Black Mirror Season 6 Episode 5 Demon 79 Explained- White Bear, Free Will, And Finding Love In The Most Unlikely Places

What matters most in life? Is it life itself or finding our cosmic person with whom we can truly be ourselves? In a rare supernatural turn, Black Mirror Season 6 Episode 5 Demon 79 delivered a sympathetic evil entity, a tender love story, and a nod to the nihilism of White Bear. What do White Bear and free will have to do with Demon 79?

In 1979 and Nida has a crappy life. She is a shoe shop assistant who faces daily aggravations. Her boss belittles her, and her customers are horrible. She has to serve a convicted murderer who gives every appearance of wanting to add her to his kill list and watches a slimy politician talking outside the shop. The next day her boss makes her eat in the basement, and she finds some old newspaper clippings of a string of murders and a small totem with the White Bear symbol on it. Nida accidentally cuts her hand and gets blood on the talisman before putting it in her pocket to finish the day.

Later that night, the talisman begins talking to her and claiming to be Gaap, a fabulously furred demon who needs her to commit three murders as a sacrifice, or the world will end in three days. This is understandably distressing to her. It’s slightly less disturbing because Gaap takes the appearance of Bobby Farrell from the disco group Boney M.

First, Gaap convinces Nida to kill a man who has been abusing his daughter. Gaap shows Nida that if she doesn’t kill him, he will continue to abuse his daughter until she is damaged beyond repair. If she doesn’t intercede, this man’s daughter will commit suicide when she is 28. After that first murder, Nida is more reluctant to kill again, but Gaap keeps working on her, telling her the world is ending and showing her news stories that he claims prove his assertions.

Gaap convinces her to go to a pub where he plies her with drinks and negative information about the customers. She rejects all of them until she sees Keith, the man from the shop at the beginning of Black Mirror Season 6 Episode 5 Demon 79. She tricks him back to his apartment with the promise of sex and then bludgeons him to death with a hammer. Unfortunately, Keith’s brother shows up right then, and Nida has to kill him, too, so there aren’t any witnesses.

Thinking she has fulfilled her end of the bargain, Nida prepares to put all this behind her. Gaap’s superiors call and inform them that because Keith was a murderer himself, his death doesn’t count. She now has only one day left to kill one more person. She sets her sights on Michael, the politician she overheard making racist comments. Gaap tells her he won’t count either, though, because his bosses think Michael is the cat’s meow and doing the Devil’s work and all that. He encourages her to pick another person.

She won’t be deterred, though. Nida steals the red jacket she has been coveting for days and returns to her apartment to prepare for the killing. A detective there questions her about Keith’s death because a woman at the pub witnessed her leaving with Keith the night before. She manages to dodge the questions adequately and drives to Michael’s speech. As Gaap tries to convince her not to kill Michael, she tries to run Michael off of the road. She succeeds, and Nida tries to bash Michael in the head with a hammer to finish the job. However, before she can do it, the detective catches her and takes her into custody.

At the police station, Nadia’s talisman has become a domino suggesting she imagined everything. As the deadline approached, though, Gaap reappeared and said because he failed, he had been sentenced to Oblivion. Gaap invites her to join them, and the pair walk off hand in hand as the world burns around them.

There was a demon, and the test was real. Unfortunately, because Gaap and Nida failed, the world ended. What is the point of the talisman with the White Bear symbol?

What do Demon 79 and White Bear have in common?

Black Mirror’s White Bear is one of the most famous episodes for its unexpected twist. It was brilliant in its use of camera work and stylish storytelling to trick the viewer. For most of the episode, we follow Victoria, a woman with amnesia, on the run. She is told the mysterious symbol she sees on the television screens and everyone’s phones turns people into media zombies. From then on, they can only record and consume content. Unaffected humans hunt down people like Victoria for fun. Jem convinces Victoria to track down the source of the symbol’s transmission and destroy it.

That would free all of the zombies and hopefully turn the hunters back into ordinary people. In the closing moments of the episode, we discover Victoria is a killer who took a child and killed them while live streaming it. Her punishment is to be condemned to repeat the same day for eternity at White Bear Justice Park. White Bear is part detention center, torture chamber, and sick amusement park.

In Demon 79, what Nida sees and believes may not be the actual truth. She and the audience doubt the existence of Gaap, thinking maybe Nida has lost her mind. The appearance of the White Bear symbol, though, points to a chilling idea. Victoria and her fiance killed the girl because they were under a spell. Bandersnatch employed a similar plot device and the concept of free will or lack thereof. The first episode of Black Mirror Season 6, Joan Is Awful, is about free will and our perceptions of self. Is Black Mirror alluding to our loss of autonomy due to technology or gods and demons?

Does the symbol indicate that Nida probably did something she is now being punished for? Is it possible the symbol means all the bad things in our world(justice park would undoubtedly qualify) were set in motion by an evil entity that controls everything, including our free will? Neither is a good alternative. I will assume it’s just a coincidence and leave it at that. I prefer to view this episode as a glass half full.

Although the world does end, Demon 79 ends on an oddly sweet note. Gaap and Nida will be together forever in Oblivion. The apocalypse doesn’t matter as much as finding love. Perhaps that was the point all along. Finding connections and forging bonds aren’t usually what Black Mirror is known for, but I want to see the good, and White Bear can’t stop me. Find all our Black Mirror coverage here.