Black Mirror returns with a new set of episodes for season 6 that continue to tell grim satirical stories about society with an unpredictable flavor added to each narrative. The episodes are now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Episode 1: Joan is Awful
Joan lives a very mediocre life that she isn’t too happy about and wishes she had more agency within her story. She works in middle management for a big corporation and has a loving yet fairly boring fiance even though she isn’t over her ex-boyfriend.
On one particularly tough day, Joan lets one of her employees know that they are being laid off. She visits her therapist before meeting Mac her ex-boyfriend, after he lets her know he’s in town. Joan decides that it was a mistake and leaves before it gets too far.
She reaches home for dinner with Krish, her fiance, and they sit down to watch something on Streamberry, a streaming service. They find a show called “Joan is Awful” starring Salma Hayek who looks eerily similar to Joan.
Joan soon realizes that the show is almost an exact recreation of her day, except it makes her look like a horrible person. Krish leaves after seeing her chat with her ex and she’s fired from her job for technically breaking her NDA after her character revealed information on the show.
Her lawyer explains that she signed away her life story to Streamberry when she accepted the terms and conditions while signing up and she can’t sue Salma Hayek either because the show is completely CGI using a digital likeness of Hayek instead.
She decides to grab Hayek’s attention by doing something despicable like disrupting a wedding at a church and succeeds. Salma Hayek herself visits her lawyer and learns that since she signed away her image rights, they can make her do a number of things.
Salma visits Joan and together they come up with a plan to visit Streamberry headquarters and destroy the quantum computer that is creating the show. They manage to infiltrate the building where Joan learns that she’s fiction level one of “source Joan” with Annie Murphy’s likeness.
She goes to destroy the quamputer as the CEO of Streamberry pleads with her not to. Joan realizes that she has no control over what she does since “source Joan” has already done it and she goes ahead and destroys the quamputer.
In the real world, Joan and Annie Murphy infiltrated the Streamberry headquarters and set the events in motion. They both eventually are put under house arrest and are allowed to move on with their lives.
Episode 2: Loch Henry
Davis McCardle and his girlfriend Pia travel to his hometown to film a documentary about a man who protects certain eggs from collectors. They stay at his house and visit the local pub the next day where they meet Davis’ childhood friend Stuart.
Pia wonders why the town is totally empty and Stuart and Davis explain that it is because of Iain Adair. Iain was a young man who lived on a farm nearby and was found to have tortured and killed 8 people over several years.
Davis’ father, Kenny, was an officer who was following the case and was shot by Iain, eventually getting MRSA while recovering from his wounds and dying from it.
Pia feels that the story of Iain Adair is a better subject for their documentary and Davis reluctantly agrees after she and Stuart convince him. They begin cutting up old footage and news clippings of the case but the prospective producers suggest they go deeper.
When Davis’ mother, Janet, learns that they’re covering the murders, she agrees to help them because according to her Iain ruined their lives. They interview her and then go to Iain’s house to get footage of the dungeon in his basement where the murders take place.
They use Kenny’s old tape recorder that already contains a tape and record over it. On their way back home, they meet with an accident and Davis has to stay in the hospital while Pia heads back home with Janet.
While Pia is digitizing their recordings for the day, she lets the tape run and it reveals something horrifying. Kenny and Janet were the real people behind the murders with Iain just a pawn who recorded most of it.
Pia is terrified and she heads out of the house in the middle of the night to get a signal and call Davis. Janet finds out what Pia saw and goes out after her but isn’t able to find her.
Pia tries to hide but stumbles into a river and hits her head on a stone, dying instantly. Janet realizes that her secret is out so she keeps aside all of their recordings and trophies for Davis to find and then hangs herself.
Eventually, a film is made about Davis’ parents with his blessing and it even wins a BAFTA as everyone capitalizes on his grief while he’s just forced to live life with the trauma of it all.
Episode 3: Beyond the Sea
David Ross and Cliff Stanfield are two astronauts on an important mission aboard a space station in 1969 while there are carbon synthetic replicas of them back on Earth with their respective families.
They use an uplink system to transfer consciousness into their replicas and spend time on Earth where they are basically celebrities who are aware they aren’t “real”.
One night, a group of fanatics intrude into David’s home, massacre his family, and destroy his replica because it’s against the rules of nature in their eyes. David goes into a deep depression in space and Cliff begins to worry.
He and his wife Lana agree that David might benefit from some time in Cliff’s replica. He begins to spend a little time each week on Earth in Cliff’s replica, painting, and spending time with Lana.
David develops feelings for Lana and makes an advance on her but she pushes back knowing that it isn’t her husband. He also hurts Cliff’s son after the boy ruins his painting.
Cliff gives David the benefit of the doubt until he finds drawings of Lana in David’s quarters and argues with him about it. When David asks to apologize to Lana in person or see her one last time, Cliff says that she doesn’t want to be anywhere near David.
