Black Mirror Season 7's Hotel Reverie Tries To Recapture That San Junipero Magic – Here's Why It Fails

This article contains a discussion of suicide.

Stop reading right now if you haven't watched the third episode of "Black Mirror" season 7, titled "Hotel Reverie" — massive spoilers ahead.

The new season of "Black Mirror" — its seventh outing total and fourth on Netflix, after starting its life on the United Kingdom's Channel 4 — features an episode called "Hotel Reverie," that stars Issa Rae as a movie star named Brandy Friday who's presented with an intriguing opportunity. She can play the lead in an old movie called "Hotel Reverie" (which pretty closely resembles "Casablanca") that featured an actress named Dorothy Chambers (Emma Corrin) when it was made decades prior, replacing the original male lead who played Dr. Alex Palmer ... thanks to a technology called ReDream that puts Brandy into a digital dimension where the movie takes place around her. Opposite Dorothy — who plays the heiress Clara Ryce-Lechere — Brandy has to navigate the digital world as Dr. Palmer, but when she stops following the script, the ReDream team realizes the implications could be dire.

That all sounds cool in theory. It is not cool in practice. In fact, it's extremely dull. Even talented performers like Rae and Corrin can barely sell this, to say nothing of supporting players Harriet Walter (as Judith Keyworth, the head of the failing Keyworth Studios) and Awkwafina (as ReDream representative Kimmy), who do their best with weak material. The episode is just ... boring! Worst of all, it's trying to do the "San Junipero" thing again, mimicking one of the show's best-ever episodes, but with seriously diminishing results.

A beautiful take on a queer relationship that takes place in a digital dimension has been done already by "Black Mirror," and they did it way better the first time around. In 2016, the episode "San Junipero," which was written by showrunner and creator Charlie Brooker and directed by Owen Harris, released on Netflix along with the rest of the show's third season, and fans met young lovers Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) and Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who themselves meet at a nightclub in the 1980s in a fictional town called San Junipero. Yorkie is much more reserved than Kelly and not necessarily as confident in her sexuality, but after the two spend the night together, they form a relationship, at which point the episode introduces the signature "Black Mirror" twist.

San Junipero isn't a real town, and the episode isn't set in the 1980s. San Junipero is a fictional reality and simulation where elderly people can visit their already-deceased loved ones, and all of the visitors can choose the body and timeframe that they'd prefer the most. Yorkie, who was paralyzed in a car accident in real life after trying to come out to her parents, wants to be properly euthanized to go to San Junipero, so she marries Kelly in the real world and the two ultimately end up in San Junipero together when Kelly, who is terminally ill, chooses to reunite with her there.

Not only does "Hotel Reverie" go against "San Junipero's" radically happy ending — which was admittedly a very left-field choice for a show as brutal as "Black Mirror" — but it's just not even close when it comes to the sheer quality. "San Junipero" is a masterpiece, and "Hotel Reverie" is a weak knockoff; the Channel to the former's Chanel.

To say Brandy Friday's experience remaking "Hotel Reverie" with ReDream is a disaster is ... an understatement. Overwhelmed by the digital reconstruction of the film filled with actors and extras who don't know about life outside of their carefully constructed environment, Brandy keeps forgetting lines and cues, which stops necessary events from occurring — like a different hotel guest drinking a poisoned cocktail meant for Clara — and when Brandy accidentally calls Clara "Dorothy," a new facet of Clara opens up within the universe of the film, connecting her to the actress that once played her.

The romance between Brandy and Clara — who comes to accept a reality as Dorothy — blossoms despite everything, even after Brandy, cut off from the ReDream team, breaks Clara-Dorothy's brain into pieces by telling her this is all a falsely constructed reality and Clara isn't a real person. Dorothy, angered by this revelation, decides to try to "find a way out," which presents a problem for Brandy, who has to get to the end of the story's narrative and say the movie's last line — "I'll be yours forevermore" — to leave the simulation and go back to her body in the real world. Slowly, Dorothy remembers her real life making the movie in the first place, as well as her attraction to a woman on set ... and the fact that she took her own life, unable to go public about her sexuality.

The two women just keep existing within "Hotel Reverie" as the ReDream team tries to salvage the project, living their lives amongst a crowd of frozen background actors and carrying on a love affair. When the ReDream team manages to reboot the system, Brandy realizes that the entire relationship between her and Dorothy will be erased, and thus, it is. Even when they redo the movie, Brandy and Dorothy, who has now reverted to Clara, still fall in love, but the script changes so radically that Clara ends up dead, and Brandy returns, heartbroken, to the real world. (A final Easter egg? Brandy, as it turns out, lives on "Junipero Drive.") Still, she's given one final phone call with Clara through ReDream, closing out the episode and their story.

"Hotel Reverie" isn't the worst thing "Black Mirror" has ever made, but it'll never be able to match "San Junipero." Season 7 of the anthology series is streaming on Netflix now.

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