In the Black Mirror Season 7 episode “Eulogy,” shock and horror take a back seat as one man revisits old memories with a fresh perspective.
The sentimental story, penned by series creator Charlie Brooker and screenwriter and playwright Ella Road (Doctor Who, Ten Percent), centers on Phillip (Paul Giamatti), who’s pretty closed-off and isolated. He receives a call from a representative on behalf of a woman named Kelly Royce (Patsy Ferran), informing him that Kelly’s mother, Carol, his ex-girlfriend, has died, and that her family would like his help with the memorial.
Phillip accepts a package from the representative containing Eulogy, tech that allows users to enter old photographs to curate a eulogy for someone who has died. While the program can process up to 1,500 photos and recommends a minimum of six images, Phillip grabs just three Polaroids from a shoebox containing stacks of photos hidden away in his attic.
As he walks through these photographs accompanied by an AI-generated adviser known as the Guide (also played by Ferran), they run into a major issue: Phillip cannot remember what Carol looks like, and none of his photos show her face because he’s vandalized them as a way of erasing her from his life.
During this immersive trip down memory lane, Phillip recalls Carol, a cellist, as the woman who hurt him throughout their relationship — a narrative the Guide continually pushes back against. In one instance, they enter a picture from a Halloween party in 1991, and Phillip claims that Carol spent “the whole night” sitting with a guy dressed as the Devil while he stood with his co-worker Emma (who he denies leading on romantically). The Guide points out that Carol looks like she’s trying to get away from the costumed man, and Phillip eventually concedes to exaggerating.
Other revelations include Carol taking a job in the orchestra pit for The Phantom of the Opera in London’s West End after the two have a huge fight; Phillip cheating with Emma and getting into a nasty argument with Carol about it over the phone; and a painful breakup that resulted in Phillip locking away memories of their relationship and never revisiting them — until now.
Phillip recalls the time he flew to London to propose to Carol at a fancy restaurant, which did not go well. He remembers that she was quiet, looked slightly different, and refused to drink the expensive champagne he purchased. When he finally popped the question, after seeking courage in the many glasses he drained, Carol was at a loss for words. She left the restaurant when he angrily demanded that she say something.
The Guide explains that she was adapted from Kelly to help ensure the eulogy’s accuracy. Filled with Kelly’s memories, the Guide offers new context about what happened that night. Carol was quiet because she was pregnant with Kelly following a one-night stand. She had written Phillip a letter, but in his angry and drunken state, he never saw it, even though it was right there on the floor of his hotel room.
But a maid had packed away his things back then, and the note is still somewhere among his belongings. In the present day, Phillip eventually finds Carol’s letter and is overcome with emotion as he reads it. Carol admits she only slept with her colleague because she was angry with Phillip about Emma. She invites Phillip to meet her after her matinée performance the next day, but understands if he never wants to see her again.
He never went.
Armed with the full context of their breakup, Phillip finally listens to a cassette recording of Carol playing cello. As the music washes over him, an old photograph of Phillip watching Carol practice comes fully into focus. Finally able to remember her face, Phillip smiles through fresh tears.
Of the episode’s bittersweet ending, Brooker tells Tudum that Phillip has “realized that he made her into a villain in his head.”
“That was his narrative, that she was just this terrible person who was horrible to him and did a horrible thing,” Brooker explains. “He has a new take on what she was going through that he didn’t allow himself to see [at the time]. As a consequence of that, he’s fallen in love with her again at the end, which is bittersweet because she’s gone.”
The episode’s closing moments reveal that Phillip attends Carol’s funeral and exchanges a silent glance with Kelly, which Giamatti found interesting.
“There’s something ambiguous about [Kelly] nodding to me,” Giamatti tells Tudum. “Was she really there in some way? Was she more connected to [Eulogy]? How does that thing work? There’s something wonderful about that sense of, ‘We know each other, but we don’t, but we do.’ It’s like I found this other person.”
Co-writers Brooker and Road found inspiration in Peter Jackson’s 2021 docuseries The Beatles: Get Back, which used technology to enhance images and extract John Lennon’s vocals, allowing modern-day audiences to see and hear archival materials more clearly.
“Eulogy” is a story about death, and Brooker calls it a bitter irony that his own father, who died recently, won’t get to see the episode.
“I had to give a eulogy at his wake, and we were looking for photographs of him to show on a projector on the wall. Pre-smartphones, it’s really easy to forget that you just don’t have many images,” he says. “What it means is those photos are really evocative when you see them, because you’ve got fewer of them, but also they’re imperfect. Today, we take photos, and you can adjust it so that nobody’s blinking, or everyone’s happy. Back then, half my photos were overexposed. […] So, there was something about that. And if, in a fit of rage, you scrubbed out somebody’s face, you’ve destroyed a precious artifact.”
Ferran, who plays the Guide, interpreted the episode as a story about embracing one’s humanity. “We make mistakes, we just have to be more compassionate toward ourselves and toward others,” she said.
“There's something beautiful about how AI is easing somebody’s grief and easing somebody’s sense of loss,” Giamatti told Netflix. “I do feel like the character's coerced somewhat by it, but ultimately, it's a good thing. I hope that this episode is touching to audiences […], that it causes people to reflect a bit about themselves and their lives and about the possibly positive function of AI in their lives.”
Season 7 of Black Mirror is now streaming on Netflix.
With reporting by Maddie Saaf-Welsh.
