Black Mirror season 7’s second episode ‘Bête Noire’ is certainly tricky to wrap your head around as the sci-fi factor in the episode is seemingly lower, but gets stronger towards the end. The plot revolves around Maria (played by Siena Kelly) and Verity (played by Rosy McEwen) at their workplace. Maria works at a confectionary company’s office and is perturbed by the arrival of Verity – her former schoolmate.
Maria tries to sabotage Verity by telling other co-workers about her rumours during school, but the problem is, Maria herself was involved in spreading those rumours in school, making Verity’s life miserable. Maria finds the first few days very confusing as she misremembers names of places, and finding that she wrote something else in an email that she swore was different when she composed it. Maria is convinced that Verity can change reality at will – something that others cannot notice.
Warning: This article contains spoilers about the episode
What happens towards the end?
After Maria is fired from her job, she follows Verity to her massive house to steal a necklace she wears that she believes allows Verity to change the reality. When Maria gets a hold of it, Verity reveals that “It’s just a remote. It connects to the quantum compiler downstairs.”
Maria keeps waving the necklace without any hope until Verity gives a more descriptive yet confusing explanation, saying, “Technically, it’s not really changing anything; it just retunes our corporeal frequency to one of the parallel realities where whatever I’ve said has always been true. There’s infinite timelines, so I just pick the one where you’re the only one that knows what’s going on. So you feel really… special.”
In layman’s terms, Verity’s necklace communicates with the compiler she has built downstairs to dictate the reality that she wants, basically making her close to being a God. The compiler then puts her in a parallel universe where whatever she has ever said is true and Maria is the only individual who’s aware of the changes in her reality.
Why does Maria kill Verity?
After an angry Maria shoots Verity in the head for ruining so many things, she uses the remote to order the quantum compiler that she’s the new controller. Maria yells, “The pendant works for me, the pendant works for me!” and then issues an instruction to get the police to stand down. “She shot herself. It wasn’t me. You saw the whole thing,” she says.
Maria’s plan works and the final sequence of the episode shows her standing on a pedestal on an alien planet, surrounded by her subjects crying out “Hail, Maria!” in unison. Ultimately the message this episode conveys is that unlimited power can eventually turn someone into exactly what they despise.
The episode’s title ‘Bête Noire’, which means “a person or thing that one particularly dislikes,” fits the plot, as Maria transforms into her bête noire at the end of the episode.
