Breaking Down the Ending of 'Black Mirror' Season 7, Episode 3: “Hotel Reverie”

Where things start to go awry:

Through the echoes of Black Mirror season 3’s “San Junipero,” we come to “Hotel Reverie,” a clever warning to the studio big wigs—keep your paws off our classics. At least, that’s where it starts. “Hotel Reverie” has some very real things to say about love, tech, and the ethics of bringing dead actors back to life.

The futuristic tech entering the function in this episode is dubbed ReDream, a sleek new platform that lets users reshoot classic films with modern actors in the leading roles. With Kimmy (Awkwafina) at the helm, ReDream strikes a deal with a debt-ridden studio head to reimagine her catalogue, namely her biggest film, Hotel Reverie.

A truly wonderful “thing inside of a thing” episode, the Black Mirror writers delivered a pretty full-fleshed Casablanca-esque film, starring a troubled movie star of the time named Dorothy Chambers (Emma Corrin). The role being reimagined here is her love interest, Dr. Alex Palmer, who in this modern retelling will be played by box office bigshot Brandy Friday (Issa Rae).

Brandy gets the part, but it’s not until she arrives in England that the full scope of ReDream is revealed: Brandy won’t just be acting opposite footage of Dorothy—she’ll be dropped into a live simulation with an AI version of Clara, played as Dorothy would have played her. The goal is to run through the film like a stage play, capturing it in a single two-hour stretch inside a so-called “self-sufficient fictive dimension” wherein everything is absolutely real to the AI’s inhabiting the scene. If Brandy strays too far from the narrative, she’ll be pulled out of the simulation. Say what you will about the plausibility of Black Mirror, but let’s be honest for a moment. This is absolutely something Hollywood would consider if the check cleared. I digress.

Brandy drops in and things quickly go off-book. She botches the piano scene—poor girl never learned “Clair de Lune”—and calls Clara “Dorothy” mid-scene, adding a layer dimension to this AI creation. Clara starts having feelings she shouldn’t technically have. Longing. Sorrow. Maybe even love? Turns out, Dorothy’s performance had a whole lot of real-life trauma baked in, and now Clara is glitching into full emotional sentience.

Kimmy and the ReDream team monitor the film’s vitals, tracking the film’s narrative integrity and identifying potential plot holes. The truth is revealed that unless Brandy land’s the film’s iconic final line, “I’ll be yours forevermore,” she will remain stuck in the simulation.

A spilled coffee in the control room separates Brandy from the ReDream team, leaving her adrift in this black and white simulation, with Clara the only character left moving in a cast of frozen figures. Time passes much more quickly there, so in the time that it takes for the ReDream team to troubleshoot their now caffeinated technology, Brandy and Clara are living together and falling in love. We’re given a look at the reality of Dorothy Chambers’ life, a queer woman forced to play straight, both in career and otherwise, before taking her own life.

Does Brandy get out of the simluation?

ReDream gets their sh*t together and the scene is reset, which means Clara’s memory of their relationship has been wiped, but Brandy’s has not. Our heartbroken hero finds her bearings and sets her sights on survival, speedrunning into the film’s conclusion. The reimagined version of the film ends with Clara being shot and dying in Brandy’s arms. Our girl says her lines, the credits roll, and she’s pulled out of the simulation just in time.

As a heartbroken Brandy celebrates the popularity of her Hotel Reverie Reborn, she receives a gift from Kimmy and the ReDream team—a phone with a connection to Dorothy’s old screen test, now reprogrammed into a chat-ready AI. Brandy picks up, and Dorothy says she has “all the time in the world” to talk. It should be a happy reunion, but it’s not. This Dorothy doesn’t remember Brandy, because she doesn’t exist. Womp womp.

It was high-time Black Mirror tackled the ethics of digital resurrection, and with Issa Rae and Emma Corrin at the helm, it couldn't have been better.

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