Note: This story contains spoilers from “Black Mirror” Season 7, Episode 2.
“Black Mirror” Season 7, Episode 2, titled “Běte Noire,” plays with reality to the point of madness.
The episode follows Maria (Siena Kelly), a confectionary prodigy whose professional success derails when Verity (Rosy McEwan) — a girl she knew in high school who was ruthlessly bullied — pops up and takes a research assistant position. From there things go downhill as Maria starts to get sure facts wrong left and right, and the person to constantly point out her mistakes is Verity.
Her former high school classmate seems to have a way to change realities and Maria is the only person aware of it happening. This begins to drive her mad and paranoid as she digs into Verity’s past.
Here’s how “Běte Noire” comes to an end and just how Verity’s reality-bending tech works.
How does Verity’s technology work?
Maria thinks it’s the remote necklace Verity wears that manages to change her reality but her rival assures her it’s just a facilitator for the real power. Her real ability is using the remote to connect to the quantum compiler set up on the main floor of her giant house.
This quantum compiler retunes the user and anyone they decide to the frequency of a parallel universe where whatever the remote-wielder just said was true. Thanks to there being an infinite number of timelines and realities, Verity has been finding ones were only her and Maria know that something is off in the situation. In doing this, Verity has been driving her high school bullies insane to the point where they kill themselves.
How does “Běte Noire” end?
Verity spends most of the episode wreaking havoc on Maria’s life by altering facts she knows to be true to have never been real. It plays on the Mandela Effect concept, but here what Maria knows actually was true until Verity got involved.
After Maria is fired from her job and her relationship falls apart, she opts to break into Verity’s home and find out what’s happening. Her home is a true McMansion, and the main floor is largely taken up by a bunch of machines and servers. Upstairs in her room there are photos of her with celebrities, on the cover of Vogue and even as an astronaut. She finds the device she thinks Verity uses to change realities but has to hide under her bed when Verity gets out of the shower.
Verity quickly realizes Maria is there and tells her to come out. Maria thinks she can use the remote on Verity but she explains it’s linked to her thumbprint and that it truly is just a remote. The real power is the quantum compiler downstairs which lets Verity use the remote to find a parallel reality where whatever she said is actually true. This is how she’s been driving her old high school bullies mad to the point they kill themselves.
The two get in a good old fashioned fist fight until Verity gets her hands on a remote — of which she has loads — and says the cops are here and looking to arrest her. A pair shows up at the house but Maria is able to pull one of their guns before being put in cuffs and kills Verity.
A shootout ensues but instead of killing the cops or getting shot herself, she uses the remote through Verity to gain control of her power. She then tells the cops she’s innocent and that they work for her now. She then tells them to kneel. In the span of 30 seconds Maria becomes drunk with the power of the quantum compiler just like Verity.
Then she says “I am the Empress of the Universe” and reality shifts to her standing in beyond regal garb as the universe kneels to her.
“Black Mirror” Season 7 is now streaming on Netflix.
