Black Mirror Season 7’s Hotel Reverie Tries To Recapture San Junipero Magic But Fails

To say Brandy Friday’s experience remaking “Hotel Reverie” with ReDream is a disaster is … an understatement. Overwhelmed by the digital reconstruction of the film filled with actors and extras who don’t know about life outside of their carefully constructed environment, Brandy keeps forgetting lines and cues, which stops necessary events from occurring — like a different hotel guest drinking a poisoned cocktail meant for Clara — and when Brandy accidentally calls Clara “Dorothy,” a new facet of Clara opens up within the universe of the film, connecting her to the actress that once played her.

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The romance between Brandy and Clara — who comes to accept a reality as Dorothy — blossoms despite everything, even after Brandy, cut off from the ReDream team, breaks Clara-Dorothy’s brain into pieces by telling her this is all a falsely constructed reality and Clara isn’t a real person. Dorothy, angered by this revelation, decides to try to “find a way out,” which presents a problem for Brandy, who has to get to the end of the story’s narrative and say the movie’s last line — “I’ll be yours forevermore” — to leave the simulation and go back to her body in the real world. Slowly, Dorothy remembers her real life making the movie in the first place, as well as her attraction to a woman on set … and the fact that she took her own life, unable to go public about her sexuality.

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The two women just keep existing within “Hotel Reverie” as the ReDream team tries to salvage the project, living their lives amongst a crowd of frozen background actors and carrying on a love affair. When the ReDream team manages to reboot the system, Brandy realizes that the entire relationship between her and Dorothy will be erased, and thus, it is. Even when they redo the movie, Brandy and Dorothy, who has now reverted to Clara, still fall in love, but the script changes so radically that Clara ends up dead, and Brandy returns, heartbroken, to the real world. (A final Easter egg? Brandy, as it turns out, lives on “Junipero Drive.”) Still, she’s given one final phone call with Clara through ReDream, closing out the episode and their story.

“Hotel Reverie” isn’t the worst thing “Black Mirror” has ever made, but it’ll never be able to match “San Junipero.” Season 7 of the anthology series is streaming on Netflix now.

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