If You Only Watch One ‘Black Mirror’ Episode, It Should Be This Romantic Mindbender

Black Mirror season 7 feels like a return to the show’s unsettling roots, with each episode focusing on different facets of how Artificial Intelligence can disrupt society — it sort of is, already. I’ve watched every entry in the new installment, and one specific episode has haunted me since the credits rolled.

I’m talking about Hotel Reverie, the mostly bittersweet black-and-white romance that delivers heaps of nostalgia and sincere emotion. Underneath it all, though, exists a stark warning for entertainment and the industry’s future. Simply put, the episode hints at AI’s threat to Hollywood. And, dare I say, the bleak creative scenario the episode alludes to is pretty much already here.

The episode follows Hollywood A-lister Brandy Friday (played by Issa Rae), who decides to take a considerable risk with her career and signs on to star in the remake of a vintage movie, which aptly shares the title with the episode itself. 

She soon discovers this is no ordinary project. Rather than stepping onto a movie set, she’s faced with the reality that instead of concocting a whole new rendition of this classic film from scratch, she’ll be dialed into an AI rendering of the flick with the help of an immersive tech company called ReDream — run by reality designer Kimmy (Awkwafina) — and will perform live opposite the life-like avatars of the actors who originally performed in the movie.

Dorothy Chambers (Emma Corrin) is the movie’s star, sauntering through every scene as enigmatic ingenue Clara. Brandy’s job is to play a race and gender-flipped Dr. Palmer, Clara’s love interest. The immersive project, if successful, would propel Friday into a new echelon of her career and introduce a new method of movie-making to the world, thus changing the entertainment industry forever.

Spoiler warning: Before I continue, I must warn you that there are major story spoilers below. If you haven’t seen Hotel Reverie, I suggest you turn back now.

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The 76-minute episode is an emotional roller-coaster ride that ultimately reveals itself as a tragedy of romance and identity. Hotel Reverie explores how an actor, also a woman of color, must navigate her professional and personal life to maintain a certain level of success and status without making too many waves. 

Like the fan-favorite season 3 episode San Junipero before it, Hotel Reverie plants the seeds for an unlikely romance to blossom between two women in a locale disconnected from real-world constraints of time and space. Brandy’s enchantment with Dorothy blossoms into an intimate bond with the AI version of the actor that, when the system goes dark, reveals to Brandy a fulfilling relationship she may never have given herself the grace ever to pursue. The line between fantasy and reality blurs quickly.

Death by virtual reality is not a new sci-fi concept. But Hotel Reverie flips that idea on its head by not just adding life-threatening stakes to the mix but also placing themes like body autonomy, agency and identity on the chopping block. Using classic cinema as a stylistic lens to tell this story and explore these ideas creates a poignant and entertaining experience. 

But what if you scaled your perspective back a bit further and looked at the bigger picture? You may see this Black Mirror episode as a death knell for movie-making. Hotel Reverie lays out a fictional reality that calls into question very real concerns regarding AI and how, if unregulated, it can disrupt (and potentially destroy) the concept of entertainment as we know it.  

OK, that sounds pretty dramatic. I get it. As an actor who participated in the SAG-AFTRA strike in 2023, I watched as these topics fueled the most heated debates and conversations driving those negotiations. 

Suppose software like ReDream existed in the real world, and remixing classic movies for modern audiences, like Hotel Reverie does, became the hot new trend. In that case, huge ramifications would follow. The economic impact would be hard-hitting and wide-reaching. Without a film set to report to, production employees like crew members, makeup and wardrobe artists, set designers, caterers, and many more folks who keep the movie-making machine running would be without work. 

However, the human impact can get blurred and pushed to the background when the creative process is rebranded as content creation. Netflix obviously knows this. After all, it is a tech company. It allows itself to be involved in Black Mirror’s ongoing Streamberry joke, but when so many hours of movies and TV shows get lost in the streamer’s churn machine, that content versus art debate starts to show some teeth.

Now think about the use of Dorothy’s likeness, here. Since she’s a character who has since passed away, ReDream would need to approach her estate for permission to move forward with this immersive project. How much would that cost? What sort of implications would creatives face if a situation like the one that Hotel Reverie poses actually came to fruition?

“It is a violation of the original filmmakers, who, as you all know, spend so much time and meticulous detail making films what they are,” Issa Rae told me and select journalists over Zoom during Netflix’s virtual press day. “So to have any average Joe or corporation be like, ‘We’re going to plop a contemporary star in and hijinks will ensue,’ is crazy to me. That would piss me off on so many levels.”

There is no happy ending in Hotel Reverie. The episode ends with the movie reboot becoming a smash hit and Brandy’s career reaching new heights. But success on this level can be isolating. The love of her life lived and died in a virtual realm that proved unsustainable for human life. That absolutely sucks.

Hotel Reverie leaves the viewer wondering if Brandy can find happiness beyond the fantasy life that transpired on the other side of the screen. It left me questioning whether the way we make entertainment is on the verge of evolution or the brink of collapse. I don’t have an answer; the episode doesn’t either. 

I’ve been replaying these ideas in my head, though. So yes, I’ve been haunted by Hotel Reverie. It’s beautiful, tragic and unsettling, like any good episode of Black Mirror should be. Wait, that means the sci-fi series understood the assignment once again, huh?

I guess it does. Well played, Mr. Brooker. Well played.