Let’s be honest, “Black Mirror” and its often-cynical take on human nature, technology, video games, movies, space travel, multiple dimensions, digital toys, and alternate realities is not for the faint of heart.
However, those brave souls willing to indulge in its provocative nightmares will be rewarded with newfound understandings and perhaps even a few sleepless nights. It’s all part of the haunting descent into our deepest dreams and fears.
Season 7 was just released on Netflix, and it’s another triumphant outing for one of the best sci-fi shows of all time, with something for every taste and temperament. We’ve watched all six chapters of Black Mirror season 7 and ranked them from worst to best. Whichever order you choose to view them in, make sure to leave a light on and have a few tissues close by.
6. “Hotel Reverie”
Featuring Issa Rae and Emma Corrin in a stylish sapphic love story, this is one of the two feature-length episodes for this 2025 outing and plays with notions of inserting AI-generated likenesses of actors into older films.
A-list star Brandy Friday (Rae) pines for the more glamorous roles of Hollywood’s yesteryear and agrees to be plugged into an interactive AI software program called Redream, which takes modern celebrities and injects them into classic movies of a bygone era. Her favorite flick is the 1949 movie “Hotel Reverie” and her gender-bent character is now a romantic interest of that film’s vintage actress named Dorothy Chambers (Corrin). But the simulation goes awry when plot points are deviated from, and the two realms bleed into each other. Will Brandy be stuck in that alt-reality forever or emerge unscathed and unaffected?
Unfortunately, it all feels a little poached from “Star Trek: First Contact’s” holodeck scene or HBO’s “Westworld.” There are some highlights here, but overall, this tepid, overlong episode is overcooked, a bit dated, and by far one of the weaker entries of the fresh season.
5. “Common People”
This bleak and depressing installment stars Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd as a middle-class married couple, Amanda and Mike. It drills directly into our current annoyance with ever-changing cell phone coverage plans and ad-based streaming platform rates. After a medical emergency, Amanda undergoes experimental brain surgery from Rivermind, linking to a subscription service that uploads a backup copy of a healthy brain via a Wi-Fi-like process for $300/mo.
But complications arise when her sleeping hours grow longer and she begins to experience blackouts when straying too far from Rivermind coverage zones. Amanda starts randomly pitching ads and other strange anomalies that, of course, all require pricier plans and new upgrades to get rid of.
This leads to a destructive downward spiral of their lives and a devastating ending that might leave you in a foul mood and wanting to axe your streaming services…. a bold move from a streaming service that just jacked its prices up again recently.
4. “Bête Noire”
Title definition: “a person or thing strongly detested or avoided.”
Starring Sienna Kelly as Maria, a flavor expert at a candy company, this brutal episode is a bit lighter than the nightmare of “Common People,” that offers up a twisty fifty minutes with a horror-tinged chapter about the traumatizing effects of childhood bullying and a cutting edge snack food firm and tasting laboratory called Ditta.
When a mysterious ex-schoolmate named Verity Greene (Rosy McEwen) appears at a focus group tasting and joins Ditta as a research assistant, Maria recalls her oddities and her insulting “Milkmaid” nickname.
Broken down by days of the week and paired with sinister organ music, the odd chapter is a fun ride. Maria’s reality begins to distort, and she expects Verity is somehow sabotaging her life, resulting in a shifting entanglement of quantum physics, infinite realities, and parallel timelines. Just be careful who you tease!
3. “Plaything”
Unspooling in a not-so-distant London of 2034, “Plaything” is a riveting segment centered around a notorious murder suspect and a cult video game from the ’90s that was home to a menagerie of digital life forms that gamers can nurture, communicate with, and control.
A highlight here is brilliant work by ex-Time Lord Peter Capaldi as Cameron Walker, playing a former PC Zone game journalist. His younger self is shown in flashbacks, a nerdy writer assigned to demo a strange new simulation that’s disguised as a video game.
Fans will recall Will Poulter’s creepy game designer, Colin Ritman, from 2018’s “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch”, and he’s back at the top of his craft revisiting the character. The tiny yellow creatures of his game, named Thronglets, become increasingly demanding as the tale progresses, leading to uncomfortable circumstances and a killer finale.
Tight storytelling, exceptional production design, and superior acting make this 42-minute chapter that links back to “Bandersnatch” one of the best of the bunch. Try Netflix’s tie-in mobile game!
2. “USS Callister: Into Infinity”
This is the first-ever direct sequel to a “Black Mirror” episode, this being a follow-up to Season 4’s “USS Callister” from 2017. There, an introverted video game genius named Robert Daly creates digital clones of his co-workers to form an adoring crew trapped in a “Star Trek”-like VR simulation where he’s the cruel captain. SPOILERS: That old episode ends with Daly’s digital and real-life demise, and the USS Callister left roaming an infinite artificial universe with a bold new captain.
Clocking in at nearly 90 minutes, “Into Infinity” is an enjoyable mission that picks up with nearly the entire first-gen cast zooming into uncharted digital space with new threats, targeted for stealing players’ MMO game credits to survive, and hunted as illegal clones.
Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) is back as the battle-tested, doe-eyed leader who works with her real-life counterpart back at Callister Inc., investigating the history of CEO James Walton and how the firm was originally built. It wraps up neatly in true “Black Mirror” style as a fun, clever companion to the Emmy Award-winning original.
1. “Eulogy”
“Black Mirror” is often at its finest when relating to the infinitely complex topics of human love and memory. Here in this melancholy entry, we follow the great Paul Giamatti as Phillip, a lonely, grumpy man who is introduced to a technology that lets him enter into his physical photographs that contain images of Carol, a long-lost girlfriend who just passed away in England.
A benevolent company called Eulogy creates immersive memorials for loved ones of the deceased, and by using their AI-assisted kit, he’s able to help curate painful digital memories for her memorial.
This process takes him into a haunted past and stirs up repressed thoughts of their relationship while guided by a Ghost of Christmas Past-like AI host. Giamatti is pitch-perfect in this bittersweet interlude as we jump from the freeze-framed photographic images. Highly personal, beautifully paced, and performed, “Eulogy” exhibits a heartfelt depth of emotion. Love’s precious piercing arrows have seldom been more acutely rendered and received. Bravo to all involved with this sentimental jewel!
All six episodes of “Black Mirror” Season 7 are now streaming on Netflix.
