‘Eulogy’ Is a Poignant Reminder of What Makes Black Mirror Great

The penultimate episode of season 7 is among the show’s most hard-hitting

Netflix

One of Black Mirror’s signature strengths is its ability to depict a nearing future with grounded realism. The innovations each episode centers on carry enough emotional weight to make the speculative feel not just believable, but palpable. The stories are vignettes that stand by and large independent of one another, but each explores the intersection of biology and technology, and how humanity contends with increasingly digital threats.

The tech on display in each episode is almost never so far-fetched that it feels alien. But it rarely fails to unsettle viewers or spur philosophical debates.

More than a showcase of technology — and how it can go awry — what “Eulogy” offers is an introspective probing of memory, love, grief, and the lengths we go to preserve the versions of our past that we can live with. As with many of Black Mirror’s most memorable episodes, it’s built on the idea that technology doesn’t change who we are. It only thrusts us into increasingly surreal scenarios. Our desires, blind spots, and personality traits don’t disintegrate just because we bridge the gap between brains and computers.

Many sci-fi stories make the mistake of assuming that with enough innovation, we become different creatures entirely. We shed our most central traits like an outdated operating system. But Black Mirror’s writers have always resisted that flattening. It presents us as messy and fragile and flawed as we are today. And we’re every bit as blithe in our acceptance of each paradigm-shifting advancement our species makes.

Black Mirror is a show that understands the ceaseless motion of the modern day, and how we assimilate fantastical innovations like smartphones and FaceTime— how we welcome them into our lives one day and treat them as banal the very next. How our most defining attributes persevere even as we mad dash into a world of ones and zeroes.

Black Mirror has received criticism for the way it’s welcomed an increasingly recognizable list of celebrities into its ever-shifting cast. But in “Eulogy,” Paul Giamatti is perfectly suited to the role of Phillip, a reclusive man offered the opportunity to revisit the past through a cutting-edge memorial service. The company behind it, also called Eulogy, allows users to inhabit old photographs and relive the captured moments as if they were happening again.

Some might charge that such a technological leap could never be achieved. But one of the aspects of the show I cherish most is how it begs us to reassess the leaps we’ve made already. The promise of the technology that serves as this episode’s anchor point is hardly different than the promise that the Apple Vision Pro offers today. We can record “spatial videos” on our phones that, with the proper helmet on our heads, can be relived in an immersive 3D plane. The headset even allows us to add depth to old photos that were taken before “spatial computing” was invented. (I’m still a far cry from buying Apple’s exorbitant VR set, but I’ve tried it before and can attest that the technology is remarkable.)

What “Eulogy” portrays is possible, even likely.

To ancestors who once followed the stars for guidance, the idea of a culture with supercomputers in their pockets, satellites in their skies, and virtual worlds they could slink away into on command would be inconceivable. I’d argue that there’s not a single invention in Black Mirror that truly exceeds our capabilities. A healthy few may still be a century or two in the distance rather than on our immediate horizon, it’s true. But I can’t help but see naivety in the people who look at the show’s brand of dystopian sci-fi and dismiss it as unrealistic — who watch the show and pick up on only the entertainment but none of its deeper cultural critique.

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In a few decades, I imagine we’ll look back at Black Mirror and uniformly agree that it was at least as prophetic as The Simpsons. I’d even venture to say that it’s achieved the superior bullseye average already. (Foreseeing Donald Trump becoming president was admittedly impressive… but with nearly 800 episodes in the cartoon giant’s arsenal, it’s bound to be right at least as often as a broken clock.)

I digress.

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In “Eulogy,” Phillip sets aside his initial hesitation around the new technology as he begins excavating old memories. And as he moves through these snapshots, we learn not just about the heartbreak that he could never fully reconcile, but we discover the gaps in his life that he’s left unexamined. The episode also offers a powerful exploration of the recollections that lie buried within us, and the way that the proper photograph or video can pull us inward toward parts of ourselves that we’ve forgotten.

“Eulogy” isn’t quite a perfect episode of Black Mirror. There were a couple of aspects to the plot that felt a tad convenient. The AI guide, portrayed by Patsy Ferran, is a needling presence who seems to overstep her role as a digital assistant. She agitates the protagonist and viewers alike at first. But through an almost Socratic line of inquiry, she drives Phillip toward catharsis.

Much of the genius of “Eulogy” isn’t in its predictive nature. It’s in how seamlessly it folds speculative tech into a story that feels close to home. What makes it stand out in the Black Mirror universe is its subtlety and restraint. There’s no meteoric spiral, nor critical operating system overload, nor nefarious techno-bureaucrats pulling strings behind the scenes.

As with many of the show’s most effective episodes, it takes place in the emotional aftermath of innovation and isn’t merely a case study on the ways an invention can be abused.

There’s a sadness to how “Eulogy” unfolds, but it’s not melancholy. Though scarcely devoid of Black Mirror’s signature twists, the conclusion is one of the show’s brightest to date. It wasn’t quite my favorite episode from the season. Yet it’s a proud testament to what I love about the show at its best. And it’s proof that after nearly fifteen years, its writers aren’t only conceiving of new and believable technologies, but ways to root them in narratives that are raw and unmistakably human.

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