Black Mirror Season 7: Every episode’s big twist, explained

Black Mirror debuted in 2011 and became the show everyone referenced when talking about tech gone haywire. Charlie Brooker created this anthology series, where every episode has a mix of suspense, biting social commentary, and many "this can actually happen" moments.

Black Mirror straight-up pokes at all the stuff that keeps us up at night: Privacy, online personas, getting watched 24/7, and that vague dread you can’t shake whenever someone mentions the future. After all these years, it is holding up a cracked, slightly grimy mirror to society and daring us to look or maybe just laugh nervously and go back to doomscrolling.

By the time you hit Season 7 of Black Mirror, it is not just about tech-gone-wrong nightmares anymore. The show is digging into all the ugly little cracks of human weakness and the gray area where ethics just sort of melt in a world drowning in gadgets.

These new episodes are way more reflective. It is like Black Mirror finally realized we live in a totally different headspace now, so it’s stirring questions that actually hit close to home: Why do we even make the choices we do, and how screwed up are the domino effects?

What’s crazy about this Black Mirror season is how it’s not just riding the “ooh, scary tech” wave anymore. There’s this obsession with how fragile everything is — society, friendships, your whole digital self — and how the past never really goes away when it is lurking in some server somewhere.

Here’s the list of episodes in Black Mirror Season 7:

• Common People
• Bête Noire
• Hotel Reverie
• Plaything
• Eulogy
• USS Callister: Into Infinity

So, what’s the deal with these? We are about to spill the beans on what each Black Mirror episode is really about, plus the plot twists that had everyone yelling at their screens.

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All twists in Black Mirror Season 7

Episode 1: Common People

We have the protagonist named Amanda, who is a schoolteacher. She gets hit by a brutal medical crisis, and now she is barely hanging on. Her husband, Mike, is desperate to save her. That is when Rivermind comes into the picture. It is a super-slick tech company promising to save Amanda by uploading her consciousness.

The plot twist is that the “Rivermind will bring her back” is a scam. Turns out, they are just harvesting minds, and Amanda doesn’t get a peaceful digital afterlife. Her brain gets plugged into their massive data farm, becoming another cog in the corporate machine. Mike figures this out way too late, and the betrayal is brutal. The story blows up, people freak out, but nobody really stops Rivermind. The tech just keeps spreading.

So what’s the big takeaway? It is a wake-up call by Black Mirror to the way we let big tech worm into the most private corners of our lives. We keep handing over power, hoping for miracles, but in the end, we are just raw material for the next algorithm.

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Episode 2: Bête Noire

Maria, a high-performing executive at a chocolate company, is startled when her old school nemesis Verity shows up. She strolls into a company tasting and, suddenly, it is like she is everywhere. Saying the exact right thing every single time and never slipping up. Meanwhile, Maria’s radar is pinging like crazy, but everyone else is oblivious.

So, Maria busts into Verity’s mansion and finds a server room, plus a stash of teardrop pendants. Before she can even catch her breath, Verity drops the truth bomb: She whipped up a quantum compiler. A reality-bending mega computer that, with the pendant, lets her jump across universes and cherry-pick whatever timeline she wants.

That means Maris is in trouble. She realizes Verity can rewrite the script anytime, turning Maria into a dangerous invader. Meanwhile, Cops storm in, and in the chaos, Maria grabs a gun and shoots Verity dead.

With Verity out of the picture, Maria snags the pendant, hacks the quantum compiler with Variety’s fingerprint, and flips reality: Now Verity’s death is ruled a suicide, and Maria’s reputation is clean. But because power is a hell of a drug. Maria orders the compiler to crown her Empress of the Universe.

What’s the point? Well, Black Mirror shows how AI could creep its way into our friendships, workplaces, whatever, just by being too perfect. Makes you wonder if we’d even notice. Maybe we could just doubt ourselves instead.

