Black Mirror : Let's talk about that ending

Let's talk about that ending

Let's assume that the horror game was real for just a second. The stated mechanism of the game was that it utilized his own brain against him to probe for his greatest fears and use them against him. As the game escalates and his greatest fears are unleashed against him, there are two major ones that become apparent: 1. he has a major fear of facing his mother for some reason (He even states that his mom is going to be behind the door. . . of all things he could say) and 2. he is deathly afraid of ending up like his father did and losing his mind (early in the episode he tells Sonja that his father died of early onset Alzheimers. Thus, it seems as if the "game", which the ending suggests wasn't a real game, seemed to follow the actual mechanism that was stated initially.

This isn't to say that the ending was a false one. However, we can't be certain about an ending in which he first loses his memory before seemingly being pulled out of the game and regaining it, only to then face his mother and come out of the game again and then to finally reach what is many people's greatest fear, death, due to his phone interfering with the game before he even played whack-a-mole. If you consider the order of these devices of fear in which he loses his mind, faces his mother and then finally dies, you have to consider that these were all due to the probing of the game to find his deepest fears. The fact that these events actually follow a logical path which is consistent with the stated mechanism of the game, has to leave room for speculation that we never actually saw him exit the game, despite what we actually we saw.

P.S. I thought it was interesting that this episode sort of mirror's a classic Twilight Zone episode and book by Ambrose Bierce titled "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge" (in fairness, it was an independent film before Twilight Zone snapped it up to be part of the series). If you aren't familiar, it is widely considered one of the finest (if not the best overall) episodes of Twilight Zone ever. It happens to be my personal favorite and I saw the parallel before we got anywhere near the end.

Re: Let's talk about that ending

I've read a few posts on this Ep and love the idea that the game never actually ended when it ended for us. Puts one more spanner in my brain.

Re: Let's talk about that ending

Even thought i believe it ended with his death, it is confusing to me on why he'd know it was even a game that played with his mind. It is stated that he died 0.4 seconds after he put on the artifact the first time and there was no reason for him to know what exactly the software did to his brain, or the conversations they had after they left the white room.

What it seems to me is that it was all made up in his mind, the game, the software, the prove, the conversations, even the whack-a-mole game. And so, it was all just a before-death hallucination which had nothing to do with the game nor a software that played with his mind nor his fears. The game purpose is probably totally different from what they showed us in the chapter. And it was focused more on what happened in his mind before his quick death.


In the other hand, if the game was in fact all what they showed us in the show, it wouldn't make sense that he died just 0,4 seconds after he put it on, therefore, the most logical explanation is that his death is just another and ultimate fear.

Re: Let's talk about that ending

I think you are overthinking it. In an anthology series like this, you have to take the ending for its word. If it were left ambiguous, then I could understand the speculation; but they clearly stated that he died at the end, and there will never be a follow-up to this story, each episode is self-contained. So personally, I would take however the episode ends as the definitive 'the end'.

Re: Let's talk about that ending

I don't believe the device actually did anything to his mind other than killed him when it went haywire as something that is still in the process of downloading is not intact and unusable.

Everything he experienced was created by his dying brain. There was a movie in 1990 with Tim Robbins about this, I won't post the name because that twist is the biggest twist in a movie I've ever seen but anyone with good taste will know the movie I'm talking about :)




Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. -Isaac Asimov
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