Black Mirror S6 E5 - Demon 79

Black Mirror Season 6 was a violent series. We witnessed family massacres; basement tortures and werewolf attacks. The violence was sometimes shocking and sometimes gratuitous, the type you might expect Quentin Tarantino to be challenged on if it appeared in one of his films.

An adjacent and reoccurring theme in Brooker’s work is humanity’s love of blood sports. The paparazzi in Episode 4, Mazey Day showed us how much some people love to watch others suffer.

With both of these ideas in the ether, the finale of Season 6 of Black Mirror asked the question: is murder ever a good idea? A nice idea? Protagonist Nida (Anjana Vasan) becomes acquainted with a demon (Paapa Essiedu) via a talisman who tells her she must kill three people to avoid the end of the world.

If dodging the apocalypse wasn’t already a good enough reason for Nida to kill, her demon friend gives her insight into the lives and futures of her victims: they are rapists and murderers themselves, they deserve to die…don’t they? What is a good reason to kill someone? Revenge? To prevent further death or suffering? This episode explores every avenue.

Brooker and co-writer Bisha K.Ali work hard to build your appetite for murder in this finale. By the time Nida comes face to face with politician Michael Smart (David Shields), you’re gagging to get the hammer and do it yourself. We’ve witnessed Nida become the victim of the vilest kind of racism, we’ve seen that Smart will lead the UK into a Nazi dictatorship: smack him on the head, fade to black and we can all go and make a cup of tea.

For compassionate reasons, Nida can’t go through with it and is instead arrested. The end of the world ensues. What is the message of this conclusion? For me it speaks to the chaos of murder and war. That there can be no morality or reason for killing. The path to revenge, to murder and to war lead only to one destination: oblivion.