Starring Issa Rae and Emma Corrin, this queer story blends old cinema and futuristic simulation to tell a tragic tale about falling in love
BY AMELIA JONES, IMAGE BY NETFLIX
Black Mirror’s latest episode Hotel Reverie dives into the past to tell a distinctly futuristic love story. The episode stars Issa Rae as Brandy Friday, a Hollywood A-lister whose search for connection bleeds into both her career and her personal life. When she signs up for ReDream – a high-tech simulation that lets users relive old movies – Brandy doesn’t just step into a film. She steps into a fantasy where, at last, she can have the life and the love she’s always wanted.
She has been recruited to relive Hotel Reverie, a classic 1940s romance, as the male lead. Her co-star? Clara, played with ghostly vulnerability by Emma Corrin. But Clara isn’t just an AI script reader – she’s fused with the likeness and tragic legacy of real-life actress Dorothy Palmers. Palmers, we learn, was a closeted queer woman whose life ended in a sleeping pill overdose after years in hiding. In Clara, her pain echoes through code.
As the AI simulation runs into some technical difficulties, Brandy’s feelings deepen, the lines between simulation and reality blur. She’s falling – not just for Clara, but for a version of queer love that was denied to women like Dorothy.
Hotel Reverie is tear-jerking and tender, taking the familiar language of black-and-white cinema and breathing new life into it. The episode shifts seamlessly between the dreamy world of the 1940s film and the sterile, digital space where AI technicians monitor and tweak the simulation. That contrast between the scripted romance and the people controlling it adds a quiet tension. It’s not just about falling in love; it’s about who gets to write the script. And yet, despite the artificiality of the setup, the emotions feel anything but fake. The show doesn’t parody old Hollywood – it reclaims it, shaping something once coded in silence into something emotionally honest and quietly defiant.
You can watch Black Mirror on Netflix now.
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