NetflixBlack Mirror Season 7 is back, baby! Instead of merely scaring you, Charlie Brooker is setting out to break your heart with the ending of ‘Hotel Reverie’.
With cutting social commentary like no other, Black Mirror has had a hold on us since 2011. It swapped to Netflix in Season 3 (which is a debate all its own), though each new season never feels guaranteed. Getting another handful or morsels feels like Christmas you don’t know if you’re allowed to attend.
Unusually, Black Mirror is choosing to bring back some of its past ideas in Season 7. We’ve got an official sequel in USS Callister: Into Infinity, with a more subtle nod to interactive movie Bandersnatch in Plaything.
The story that sets up a potential comparison to smash-hit episode San Junipero is ‘Hotel Reverie’, though the Black Mirror Season 7 episode ending quickly proves there’s much more tragedy than meets the eye. Warning: spoilers ahead!
Black Mirror Season 7 ends Hotel Reverie with unexpected heartbreak
After Brandy successfully escapes from the data lock, ‘Hotel Reverie Reborn’ becomes a smash hit on fictional streamer Streamberry. Kimmy (Awkwafina) is thrilled with the film’s success, but Brandy is dismayed by what happened while the system was stuck.
As a thank you gift, Brandy is sent a USB and phone by Kimmy. The clip of Dorothy’s outtake acting with a phone is on there, with Brandy’s phone directly linking to the clip. Dorothy hears Brandy’s voice when she answers, and the two are able to say goodbye one last time.
NetflixThe lead-up to this is more complex. Looking for a leading role that isn’t merely a guy’s sidekick, Brandy catches wind of a project to reboot acclaimed 1940s film Hotel Reverie. Her condition? She plays the male lead role, Dr. Alex Palmer, just as company RedReam is advertising.
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What Brandy doesn’t know is Kimmy, head of RedReam, has something different in mind for filming, with Brandy failing to read the full instructions that come with her rehearsal package.
Judith Keyworth (Harriet Walter), head of the now-failing Keyworth Studios, is also skeptical about the filming process. But everyone needs this to work for different reasons, meaning filming day comes quickly.
It’s only when Brandy gets there that she finds out the real deal – instead of a live recast or deepfaking, she’ll be digitally inserted into a perfect AI remake of the original movie via a “Mesmerizer”. Nothing is real, but Brandy has to perform in line with the original timings or the whole film will need to be reset.
After a brief freakout, Brandy initially hits all her beats. She’s starstruck working opposite “troubled” actress Dorothy Chambers, who notoriously died in real life shortly after making the real movie. The AI version of Chambers believes she is Clara, the woman she plays in ‘Hotel Reverie’. When Alex is supposed to play a piano solo of Clara’s favorite song, Brandy doesn’t realise she needs to do so perfectly without help. She doesn’t, and this throws the film off course.
NetflixAs we’ve already been told by this stage, deviating from the script could be dangerous. New plotlines will create holes, and it’s clear the team doesn’t really understand the knock-on effects this could cause. Brandy’s bad playing means a drink meant to poison Clara arrives at her table, when it should have accidentally killed one of the guests. Instead, Brandy throws the drink when Clara isn’t looking – in a desperate attempt to get things back on track – but said guest’s dog drinks it instead.
The action completely changes, with Brandy fighting to get Clara back on course. Getting her attention by calling her ‘Dorothy,’ the two have a heart-to-heart that clearly builds romantic tension. The scene breaks, and Kimmy tells Brandy things have changed too much for the original ending to play out. The team behind the scenes scrambles to come up with other routes to get there, but as more goes wrong, disaster strikes.
When the team tries to reset the film and pull Brandy out, the system has overloaded to the point where it crashes. First visually, then sound is cut off entirely, meaning Kimmy can no longer feed Brandy direction. This happens as Clara and Alex reach their first kiss scene. With everyone around them frozen in time while the film unofficially pauses.
Not knowing how long they’re going to be stuck, Brandy reveals her true identity and tries to explain the concept of what’s going on to Clara. Telling her she’s really Dorothy, Clara refuses to believe any of it, even if she had seemed to be gaining more sentience beforehand.
NetflixThey have a fight, with Brandy apologizing. The next day, Dorothy tries to find a way out, breaking the confines of the set to be exposed to the full data lock. She finds out the truth about her real life, returning to Brandy without sharing what she’s learned.
Time in the film moves much more quickly than it does in real life, meaning months have passed inside with the RedReam team working on a fix in a matter of hours. In this time, Brandy and Dorothy fall madly in love.
When a fix is finally found, Kimmy tells Brandy they’re picking up at the scene they left off. This means any of Clara’s memories – from finding out she’s really Dorothy to her feelings for Brandy – will be completely wiped. Before Brandy can get them to stop, the scene reverts, and the woman she fell in love with disappears in front of her eyes.
The only choice left is for Brandy to get to the end credits and say the final iconic line so she can return to real life. If not, she’ll die.
While Brandy manages to get through the beats of the inspector and husband Claude’s side plot, the final scene doesn’t go to plan. Claude is supposed to be the one shot by police, instead strangling Brandy and leading Clara to shoot him instead. When Brandy tries to take the fall for her, Clara starts shooting the police officers, getting shot in return. Brandy is in tears, cradling Clara as she dies. She utters the magic line – “I’ll be yours forevermore” – and the credits roll.
Brandy comes back around, with the team deciding to pitch the reboot as the ultimate tragedy. This takes us to our ending, which is as heartbreaking as you can imagine.
Hotel Reverie is a 180 criticism of AI from Charlie Brooker
Normally, Black Mirror episodes tell you evolving tech is going to ruin everything. From memories stuffed inside a teddy bear to constantly being rated through your phone, it’s all misery. That’s why it’s a surprise ‘Hotel Reverie’ is one of the few episodes ever to have a more emotional take.
NetflixIn all likelihood, Black Mirror Season 7 Episode 3 has reminded you of (in my view, the all-time best) San Junipero. Through a digital system made to store the consciousness of people who have died, Yorkie and Kelly get their happy ending when they live together digitally, happy ever after. ‘Hotel Reverie’ is the yin to ‘San Junipero’s’ yang, preventing our lovebirds from keeping hold of their romance.
But what is Brooker trying to tell us about AI here? Instead of their unchecked and expanded sentience destroying the world, it destroys themselves – just like a human. Clara/Dorothy is tortured after learning about her real-life history, falling into the comfort of the type of love she wanted to have all those years ago. Even when Clara is reset, it’s implied she has some lingering sense of who Brandy once was to her.
‘Hotel Revierie’ also tells us AI can mean more than just a threat to humans. Even though Brandy knows the stakes and context, that doesn’t stop her from falling in love with something that isn’t real. Being in the set is the most fulfilled she’s seemingly been in a long time, so are we collectively handling the AI debate completely wrong?
Leave it to Brooker to get us asking the hard questions… but don’t worry, there’s plenty of technological misery elsewhere in Season 7.
Black Mirror Season 7 is streaming on Netflix now. For more, check out the best Season 6 Easter eggs, how to sign up for Streamberry, and our favorite episodes of all time.