Review of Black Mirror Season 7

Black Mirror, Season 7, Episode 2

Original Air Date: 10th April 2025

Revenge in an Alternate Reality

Imagine experiencing a break from reality, not because of a mental illness, but because someone keeps deliberately changing it to drive you into paranoia. This sums up the premise of Bête Noire, an episode of the highly acclaimed series Black Mirror. Although writer Charlie Brooker does not explicitly adopt a feminist lens, his writing references various gender norms, stereotypes, and expectations regularly. In this episode, Maria is a culinary researcher, working at a chocolate-manufacturing company, tasked with developing new flavors. She is reconnected with Verity, an old school classmate, when Verity joins a focus group reviewing Maria’s latest creation. Verity can literally construct and reconstruct reality, by using a pendant that is responsive to her fingerprint, making Maria doubt her own truth. What starts as a psychological drama, ends in science fiction, but what motivates Verity to alter reality?

In school, Verity represented the trope of a computer nerd and was socially excluded. Along with some friends, Maria participated in a rumor that Verity was sexually active with one of the teachers. Spreading gossip about others is a form of relational aggression, or non-physical forms of bullying, and teenage girls are pros. Rumor-mongering serves the selfish goal of demarcating an in-group and out-group, carefully curating your friend circle. This is very different from how boys display aggression, which is almost exclusively physical. So Verity has a nasty rumor spread about her, and she’s motivated to seek revenge.

Fast forward to adulthood, where she has amassed scientific knowledge that could be applied to several benevolent ends - curing cancer, reversing climate change, or even eliminating poverty. She knows how to alter reality in a flash, and what does she use it for? Getting back at the mean girls who made her school life miserable. It’s an age-old tale of obscene competitiveness between women, and if Verity and Maria were men, this would have definitely played out differently. Verity is also extremely creative and inventive, but she chooses to meet selfish and perhaps evil goals, instead of good ones. Applying dark creativity, she conceives of an ingenious way to drive Maria up the wall, by subtly changing her version of reality. A telling example is when Verity ruthlessly drinks a co-worker’s almond milk and looks Maria in the eye while doing it. When the CCTV footage is reviewed, it’s Maria who’s drinking the milk -- changes made in an instant when Verity touches her necklace.

From the angle of reclaiming power, the episode is very interesting because, despite their differences, both Verity and Maria choose to become the Empress of the Universe when they have control over the pendant. It is reflective of how, when given absolute power, women in this episode channel it into personal vendettas shaped by social dynamics unique to their gender. Although men in fiction, and often in life, are more frequently shown waging battles over territory, status, or ideology, this episode reframes the female battlefield into one of perception and memory. It suggests that teenage wounds are neither forgotten nor forgiven, and that when opportunities for retribution arise, they are often pursued with precision and creativity.

Hansika Kapoor is a researcher at the Department of Psychology, Monk Prayogshala, India. Her research focuses on creativity, socio-moral psychology, and behavioral science.