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Episode 3: Hotel Reverie

In this Black Mirror episode, Brandy Friday gets dropped into a high-tech reboot of an old ‘40s noir called Hotel Reverie. But it is not just acting. They literally chuck her into the movie using a Redream simulation tech. She is acting with AI ghosts of classic stars, and her main scene partner is Clara, who heiress type played by Emma Corrin as Dorothy Chambers.

Brandy’s job is to stay in character, wing it when the story goes sideways, and basically “finish” the arc. She has got Kimmy, Redream’s handler, telling her to keep things running smoothly. And then someone spills coffee on the server, and Brandy is cut off from the outside world. The simulation hits pause, except for her and Clara. So now they are stuck, alone in this digital Casablanca knockoff.

And sparks fly. Brandy and Clara start vibing. It is not just a script anymore — Brandy is catching major feelings. Clara, who slowly realizes she is not even “real” but a program based on a washed-up, tragic actress, still leans into the whole thing. They get all the time in the world — weeks, months, who knows? Just hanging out and building this whole relationship way outside the plot.

Then the techies finally get their act together and hit reset. The simulation jumps back to just before the coffee drama, erasing Clara’s memories. All those stolen moments are gone. Brandy remembers everything, though, which is just cruel.

So they go back to the movie storyline. This time, Clara goes off-script, smashes her abusive husband, gets shot by the cops, and dies in Brandy’s arms. Brandy is shattered, but she has to finish the scene, say the line, and finally gets pulled back to reality. Now Brandy is totally wrecked. She lived a whole love story, and now it is like it never happened, at least for Clara.

And then Kimmy hands Brandy an old-school rotary phone, which can call up Clara’s consciousness whenever she wants. The episode signs off with Brandy dialing in, hearing Clara say: “I have all the time in the world.”

Brandy’s love is real, but her girlfriend is just a voice trapped in a computer, forever stuck in the past, something only Black Mirror would dare to show.

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Episode 4: Plaything

Black Mirror's Plaything is a trip. Peter Capaldi plays Cameron Walker in 2034, but you also get this younger version in 1994, played by Lewis Gribben.

Flashback to ’94: Teenage Cameron gets super fixated on a PC game called Thronglets. These Throng start as digital blobs but evolve and interact with you in ways that get under your skin. Cameron starts hanging out with Colin Ritman (Will Poulter) and ends up with the only copy of Thronglets after Colin becomes a mad scientist and nukes the rest.

Basically, Cameron lives in the game. He is upgrading his rig, chatting with the Throng, even using LSD to “speak their melodic language”. Then there is this night — him and his mate Lump (Josh Finan), both off their faces, and Lump starts messing with the Throng, and, thinking it is just a game, abuses the creatures for his amusement. Cameron absolutely loses it, and he kills Lump.

Jump to 2034: Cameron has become a hermit who gets caught shoplifting, and the cops realize he’s tied to that decades-old murder. He tells his story and asks for a pen and paper, doodles out a “code,” and hands it over. This code, when transmitted, gives the Thronglets access to the UK’s Central State Computer, essentially letting them “update” humanity itself.

Turns out, it was never just about his digital buddies. He wanted to fuse people with the Throng’s hive-mind. His “crazy guy” schtick was a part of the plan, so he could bring the Throng code right into the heart of the system.

So, the Throng let loose this “reset” sound through the whole world’s network, and everyone hears it, passes out, and wakes up… different. Did humanity just get an upgrade, or are we all just glorified pets now? We have zero answers from Black Mirror as usual. It is all very ambiguous. Was Cameron some broken kid, a nutcase, or the next messiah for techno-evolution? And are we the Throng’s new toys, or did we just level up? Black Mirror leaves you just hanging in there.

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Episode 5: Eulogy

Phillip (Paul Giamatti) is just drifting through life until he gets a call from tech people at a company called Eulogy. Turns out, Carol Royce (Patsy Ferran), the woman he used to love, has died. He can’t make it to her funeral in London, but company gives him a chance to upload some memories for her fancy VR memorial. They send him a “memory guide”. This thing nudges him into reliving his actual memories of Carol, so her family can see who she really was.

