrooms to stave off anxiety about a script she’s shooting and hits them with her car. She takes off from the scene.
The episode then cruises along at mach speed, with weeks passing from one scene to the next until we get to the climax. Bo’s out of the paparazzi game following her experience with the soap opera star, but she’s late on rent and tempted back in by a huge payday offered for the first photo of Mazey Day, who has disappeared from the public eye shortly after her secret car accident.
The episode feels choppy. We see Mazey kill someone, and then find out through second-hand through Bo that Mazey stopped showing up to set, started acting more erratic, and was eventually fired from the production she was working on before flying home to Los Angeles. It’s coherent if you’re paying close attention, but it would be more clear if the characters were given more attention.
Surprise, it’s a werewolf!
What follows is one of the weirdest twists I’ve ever seen on Black Mirror. Bo eventually gets a lucky tip that leads to Mazey’s trailer. Unbeknownst to the paparazzi, Mazey has been taken to a special retreat in the woods by a shady “doctor” to help her detox. Bo and the other paparazzi eventually follow her there, and when they break in, things get real strange real fast.
Bo notices that Mazey is chained to a bed, and decides to free the suffering actress. The paparazzi with Bo snap photos while she shouts at them to help her. The editing in this scene is terrific; the blinding flashes assault the eye, selling how awful it is that these tabloid photographers are snapping photos of someone who is literally in chains and struggling through a bad detox.
Or, at least, that’s what the show wants you to think Mazey is doing…but we soon find out Mazey has a different problem altogether when she gets a glimpse of the full moon through her skylight. We then find out that Mazey didn’t hit any old person in the Czech Republic; she hit a werewolf, which bit her when she got out of the car to investigate. All the erratic behavior that led to her getting fired wasn’t just coping with killing someone, it was coping with becoming a werewolf.
Yes, it’s a pretty bonkers twist, but Black Mirror goes all in on it. The last third of the episode is a wild monster chase, as Mazey wolfs out and mauls several paparazzi (who continue taking pictures right through to the end) before chasing after Bo. It all culminates with Mazey attacking a nearby restaurant and killing everyone inside. At the last moment, Bo manages to get an abandoned gun dropped by a police officer and shoots Mazey.
She then takes the camera from one of her dying friends. Mazey begs for Bo to kill her, but Bo doesn’t want the blood on her hands. Instead, she gives Mazey the gun and prepares to take some photos. The camera pulls out of the restaurant as a shot breaks the night.
“Mazey Day” is easily the strangest episode of Black Mirror season 6. It doesn’t quite hold together as well as the other episodes; werewolves are pretty far outside the sort of things the show normally covers. Even with the small bits of foreshadowing the show does for the twist, it still feels like it comes completely out of nowhere. Both Zazie Beetz and Clara Rugaard turn in solid performances as Bo and Mazey, but without enough screen time to really let their characters shine, “Mazey Day” ends up feeling like a wild, campy romp. It’s fun, but left me wanting more depth.
Verdict
While “Mazey Day” has some strong ideas about celebrity and privacy, it’s the most uneven episode of the season. The shift into gozno monster movie is too abrupt, and it doesn’t give the actors enough time to show off their talents. Not a bad episode of television by any stretch, but the weakest one here.
Episode grade: B-
Episode 5: “Demon 79”
Like “Mazey Day,” the final episode of the season gets pretty bonkers pretty fast. Shoe department store worker Needa (Anjana Vasan) is generally under appreciated and forced to face racism and misogyny regularly in her 1970s UK workplace. Needa isn’t prone to confrontation and often swallows her anger over this abuse, with the occasional fantasy about meting out bloody, violent retribution as a salve.
When she’s forced to start taking lunch in the musty basement of the store on account of her co-workers not liking the smell of her Indian food, Needa stumbles on a strange rune hidden in the former owner’s desk. As she picks it up she pricks her finger, getting some of her blood on it. Later that night, at home, she suddenly hears a voice speaking to her.
It’s the demon Gaap, played with mischievous aplomb by Paapa Essiedu. So that he won’t terrify her quite so much, Gaap takes the form of a pop star whose music Needla likes and informs her that by activating the rune, she has set an apocalypse in motion. Unless she sacrifices three people by murdering them over the course of the next three days, the world will end in a fiery blaze.
This is another pretty out-there concept, but “Demon 79” makes it work by committing to it so fully that you can’t help but be swept along for the ride. The episode utilizes its ’70s aesthetic, as well as the fantastic chemistry between Vasan and Essiedu, to great effect. Essentially, the entire rest of the episode boils down to a funny demon trying to convince a reluctant, fairly normal person to go around killing people. There are mishaps along the way, and Needa is understandably reluctant to become a full-fledged murderer.
One of the things that helps her is that Gaap can see people’s futures and pasts; it’s easier to kill someone when you know they are a sexual predator who’s abusing their own daughter. Gaap often volunteers this information without being asked, or forces Needa to see visions of these misdeeds to strengthen her resolve.
Some of the situations Needa finds herself in are funny; others are surprisingly heartbreaking. If “Beyond the Sea” was too long and “Mazey Day” too short, “Demon 79” is just long enough to give its wacky story the room it needs to wrap up on its own terms without overstaying its welcome. We have more than enough time to come to care about Needa and Gaap’s fates; this murder mission involves consequences for the demon too, since if they fail he will be cast out into the lonely void of darkness away from all his demon cohorts.
This multi-day murder spree culminates with a nice bit of societal commentary, as Needa overhears a sleazy politician named Michael Smart (David Shields) promising to return Britain to more xenophobic times. She insists that Gaap use his powers to foresee Smart’s future, which is filled with horrible deeds that will push the country into dark times. Finally making a choice to kill someone fully of her own volition, Needa decides Smart will be her third and final sacrifice.
She never quite gets to finish the deed though, as the police finally catch her while she stands over Sharp with her trusty head-crushing hammer. The following interrogation casts doubt on whether the entire thing was just in Needa’s mind the whole time…until the clock strikes midnight and sirens begin blaring. As nuclear missiles rain down on England, Gaap offers to take Needa with him into the void so that they can share eternal banishment together. The episode ends with them walking off to their fated end, while a nuclear apocalypse whites out the screen behind them.
Black Mirror Bullet Points
- Gaap dials 666 for the headquarters to ask about why the rune didn’t register one of Needa’s kills. (It was because the second man she killed had murdered someone, thus disqualifying them from the ritual because they’re “already playing for home team,” as the demons put it.)
- When Gaap shows Needa the politician’s future, she sees how he will plunge Britain into a darker, racist period of governance. One of the visions she sees is a robot dog. These featured prominently in the Black Mirror season 4 episode “Metalhead.”
Verdict
“Demon 79” is an interesting episode; conceptually it strays pretty far from the show’s usual focus on sci-fi ideas, but it still feels like Black Mirror, with its subversive story and gleefully bleak ending. Ultimately it is a little less powerful than some other episodes of the series, but it’s executed so well it doesn’t really matter. It’s a weird, compelling way to end the season, perfectly encapsulating both its strengths and weaknesses.
Episode grade: B
Season grade: A-
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