David fakes an emergency and when Cliff is outside checking on it, David goes into his replica. As soon as he realizes that David was in his replica, he rushes back to find his wife and son brutally slaughtered.
He returns to the space station where David is sitting nonchalantly, as Cliff now has experienced the same thing that David had to.
Episode 4: Mazey Day
Bo is a paparazzi photographer who is always uncertain of where her next paycheck is going to come from. When she captures a former television star having a secret rendezvous with a man, the star offers to buy the pictures from her but she drives away.
Days later, the news reports that the star killed himself and Bo feels disillusioned by the job she’s doing and how it affects the stars they go after.
Mazey Day is an actress who is shooting something in the Czech Republic when she gets high one night and goes out for a drive. She ends up hitting someone in the torrential rains and keeps it a secret from everyone else.
She is soon in the news after showing up to filming with erratic behavior and eventually is asked to leave the production altogether. Bo has taken up a job as a barista when she is approached by one of her old paparazzi buddies.
He says that there’s a fee of 30 thousand for a picture of Mazey Day and Bo is instantly pulled back into the thick of it. She finds out that Mazey is staying at a producer’s house.
She stakes out the place as Mazey is struggling with her mental faculties and is visited by a doctor who says that he’s booked out a private place where she can recover.
She follows Mazey’s car which stops at a diner outside the city. The driver walks up to Bo’s car and slashes the tires before driving off. The diner attendant tells Bo that there’s a rehab clinic nearby that has been booked out for one person.
She calls her old buddy and they head to the resort in the middle of the forest. They are followed by another set of photographers who are after the payday as well.
They break into the place and find Mazey with a chain around her neck looking very sick. Bo unties her as Mazey gets flashbacks of the night. The person she hit wasn’t human but something else.
Suddenly, the sky reveals a full moon and Mazey begins transforming into a werewolf as Bo and the others make a break for it. Mazey kills two of them but Bo and her friend make it to the diner nearby.
They try to warn everyone inside which includes a cop but Mazey makes it there and starts killing everyone. Bo is the last one left but she gets a hold of the cop’s gun and shoots Mazey.
She transforms back and asks Bo to kill her but Bo places the gun in her hands to let her do the job herself.
Episode 5: Demon 79
Nida is an Indian immigrant in Britain in 1979 who works as a sales assistant at a department store. She’s subject to racist remarks from her colleague on a regular basis but is too meek to do something about it.
After being asked to eat in the basement because someone complained about the smell of her lunch, she finds news clippings of murders in the past and a talisman that is marked with her blood while retrieving it.
When she gets home, the talisman starts talking to her in her head. It introduces itself as Gaap, a demon who tells her that she must make 3 human sacrifices over the next 3 days or bring Armageddon.
She walks out of the house to a nearby canal trying to tell herself that Gaap isn’t real but he follows her everywhere. A man walks up to her and asks her what’s wrong but Gaap says he’s the perfect first target because he molests his daughter.
Nida smacks the man on the head with a brick and he falls into the canal. She goes back home, completely in shock at what she’s done.
Gaap encourages her and tells her that she has just two more kills to complete. Meanwhile, the police are informed of the man’s disappearance and when his body eventually turns up.
The second day arrives and Gaap tells Nida that she needs to go about her day as normal or else people will get suspicious. She goes to work but doesn’t target anyone. Gaap suggests getting a drink to give her confidence so she goes to the nearby bar.
Nida gets two drinks for herself and sees Keith Holligan, a man who was charged with manslaughter for killing his wife a few years ago. She figures he’s the perfect target because he was lewd with her a few days ago at the store too.
She follows him out but when he sees her, he thinks she wants to sleep with him and invites her back home. She goes to his place and kills him but before she can leave, Keith’s brother shows up and she has to kill him too.
Gaap tells her that she’s completed her 3 kills but when he checks the talisman, it hasn’t counted one of them. He finds out that Keith didn’t count because he was a murderer and they don’t count are pure souls.
Nida has to make one more kill when she sets her sights on Michael Smart, the local MP. She decides on it after asking Gaap to show her his future where he goes on a racist and xenophobic campaign that leads to many deaths.
Gaap tries to talk her out of it because Hell would be very unhappy if he died before his time. However, she is determined and begins planning how she’ll do it.
The chief of police is right on her trail and follows her as she’s trailing Smart. She catches up to him and almost kills him before the officer arrives and stops her.
They take her in for questioning and she tells them that if she doesn’t make a kill before midnight, nuclear war will break out. The police think she’s lost her mind as midnight approaches.
Gaap tells her that this was initiation too and since he’s failed, he’s going to be cast out into oblivion so he asks her if she would like to join.
The two of them walk toward eternal damnation at midnight just as the first bombs drop and engulf the earth in flames.
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