At first, Phillip is just not having it. He is holding onto old grudges, snipping up photos, burying the pain. In his mind, Carol wrecked him, not the other way around. But the memory guide drags him through all these moments: Artsy young love in Brooklyn, fights, his awkward proposal in London where she is clearly over it, and, of course, their breakup followed by years of him drowning his sorrows in whiskey.

Throughout, the Guide gently corrects his bias, showing that Carol was not the only source of pain. Turns out, he cheated, lied to himself, and just refused to deal with the truth. And Phillip has blocked out Carol so much that he can’t even remember her face. She is just this blurry ghost. The Eulogy process kinda forces him to stop airbrushing the past for the family’s sake and actually to face the ugly stuff.

So, late in the game, Phillip realizes the memory guide isn’t just some random AI. It is actually built from the memories of Carol’s daughter, Kelly. If Phillip had bothered to sit through the “Terms and Conditions” intro at the start, he would have known, as Black Mirror has pointed out again and again.

Kelly is the stand-in for the daughter he never had, and she is walking him through his own emotional demolition. Carol actually wrote Phillip a heartfelt letter after their breakup, but he never saw it. There is this reconstructed memory, where a letter’s just sitting, ignored, on the hotel room floor. He missed it because he was wasted and heartbroken. By the time he finally finds out, it’s way too late.

Despite all the regret, the immersion works. Phillip listens to old tapes, watches Carol’s daughter play cello at the memorial, and his brain lets him remember Carol’s actual face, not the twisted, bitter version he’s been clinging to. She is real to him again, for the first time in years.

The last scene is Phillip tuning in for the funeral, both in VR and, somehow, actually in person, and owns up to his screw-ups. There is this quiet moment between him and Kelly — no big speeches, just a nod of respect as she plays cello. Here, the real Black Mirror “twist” is just… grace. Phillip can’t redo his past, but by finally facing it, he gets a little bit of peace. Maybe even forgiveness, for Carol and for himself.

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Episode 6: USS Callister: Into Infinity

USS Callister: Into Infinity picks up a few months after the OG Black Mirror episode, and if you thought things were crazy before... buckle up. Robert Daly is dead in the real world. Now, Captain Nanette Cole and her ragtag crew of digital clones are hustling to survive inside a massive online game called Infinity. And by “hustling,” we mean they’re robbing other players blind just to get by. The problem is, other players keep complaining about these “cheating glitches” (aka our crew), because they don’t have gamer tags.

Things get dicey after some near-lethal run-ins with actual players. Nanette figures out the only shot at real freedom is to hack into Infinity’s source code and boot themselves onto a private server. To do that, though, they need Lt. Walton, who died before but respawned somewhere.

Meanwhile, back in reality, Nanette’s real-world counterpart investigates these anomalies. She is checking out gameplay footage and DNA samples swiped from Daly’s place. Turns out, Daly was cloning his coworkers and trapping them in the game. The crew tracks down Walton, hoping he will help, but he is not on their side. He tries to wipe them out in-game to cover himself in the real world. Nanette is not having it, though. She offs Walton in the game and blocks his respawn.

But just as things start looking up, real-world Nanette gets into a fight over exposing the whole cloning thing, gets hit by a car, and slips into a coma.

Final twist is that Infinity gets deleted, but the digital crew isn’t set free. Now they’re stuck inside Nanette’s mind, seeing everything through her eyes. The episode ends with them making Nanette watch a new TV show.

So you would think deleting the game would free these poor digital souls, but now they are inside Nanette’s coma-riddled brain, living out this bizarre, claustrophobic existence. They are out of the digital prison, but now locked in a different kind of cell — her mind.

It is Black Mirror doing what Black Mirror does best. You get this whole meditation on what it means to be free when you are an immortal code. Nanette’s stuck, the crew’s stuck, and you are left staring at your screen, questioning everything about technology and consciousness.