Netflix released the much-anticipated sixth season of Black Mirror a few days ago. After binge-watching the five episodes, we're sure you've got questions, particularly with the fourth episode.
In this article, we're here to shed light on everyone's question: Black Mirror Mazey Day: why did Mazey go into hiding?
What Is Mazey Day Episode About?
The official synopsis of Mazey Day reads:
"A troubled Hollywood starlet goes to great lengths to escape packs of invasive paparazzi as she deals with the aftermath of a hit-and-run."
Mazey Day is unlike other Black Mirror episodes. For one, it has a completely familiar story in the end. And two, it doesn't really use advanced technology.
Instead, it uses the available technology during the time it was set: early 2000s. The only visible technology seen in the episode was Bo's (played by Zazie Beetz) fascination with what the iPod Shuffle can do.
The episode follows the moral struggle of Bo, who is a paparazzi skilled at finding her subjects. But after one of the celebrities she shot decides to kill himself, Bo realizes that the guilt is not worth it.
As time progresses, however, Bo's work as a barista does't seem to cut it. She needs a bigger amount of money so she could pay rent.
This makes her take on a side gig: to find Mazey Day (played by Clara Rugaar), a Hollywood A-lister who seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.
Now, this is a time when paparazzi loved to capture distraught actresses during their worst times: getting out of rehab, a mugshot, and other events.
Thinking that Mazey was locking herself due to drugs, Bo decides to accept the gig and start the hunt for the troubled actress.
What she doesn't know, however, was that Mazey was actually hiding due to the trauma she experiences while filming in the Czech Republic.
Why Did Mazey Become a Werewolf?
As it turns out, the hit-and-run victim that Mazey was involved in was actually a werewolf. After getting out of her car to help the man, Mazey gets bitten, which passes on the curse to her.
This causes Mazey to have trouble working on set and has to leave the public eye. A celebrity doctor decides to bring Mazey to an exclusive rehab facility so she could work on the transformation on her own.
Unfortunately, Mazey's car gets trailed by Bo, who gets involved in Mazey's transformation along with three other paparazzi friends.
The three get killed, along with other diner folks, and Bo is left alone with Mazey. She shoots the animal, which causes Mazey to return to her human form.
Mazey asks Bo to kill her so Bo hands her the gun. Off-screen: before Mazey pulls the trigger, Bo takes one last shot of the actress. And the screen goes blank.
Am I Still Watching Black Mirror?
This is exactly what plenty of people who watched Mazey Day felt at the surprising turn of events. And because of this, many are left confused and frustrated.
Before the season was released, not much was known about all the episodes except their short synopsis. And for show creator, Charlie Brooker, this was on purpose.
Brooker explains that the Mazey Day episode "is best seen knowing nothing going in."
But it doesn't work. The twist in Mazey Day has been referred to as "one of the worst twists in recent memory," certainly not the mindf*ck that Black Mirror is best known for.
The episode is also pointed out as one of the worst Black Mirror episodes and virtually tops every "worst Black Mirror Season 6 episodes" list.
We've seen this kind of twist numerous times before. Perhaps the only time we felt troubled in the episode was the scene that mirrored how intrusive paparazzi can get.
But that's it. Nothing about it was Black Mirror and it definitely wasn't original.
In Brooker's recent Vanity Fair interview where he explains what Red Mirror is, he says:
I started this season with a Red Mirror story, Demon 79, which was set in the past. The idea [with the Red Mirror label] was to do an alternative horror companion to Black Mirror. But Demon 79 links back to regular Black Mirror episodes near the end. That made me think, yeah, I can do episodes [set] in the past, so why am I locking myself into setting things in a future with lots of chrome and glass and holograms? For the Beyond the Sea episode, I’ll set it in 1969. What would that look like? And incidentally, that’s quite exciting, because it feels like a sort of lost science fiction story of the 60s. And it means that the characters within it are behaving like people of their era, not of our era. Is there a term for that? Retrofuturistic? Psychedelic steampunk?
And then Mazey Day is set in the early noughties. That one, I flip flopped between making it a Red Mirror and a Black Mirror. And then I thought, F--k it, it is Black Mirror—because otherwise we were blowing the slightly outrageous twist that happens there. But again, I was just trying to experiment a bit with what Black Mirror was. I don’t want to sit here feeling like I’m in a box where I have to write an episode about NFTs or whatever’s on the tech pages today. That’s not what the show was ever intended to do. If you look at our first episode, you can tell it was obviously designed to be startling and surprising and weird. So I was trying to sort of reconnect a bit to that.
Mr. Brooker, Mazey Day is a Red Mirror, in our opinion.
When Brooker teased the coming of Black Mirror Season 6, he promised that it will have horror and some unexpected twists.
With the Mazey Day episode, you can say that again.
RELATED: Black Mirror Beyond the Sea: What is a Link?
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