Black Mirror Season 7 Review

Black Mirror (2011-)

Season 7 - 6 episodes (2025 April 10)
Watch Black Mirror Season 7 on Netflix
Created by: Charlie Brooker
Starring:  Rashida Jones, Chris O'Dowd, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Emma Corrin, Awkwafina, Peter Capaldi, Will Poulter, Paul Giamatti, Billy Magnussen, Cristin Milioti, Jimmi Simpson, Jesse Plemons, Siena Kelly
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Plot
Each unconnected episode examines the pitfalls when technology and society intersect. What happens when technology goes off the rails, creating a horrifying situation? Does technology make us happier, is being connected at all times beneficial, and does it do more harm than good? The stories are known for their harrowing nature and depressing conclusions.

Verdict
This season is the Black Mirror I've missed. It combines pop culture, technology, and the future to create intriguing yet solemn narratives. Half the episodes are great, and the other half are still really good, exploring a future that's just around the corner. My favorite episode is Eulogy due to the depth and story structure. With each scene we delve deeper into memories and how subjective they can be. The story keeps building. It exemplifies what makes this show so engrossing. The writers think through these ideas and how these concepts would play out in the world.
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Review
Black Mirror explores the technology that's just around the corner. It solves a need, but there's always a catch, or more apt a company ready to exploit the technology.

In Common People a new technology is able to reverse the effects of traumatic brain injury by creating a digital copy of the brain. That information is then streamed into the mind of the patient for a monthly streaming fee. Amanda (Rashida Jones) benefits from this revolutionary technology, but it's like a cell phone. She has to stay in range or becomes catatonic.

Subscription services are often terrible, each upgrade makes service worse while adding unwanted features. Amanda is a human functioning on a subscription service, and each new roll out makes the existing tier worse. She can't get better service without paying more. If she wants increased range, she has to upgrade. The company starts pushing ads through her. Don't want ads? Upgrade. This is the personification of platform decay. It's wild, but like all things Black Mirror, you can see a world where this happens. A company is playing with people's lives.

Bringing this full circle to a website introduced early in the episode. Amanda's husband begins debasing himself on the website for cash to keep Amanda functioning. Once he starts that, it spirals and we know it will only get worse.

E1: Chris O'Dowd, Rashida Jones play

With Bête Noire, research lead Maria (Siena Kelly) hires an old classmate as a research assistant. Maria is bothered by Verite, but she can't articulate why. Is it the competition or hesitant to connect past and present? Verite wasn't popular in high school, and I began to wonder if Maria bullied her.

We get a Mandela Effect with characters even referencing it. Maria is sure of a fact and then proven wrong. From the outside Maria seems to be spiraling. I'm bewildered. If this is Verite on a revenge tour against her high school classmates, how is she doing this? This episode takes some wild turns. Two episodes in, and this season is bringing it.

Hotel Reverie fuses advanced green screening and AI to remake a Hollywood movie. Movies are using more AI and digital sets. This is a giant leap forward. A production company can recreate a movie virtually with an actor's avatar in only a few hours. There's a "Streamberry" reference that is a nod to Netflix I believe the show introduced in season six.

This episode is too comical and silly. The premise is interesting. Brandy (Issa Rae) plays a part in a virtual world. Of course the production goes off the rails, and there's a threat Brandy could be trapped in this virtual set. A question that pervades this season is what's real? Brandy is in this world where people aren't real, but when the software glitches, one of the fake characters seems real. Brandy is faced with escaping this world and eliminating this virtual character with which she's formed a connection or trying to stay and save her. I didn't like this episode as much. It's lighter in tone, sillier.

Plaything also explores the boundary between an artificial intelligence so real it blurs the line of whether it's sentient. Cameron (Peter Capaldi) steals from a convenience store, but he's quickly caught. This is a world where the police can DNA swab a suspect and instantly get a list of related open crimes. Cameron is accused of murder. Years ago he was hired by Colin (Will Poulter), a game developer we first saw in the Black Mirror choose your own adventure movie Bandersnatch. Cameron becomes obsessed with Cameron's latest game, Thronglets. Colin claims it's the first sentient digital creature. This is a trip. Is Colin becoming obsessed to the point of detaching from reality? For decades he's obsessed with this game, thinking he can decipher some secret meaning from sounds the game's creatures make. Are the Throng an entity? What are they after? The conclusion flips the narrative, but we're still wondering what just happened.

Eulogy introduces a new technology where AI can take you into a photograph. With this show, I assumed it would explore the ephemeral nature of memories. I love how this episode slowly unfolds. Phillip (Paul Giamatti) is asked to provide a memory for a woman he used to know that he can barely remember. The AI guide keeps digging, asking him to find photographs. With each image, memories slowly return. It's not that Phillip didn't remember the woman, he didn't want to remember these painful memories. This episode is so layered, and it keeps getting deeper. Each photograph and trinket reveals more about Phillip's relationship with this woman.

One issue I have is that the AI couldn't render what couldn't be seen in the photograph. Other images later in the episode don't have that limitation.

This soon seemed like less of a program to generate a eulogy but more of a way for his ex-girlfriend to reveal her side of these memories. This app helps him remember, but not in the way he thinks. I had a guess as to how this plot would unfold. 

This is perfectly plotted, slowly building and exploring the depths of Phillip's memories. There are three sides to every story, Phillip's memories, the woman's memories, and what actually happened. The other side to this is that who keeps memories, souvenirs, and even photos in shoe boxes anymore? Modern society would never be able to experience this unless they keep old phones and manage to power them. This has to be criticism of how we do and don't store souvenirs.

E5: Paul Giamatti plays

Episode six is a sequel to the season four episode USS Callister.  In the original episode Daly (Jesse Plemons) lives out his fantasies in a VR world. It's the only place where he's liked and popular, but the power he holds in the digital world combined with the mistreatment he experiences in reality soon turn him into a bully. In this episode the virtual copies from season four are trapped in the game. Being genetic copies, death in the game is real death. With this game being transaction based, everything keeps getting more expensive, forcing the copies to steal credits to survive. They need to find a way to escape the game, and that reveals the secrets to how the game was created. The entire game is built on illicit activities. This episode is feature length, and it's a ride.

E6: Cristin Milioti, Jimmi Simpson play

The first two episodes were great. I didn't like three and four was lackluster. Episode five brings it. This season is a return to form. Technology is great, right up until it's not. Black Mirror explores these ideas in such depth. Every innovation has a dark side and this show is ready to delve into it.