Warning: Spoilers for 'Black Mirror' Season 6 Episode 5
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: The four-year-long wait is finally over and ‘Black Mirror’ is out with Season 6 comprising five brand new episodes. If you are wondering if the show has done anything especially different this season, the season's last episode, ‘Demon 79’, will be the perfect example of that.
We are thrown into a town in North England, where nothing much seems to be happening. The episode accurately portrays the sociopolitical state of England in 1979. We meet the brilliant Anjana Vasan as Nida and the demon Gaap, wonderfully performed by Paapa Essiedu.
Classic ‘Black Mirror’ but not really 'Black Mirror'
‘Demon 79’ leaves you with the same conflicting emotions of having just encountered something strange and unsettling. At the same time, the episode is a departure from the sub-genre of dystopian and futuristic elements that Charlie Brooker, the creator and writer of the series, is known for. This was hinted first in the season’s trailer as well, wherein a peek into the last episode revealed a horror-comedy setting, and it proved to be quite true!
The episode follows the quiet and docile saleswoman, Nida, who is leading a simple life in 1979 Britain, a trying and dangerous time for a person of color. After a bad encounter and an unintended deal with the demon Gaap, Nida's inner turmoil manifests in the form of crimes she is made to commit to save the world. She is given the goal of killing three people within three days to put an end to the looming manmade apocalypse.
The episode shows Nida’s transformation, quite similar to the one Vasan went through in her hilarious sitcom, ‘We Are Lady Parts’. Her quiet suffering blooms into anger and an enquiry into human evil while she befriends the flamboyant Gaap.
‘Demon 79’ ending explained
For an episode spanning over an hour, the ending arrives faster than you would realize. The pace picks up after Nida makes her final transformation when she turns red, literally and figuratively while Gaap tries to stop her from killing the politician Michael Smart. It’s not really a secret as to which politician Smart is modelled after. The symbolic red leather jacket with her newfound confidence soon ends up in blunder as Nida fails to make her last kill and is taken in by the police.
Nida watches as the world starts to inevitably burn to the ground. Nobody could have known that the demon was telling the truth about apocalypse. However, as ‘Black Mirror’ would have it, the twist in the end was a pleasant surprise as Gaap offers to take Nida with him into "Eternal Oblivion.” The final shot of the episode is a world drowning in a nuclear explosion as the red and white demons (interesting choice of colors) join hands and walk away.
There was a clear absence of any interaction between humans and technology but the demon symbol shown in the episode is something ‘Black Mirror’ fans are quite familiar with. The symbol was previously in Season 2 and the movie ‘Bandersnatch’ as well. So, while the episode was a major genre departure, it still reflected everything the series stands for.
You can stream the Season 6 of ‘Black Mirror' exclusively on Netflix from June 15.
