There’s nostalgia, there’s AI, and then there’s Black Mirror Season 7‘s Hotel Reverie — a stunning, aching love story between Issa Rae and Emma Corrin that effortlessly calls back to San Junipero while blazing its bittersweet path.
Black Mirror has done it again. Hotel Reverie, starring Issa Rae and Emma Corrin, is everything longtime fans of the anthology never dared to expect — a spiritual sequel to San Junipero that doesn’t just reference its DNA but deepens it.
Charlie Brooker confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that the episode exists “in the same Venn Diagram” as the beloved queer digital afterlife tale. At the same time, Rae herself told Collider that she was “transfixed” by Corrin’s transformation into Dorothy, the classic Hollywood starlet at the center of the in-movie romance.
And suppose San Junipero was about second chances in a digital forever. In that case, Hotel Reverie is about fleeting eternity — about loving a ghost in a world that was never built to last.
Black Mirror gives us another queer, retro-futuristic romance that questions who gets a happy ending
The premise is pure Black Mirror: Brandy Friday (Rae), a megastar disillusioned by her career, volunteers for a project by Redream, an AI company that lets actors insert their consciousness into revamped movie classics. Her target? A not-real, Casablanca-esque romance called Hotel Reverie, where she insists on playing the role opposite Dorothy Chambers (Corrin) instead of the usual male lead.
What begins as a clever tweak turns into a soul-shaking immersion. As Brandy becomes entwined with Dorothy and disrupts the film’s storyline, it’s clear that she’s not just acting — she’s falling in love.
As Collider reported, Rae didn’t want to leave the sets of this Black Mirror episode herself, adding: “I got to be Brandy at home by myself and then live in Hotel Reverie for almost a month and be with Emma… then I had to say goodbye.”
Just like Yorkie and Kelly in San Junipero, Brandy, and Dorothy are separated by more than time or technology — they’re split by narrative itself. The ending, both tragic and poetic, reframes who gets to be remembered, who gets the spotlight, and how queer romance gets to end.
The echoes of San Junipero are more than easter eggs
Brooker doesn’t just wink at San Junipero — he sends it love letters, literally. When Brandy receives a mysterious device from Kimmy (Awkwafina) that lets her reconnect with Dorothy post-movie, it’s addressed to Junipero Drive.
The meta-layers of this Black Mirror episode are thick, but so is the emotion. Dorothy’s final appearance is in black-and-white test footage, her digital consciousness preserved not in a beach town but in a reel of silent longing.
“It’s about nostalgia, escape, relationships, and second chances,” Brooker told EW. And it’s true — Hotel Reverie and San Junipero both ask if love can outlive the moment it’s born in and whether tech can preserve the most human part of us: the need to connect.
In a season filled with genre swings, Hotel Reverie is the heart. It’s a reminder that Black Mirror can still make us cry and that somewhere between the past and the simulated, a new kind of future might be waiting.
