There are spoilers ahead!
In classic Charlie Brooker fashion, Black Mirror’s Beyond The Sea surprised us with an unexpected twist.
After a four-year wait, the third of five episodes from the sixth season, Joan Is Awful, Loch Henry, Mazey Day, and Demon 79, were available on Netflix today.
Beyond The Sea, starring Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett, is set in an alternate 1969 and follows “two men on a risky high-tech mission.”
The astronauts live in orbit, but there are also ‘digital counterparts’ of them on Earth who remain with their families.
David (Josh) and Cliff (Aaron) can plug themselves into computers that connect their thoughts to digital bodies, allowing them to be themselves on Earth – but not quite.
They achieve popularity on Earth while advancing technology with their perilous yet highly respected job on their trip, and it almost seems too good to be true – which it is.
Intruders enter into David’s house and murder his wife and children before ruining his digital body, which oozes green slime like a robot, and setting fire to their whole home.
He is bereaved, and Cliff has no clue how to help his partner, until his wife Lana (Kate Mara) suggests allowing David to wander in Cliff’s body for only one hour a week, giving him a reason to return to Earth.
Things appear to be going well as their plan unfolds, until David, who finds refuge in suffering, develops affections for Lana.
You might assume you know where this is headed, with the apparent surprise being that David murders Cliff and stays in his digital avatar for the rest of his life to pursue a romance with Lana.
Nope!
How does Beyond The Sea end?
Cliff confronts David after learning about the devastating betrayal, which saw Lana reject David’s attempts at seduction and their son Henry uncover what’s going on, and discovers the artist has been picturing and drawing nude images of Lana.
Enraged at David’s reentry into Cliff’s digital body, he confines him to their spaceship.
In a savage argument, David tells Cliff: ‘Why can’t you see? I don’t have anything. You have no idea what it’s like to be me. Everything I had… gone. Just destroyed. You don’t know.’
Aaron’s character replies: ‘The thought of you returning makes her vomit. She says that you’re a snake. A conman. The worst kind. The arrogant kind. She won’t have you anywhere near her. She is mine.’
But David will not be satisfied, and dupes Cliff into travelling into space to ‘repair’ a section of their shuttle, only for Cliff to return and learn that in those few minutes, David returned to Earth (as Cliff) and performed some horrific atrocities.
Rather of living the life he desired on Earth, David makes Cliff experience what it is like to have his family brutally slaughtered.
Cliff quickly reconnects to his digital version, only to see his home splattered with blood and his beloved wife and son killed.
He returns to the ship, both heartbroken and enraged with David, but now understanding what he went through.
As the spacecraft with the two friends aboard floats off into space, David pushes out a chair for a sad Cliff to sit on, gesticulating towards it.
Black Mirror is available to watch on Netflix.
