One of the darkest stories explored in Charlie Brooker’s sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror was featured in the show’s only Christmas special, which released on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom on December 16, 2014. Black Mirror has become one of the most popular and talked-about shows on TV since its premiere back in 2011. Each episode explores a standalone, self-contained story typically set in the near future where advanced technology and speculative fiction toys with the lives of regular people. This was no different for the series’ first and only Christmas special.
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On December 16, 2014, Black Mirror released its only Christmas special, “White Christmas,” which starred Jon Hamm, Rafe Spall, Oona Chaplin, and more. “White Christmas” explored three different stories involving the same characters, centered around a conversation between Matt (Hamm) and Joe (Spall) in a remote cabin on Christmas Day. As is typical with Black Mirror, however, all is not as it seems, and “White Christmas” packed a series of unexpected twists that makes it one of the series’ darkest episodes, despite embracing the Holiday spirit.
“White Christmas” Is One of Black Mirror’s Darkest Episodes
Most Black Mirror episodes have dark undertones and say something worrying about our own modern society, but “White Christmas” is perhaps the darkest of the bunch. First, Matt, who formerly worked training sentient “cookies,” including Greta (Chaplin), remotely coaches Harry (Rasmus Hardiker) through crashing an office Christmas party to meet a woman he fancies—Jennifer (Natalia Tena). Jennifer, who is dealing with serious mental health issues, ends up killing Harry before herself while Matt and his voyeuristic friends watches using Harry’s “Z-Eyes.” This leads to Matt being arrested for his role in Harry’s death, but that’s not all.
“White Christmas” also explored Joe’s backstory, where he reveals that his fiancée, Beth (Janet Montgomery), blocked him—causing them to see each other as grey silhouettes and preventing contact—after they fought about her having an abortion. Soon after, Joe sees Beth’s silhouette, and realizes she is still pregnant, so stalks her and her child, who the block extends to. Following Beth’s tragic death and the removal of the block, Joe learns the child is the product of an affair. Joe subsequently killed Beth’s father and left the girl to freeze to death in the woods, leading to his arrest.
It was after this story where it was revealed that Matt and Joe were speaking to each other inside a cookie, with Matt having been recruited to elicit a testimony from Joe. While this allowed Matt to avoid prison time, he was registered as a sex offender, which caused him to be blocked by everyone and for everyone to view him as a red silhouette, while the Joe cookie was left to fester inside the machine at the rate of 1000 years per minute. “White Christmas’” ending is one of the darkest in Black Mirror’s history, and hasn’t been topped. The conciseness of its stories and brilliant performances from Hamm and Spall make it one of the strongest Black Mirror episodes yet.
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