Fans of Netflix’s Black Mirror are feeling it this season. The seventh season of the show, ‘Hotel Reverie’ debuted last week and one episode, featuring a lesbian romance, has got fans particularly weepy.
Warning: Minor spoilers for Black Mirror‘s ‘Hotel Reverie’ ahead.
‘Hotel Reverie,’ the third episode of the season, sees Isaac Rae star as Brandy Friday, an A-list actor bored of where she is work-wise and facing speculation about her personal life. Then, through Redream, a futuristic piece of tech, Brandy is able to step into one of her favourite old-Hollywood films, Hotel Reverie (not a real movie) as the lead protagonist.
Choosing to take on the male lead role, Brandy finds herself falling for the female protagonist, Clara played by Dorothy Chambers (Emma Corrin). At first everything proceeds as it should do, line-by line, with the AI characters reacting to Brandy and Clara.
However, things soon go off-script and as a result Dorothy begins to breakaway from her programming, realising her repressed queerness. The episode ends on a semi-positive note (rare for Black Mirror).
Posting on Reddit after watching ‘Hotel Reverie,’ one viewer said: “As a lesbian I loved it”. Another added: “Not a dry eye in the house.” Someone else wrote: “I loved it and didn’t want it to end.” Another viewer shared that, “as a lesbian this one hit hard. Knowing that the actress never came to terms with her sexuality/never got to experience it & in this one universe she can finally be herself.”
Similarly, another queer Black Mirror fan said, “this lowkey hit harder than san junipero.”
They are not the only one to draw parallels between ‘Hotel Reverie’ and ‘San Junipero’. In the latter, two women choose to spend forever together in a digital landscape. It’s often cited as one of the best episodes of the series.
Viewers also praised both Rae and Corrine for their roles calling the actors “great” and “absolutely fantastic” respectively.
The episode highlights how queer actors in the ‘golden age’ of Hollywood often had to hide their queerness. Actors like Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter were both LGBTQ+ and yet successful in their time.
Speaking about the episode, especially Dorothy’s journey, Rae told Out recently, “It shows the fact that Dorothy was queer during this time period where she couldn’t really acknowledge those feelings and couldn’t be who she really was.”
Rae was also full of praise for her co-star, Corrin. “Playing this with Emma was so fulfilling just because they’re such a phenomenal, transformative actor. And to watch them transform and to embody this actress from the ’40s was also alluring for me, where I was just like, ‘Oh, there’s such a grace and elegance and dignity that I want to emulate myself and that I want to be around and that I’m curious about’.”
Corrin heaped similar praise on Rae when speaking to Elle UK. She told the magazine, “She’s brilliant,” and “Her comic timing is unreal.”
Black Mirror is streaming now.
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