Wow, what’s an episode of Black Mirror Season 6, Loch Henry was. It was a very different type of episode for the show to put out, and it’s one that I would most similarly compare to “Shut Up And Dance” from Season three, which is quite right considering one of the characters in this episode is called Kenny, just like in season three.
Whitelist not having a technology that impacts a person or focuses on society and how it changed with its implementation, and this episode did what Black Mirror does best: to show the demise of a character in front of our very eyes.
Focusing on Davis and Pia looking to make a film on a crime that was committed in Davis’ hometown several decades ago. With the need for an angle to make it more personal and unique, that very thing did end up happening. So let’s do a Loch Henry Ending Explanation and Breakdown all that there was to take away from this episode while still so calling out some Easter eggs.
Here is Black Mirror Season 6 Loch Henry Ending Explained:
Loch Henry’s Ending Explained
This episode did a great job of giving us everything during the first half and allowing it to all make sense when the reveal happened right at the end. During the beginning of the episode, we focus on the mask in the first couple of minutes, which was on the wall, which would ultimately go on to become synonymous with the killings that took place.
We saw the lack of signal that was present in the place that Davis and Pia were in, which tied into the reality that Pia needed to abandon the House for her safety. There were stories of people getting lost out in the open and never being found, which connected to Pia being claimed by the wilderness. Plus, their odd nature of Janet was something that made sense due to her ending up being involved with Iain in the murder.
We were told the story of Iain Adair, who was revealed to be a killer that tortured and murdered eight people in the area. It was said that it was once an area that was thriving with tourists due to the landscapes that were present. But since the incident all of those years ago, it was a place where everybody fled from, and nobody wanted to visit.
It was once Pia found out about the gruesome case that she wanted to investigate further and do a documentary on it. She was a filmmaker along with Davis, and she wanted to make something that people would enjoy watching. Even though Davis was reluctant to due to his connection to it and the fact that his father died shortly after, however, they did ultimately end up doing it.
But upon making it and pitching it to Historic Productions, they mentioned how there was nothing that was really that unique about it and that they should lean in on the personal connection. This was the fact that Davis’s father, Kenny, was injured after going around there to check on Iain. He was fired and ultimately ended up dying after contracting an illness whilst in hospital.
Davis’ Mum And Dad Were The Killers
It was during the digitizing process that Pia stumbled across a VHS tape that had footage of the missing couple, Dawn and Simon Challis, in the dungeon beneath Iain’s House, and Kenny, Davis’s father, was present there and almost like he was leading the situation.
Iain Adair gave off the impression of being someone who was being used as a facilitator and was being used. The true turning point, though, came when Janet, Davis’s mother, entered the room while wearing the menacing Red Mask and started acting evilly, showing that she was also complicit. Iain Adair was also a member of this serial killing pair.
Everything we were told and the story that existed of the gruesome murders up until that point was only half true. This was what caused Pia to run out into the open space and hide. However, after escaping, she ended up falling over in the lake and hitting her head on a rock, tying into the harshness of the environment that was present and what was told to us earlier in the episode.
With the idea of being caught and found out, Janet got all of the evidence out-of-the-box that she kept, and she had one last chocolate, which was something that was seriously haunting. And then she left her son a note before ultimately ending it.
I thought this note was going to say, “Forgive me’,” but it was only right at the end that we saw that the note read “For your film,” providing a strongly dark stomach-sinking moment which showed that she had no remorse for her actions and that she didn’t regret what she did in the slightest.
Davis Lost Everything For A BAFTA Award
To me, this episode really symbolized how one could often look at these cases and documentaries from an outside perspective and see the entertainment value in them rather than seeing the real human aspect of it. Like we often see when we watch them on Netflix ourselves. However, it’s only once that personal connection is made that things start to lose the entertainment aspect of them.
Pia was excited to be able to make it due to not being connected to it, but once she was, she was fearful, and she ended up dying. Davis was on board with doing it. He won a BAFTA and became a known name, but he lost everything in the process of it. We saw the detachment that was present when Stuart was on the phone cheering in his busy pub with members of the public wearing red masks as if Janet was some kind of fictional character.
The lack of understanding on Stuart’s side that this documentary that he was cheering for was about Davis’s own family and the fact that they were horrific killers was nonexistent. As I said, it’s as if they were characters in a TV show. Stuart’s father, however, wasn’t over what occurred due to the connection that he had with it.
So I think it’s definitely symbolic of the way that we can often view things and the detachment that one can have. Now let’s move on to the Easter Eggs.
Loch Henry Easter Eggs
There weren’t actually that many Easter eggs in Black Mirror Loch Henry. It’s often strange because in one episode of Black Mirror, it will be a world where Twitter doesn’t exist, and they’re using Smithereens. However, this was not the world. This was a world where almost none of the technology that we came to know over the show existed. This was set more in the Michael Callow “National Anthem” and “Hated In The Nation” universe.
In terms of the Easter eggs, I think a little homage to a previous episode was the fact that Davis’s father was called Kenny, a person who ended up being a serial killer. And in the episode “Shut Up and Dance,” Kenny is a person who ends up being arrested and as well as committing horrific acts.
During a lot of the newspaper articles, we saw that Michael Smart was featured on the front page for most of them for a number of different reasons. Plus, we also saw that a documentary that was created for San Junipero was nominated for a BAFTA. So whilst there weren’t a ton of Easter eggs like the first episode, they still managed to squeeze in a few for us to spot.
Black Mirror Season 6 Loch Henry Review
I thought this was a really good episode of the season and a great one that stands up when compared to the rest of the show. It’s very different, and it’s probably the least Black Mirror. But I don’t mind that because “Shut Up And Dance” was like that, too, and that’s still considered one of the greats.
I don’t think this will be remembered as one of the greatest of all time in the show, but it’s one that was definitely pleasant to watch. I really like the way that we were led down one path, and then the rug was pulled from under us right at the end, and we were given a massive twist. I expected something, but I didn’t expect everything to just change like that.
The most haunting scene was when Janet did what she did, but also when Davis looked at the note. It was three words that, outside of the context that we saw, weren’t sinister at all, but in this situation, it really was. I also found the fact that he kept it with him in his pocket to be quite a dark thing to do. Could he potentially have that darkness ingrained within him? I think it’s something that the character would definitely think about.
Black Mirror doesn’t need the technology to allow it to shine, and I think this episode proved that. We had an episode that just allowed us to take a dark look into a small area in Scotland that had a history that destroyed the town, but how it was all one big lie. While stuff heavily compared it to “Shut Up And Dance,” I wouldn’t say that it is better than that episode. But this one is good.
Also Read: Black Mirror Season 7: Everything We Know
