Black Mirror Season 6 Beyond The Sea truly stands alone when it comes to Black Mirror episodes. There’s quite literally nothing else like it. It is one of the longest inclusions in the entirety of the show. I was intrigued from the off. That paired with the concept, the leads, and the world that was created, this episode far surpassed my expectations.
This isn’t an episode that you’d just throw on. It’s an episode that I feel that you’d try and give as much of your attention to as possible, and I imagine when viewing, you’re in it for the long haul as well. It’s in the same category as White Christmas and Black Museum, two fantastic episodes. I feel Beyond The Sea definitely deserves to be up there alongside it.
So with that, let’s recap, do a Black Mirror Beyond The Sea Ending Explanation, and Breakdown all the important things in this episode. I will also try to find any Black Mirror Easter Eggs in this episode.
Here is the Beyond The Sea Ending Explained:
Beyond The Sea Theme
Beyond The Sea was focused on two individuals on a mission in space, where it was crucial that both of them stayed alive in order for it to be successful. However, a way in which they were able to stay sane was because they had replicas down on Earth, which allowed them to go back home as and when they needed to in order to be with their family.
We saw that both Cliff and David were two opposite sides of the spectrum. David embraced the fact that he had a replica and treated it like it was just an extension of himself. But Cliff did the opposite; he didn’t want to treat it like a human, nor even be intimate with his wife, and he lived a much more reserved life and was playing the waiting game until his real body came back down to Earth.
The difference was perfectly mirrored during the opening scene, where David was out and about, socializing and being noticed, whereas Cliff was in insight with his family in a really remote area.
Early on in the episode, David’s replica is destroyed whilst he is inside it, and he has to bear witness to his whole family being killed in front of his eyes. This was because of a group of individuals who were led by Kappa (Rory Culkin), who did a fantastic performance, by the way, and they were against the development of technology, and they were fearful of what the eventuality of the progression meant. Kappa believed that David’s family were enablers and contributed to the development.
This meant that David was ultimately stuck in space on his own, with no way of being able to go back down to Earth after witnessing the traumatic event. He couldn’t attend his family’s funeral, and he was stuck on his own, losing his mind.
David Allows Cliff To Use His Replica
This was then where we saw that Cliff was prepared to give up his replica in order to allow David to go down to Earth and spend some time in the forest to get some fresh air and to remind himself of what it was like not to be stuck in space. This was only for one hour a week.
We eventually saw David and Cliff’s replica go on to grow some kind of connection with Lana. She and Cliff’s wife have somewhat the same thing too. However, she was able to stop herself from being able to act on it. This really messed up your head as a viewer, and we kind of experienced it from the perspective of Lana because it begged the question of if she was actually doing anything morally wrong if she were to act on her initial feelings.
Technically it is a replica of Cliff, and it wasn’t even a human version. However, it had a different mind. So it showed us that a connection does transcend more than physicality and that it’s about what’s within rather than what’s on the outside. This is one of the main talking points that I feel this episode really wanted us to question inside of our own minds.
Beyond The Sea Ending
With Cliff finding out how David was getting obsessed with Lana due to the drawings that he had of her in his quarters, and due to his confronting Lana, he rescinds access to his replica, meaning David was never going to be able to use it again. However, David saw a way around it. He faked an emergency that caused Cliff to come back, and whilst Cliff was out in open space with his belongings in the tray, he took his tag and went back to Earth.
At this point, I thought it was going to be an Ending where David would have killed Cliff by leaving him out there and then gone back and spent the remainder of the time that he had with Lana. Due to his family being killed at the start, he basically said that he had nothing left to live for, so I thought he had the mindset that he had earlier on, where he almost didn’t see a point in sticking around.
However, instead, David went back and butchered Cliff’s family, just like what happened to his own family, making Cliff truly understand what it was that he felt when he suffered the ordeal. And what it was like to be up in space all alone in suffering.
In the confrontation, David said to Cliff that he didn’t truly understand how lucky he was and that he didn’t understand what he had. So by doing this, David made him realize how lucky he was and that he took it for granted. Cliff was acting like he was going to change, but by then, it was too late.
Black Mirror Beyond The Sea Ending Explained
With Cliff finding the crime scene and waking up in his replica covered in blood, we saw the same reaction play out as what we saw when David’s family was killed, with the camera rotating around and providing us different shots as they were fading in and fading out. It was actually quite an uncomfortable experience with the way that the camera was moving.
The darkest part about this episode, though, was the fact that David pulled out a chair and got Cliff to sit down next to him, knowing full well that they both had to sit there working with one another for the next four years in order to survive. If one of them killed the other, then it was a death sentence, as two individuals were needed in order to survive. It had a white Christmas filled to it. So bleak, so intimate, and so tragic.
With the song “Le mer” being played, which is a song that has been replicated so many times over the years and in multiple different languages by different artists, it was a somewhat fitting track to have as the main motif for when a pair would be made. For example, David and his wife, Cliff, Lana, and ultimately Cliff and David.
Easter Eggs In Beyond The Sea
Black Mirror Season 6 Episode 3 was one that felt as though it had the least amount of Easter eggs inside of it. One Easter egg that we saw was on the listings outside of the cinema. Most of the movies that were there were to represent the time period, with them coming out in late 1968 and 1969. But on there, as well as “Space Fleet.” The show that Robert Daily was extremely obsessed with in “USS Callister.” So there must have been a movie made in the 60s.
Within the newspaper where we saw that David’s family was killed, there was the white bear symbol present, which could end up being one of the earliest uses of the symbol, which is quite interesting.
The bookshop that they went into in the episode was called Cooper’s Bookstore. I don’t really know if it’s worthy of being an Easter egg, but Cooper was the name of the individual who partook in the trial for the episode “Play Test” in Season 3.
Beyond The Sea Review
I thought this episode was a really good one. It stands out as one of a kind, as there’s not been a Black Mirror episode before with the level of depth to it that this one had. It was a true sci-fi story, one that was in space, and I liked that.
The technology was so interesting too. I actually thought that the linked technology that was being used was a possibility in this episode when I did my Trailer breakdown. So I’m glad that it was that as it was such a cool concept, a concept that we’ve not seen before.
The way that this episode was shot was truly nice on the eye as well. I don’t think that it was shot on film, but the way that it was edited gave it the illusion that it was. The time period that it was set in is something that I feel also allowed it to have that feel as well.
Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett really did deliver some of the best performances in the entirety of the. Black Mirror show. The relationship that the pair had and the range of emotions, with the gradual decline in the sense of care, felt so real.
The fact that Aaron Paul had to essentially play two different characters whilst being in the same skin was really impressive too. I genuinely believed that there was a version where he was David and a version where he was Cliff, so it was truly top-notch.
I’m a massive fan of this episode. If you take these first three episodes of Season 6 and compare them to the three episodes that we had in Season five, it really does feel like Season 6 is on a different level.
Also Read: Black Mirror Season 7: Everything We Know
