Daredevil: Born Again’s Successful First Season Is a Good Sign for the MCU
This post contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again season 1. The devil is in the details. That’s what Marvel realized in October of 2023, when the writer’s strike forced them to pause their long-in-development revival series Daredevil: Born Again. Although six of the planned 18 episodes had been completed, Marvel let go of writers Chris […]
The post Daredevil: Born Again’s Successful First Season Is a Good Sign for the MCU appeared first on Den of Geek.
This article contains spoilers for the Black Mirror episode “Hotel Reverie.”
Black Mirror is about technology but it isn’t about technology, you know what I mean?
*puts bong down* Sorry about that, maybe an example from “Hotel Reverie” can better explain. In this season 7 installment, Issa Rae stars as Brandy Friday, a modern day movie star who takes a job as the male lead in a remake of her favorite black-and-white classic film Hotel Reverie. Like many other Black Mirror characters, Brandy is guilty of Not Reading The Instructions and doesn’t realize that “remaking the film” means digitally stepping in to the existing version of it where she must play her part convincingly enough to get to the end.
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Hotel Reverie isn’t exclusively about technology. The Redream program is merely what sets events into motion where the episode, written by Charlie Brooker and directed by Haolu Wang, can delve into complex questions surrounding digital personhood, copyright law, and love itself. Still, without that tech as a starting point, the story wouldn’t get to explore those questions in the first place. That interplay between sci-fi commentary and the human condition is what drew Issa Rae to the role.
“I remember being super excited to get a Black Mirror script and to even be considered for it, and then just immediately being immersed in all the different levels of it. I was gonna say yes anyway, but I was definitely in then,” Rae tells Den of Geek and other outlets at a roundtable junket.
A longtime fan of Black Mirror, Rae knew that that the technology Brandy uses to enter into Hotel Reverie looked mighty familiar. A small disk that is placed on one’s temple to engage a virtual reality interface has recurred several times throughout the show’s canon. It first popped up in season 3’s “San Junipero,” then made appearances in season 4’s “USS Callister,” and season 5’s “Striking Vipers” (where it was referred to as an “Experiencer Disk”). A variant of it also turns up in season 7’s “Eulogy.” Manufactured by TCKR Systems, the device has never had an official name until now…sort of.
“Charlie [Brooker] calls it a ‘Nubbin,’ but Awkwafina’s character calls it a ‘Mesmerizer.’ I don’t know if that’s the slang version of it,” Rae says. “I didn’t have the ‘real’ version on screen. I don’t know if I’m supposed to reveal this but I had like a fake, smaller version with double-sided tape. So I was very excited to hold a real one more recently.”
The “real” Nubbin that Rae got to hold recently was undoubtedly the one used to film this meta advertisement for season 7.
@blackmirror issa rae taking a quick trip to another reality #nubbin #blackmirror ♬ original sound – BlackMirror
That same ad campaign was accompanied by a Netflix-hosted activation where visitors could experience the device that is definitely called a Nubbin with a brand trademark and everything. Looks like Charlie Brooker got his way on this one. Sorry, Awkwafina’s character!
Given that the doohickey we now know as a Nubbin first premiered in San Junipero, its use here has an added bit of resonance. Like that all-time classic episode of the show, Hotel Reverie ends up being a touching love story where two women make a connection outside the bonds of time and space. The story even concludes with a San Junipero easter egg as Brandy Friday’s address is revealed to be “3049 Junipero Drive.”
“Charlie said that this is the first episode he wrote for this season. [San Junpiero] is big shoes to fill, so I just hope that people can look at them both separately, but also appreciate them as complements to one another,” Rae says.
All six episodes of Black Mirror season 7 are available to stream on Netflix now.
The post How Hotel Reverie Expands Upon the Black Mirror Canon appeared first on Den of Geek.
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