Why Black Mirror’s “Mazey Day” Twist Doesn’t Work

Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Season 6 of Black Mirror.The anthology series Black Mirror has returned this year for its sixth season, and the results are unfortunately mixed. The latest season has five episodes of varying quality, though, at the end of the day, it’s unlikely that any will be considered classics, with the days of it the show being groundbreaking, unmissable television arguably being behind it now. That could sound a little harsh, because yes, there are certainly episodes within Black Mirror’s less-than-amazing sixth season that aren’t too bad overall. The season’s opener, “Joan Is Awful,” has a fun premise surrounding streaming services presented in a distinctly Black Mirror fashion. The overlong middle episode, “Beyond the Sea,” at least has some great performances and a premise that would’ve made for a great episode had the runtime not been so bloated. And the final episode of Season 6, “Demon 79,” barely feels like Black Mirror, but it is entertaining. The same cannot be said for the penultimate episode, “Mazey Day,” which isn’t particularly entertaining and is brought down considerably by one of the worst twists in recent memory.

It doesn’t feel great to criticize Black Mirror so strongly, because its earlier seasons tended to really deliver. When Black Mirror was at its best, it provided some of the most memorable (and sometimes painfully hard-to-forget) television moments in recent memory. Maybe it’s the fact it can be so good that makes it worth criticizing the moments where it fails, because in an ideal world — be it utopian or inevitably dystopian — everyone wants Black Mirror to hit hard and be compelling. “Mazey Day” — and particularly its twist — sums up a good deal of what’s wrong with the latest season.

Though Black Mirror and twists usually go together like a fireplace and a warm tea, here the tea is too hot and bitter, so you’ve spat it out, and it happened to splash all over the fireplace, and now you have no fire or tea. Twists aren’t inherently good, and neither is breaking too haphazardly from the rules previously established by a show’s prior seasons. The way “Mazey Day” crashes to a halt in its final act demonstrates these painful facts remarkably well.

RELATED: Every ‘Black Mirror’ Season 6 Episode, Ranked From Worst to Best

‘Black Mirror’s Twists Are as Infamous as They Are Iconic

Black Mirror first got attention in 2011 for crafting intense stories surrounding technology, sometimes with a futuristic setting, and often with some kind of devastating ending that successfully troubled viewers first in the U.K., and then eventually around the world. It made the jump from a U.K. show airing on Channel 4 between 2011 and 2014 (comprising two short seasons and one Christmas special) to becoming a Netflix show in 2016, the same year its third season was released. At this point, the nightmares provided by Black Mirror truly had a worldwide audience. Season 3 managed to branch out considerably, as the budgets felt a little beefier, there were more big-name actors involved, and the season featured six episodes, compared to three each in seasons 1 and 2. By the third season, its reputation for being shocking and twist-heavy had been well-earned, with the best and most disturbing twists proving hard to shake (it’s hard to imagine someone not being affected by the reveal in Season 2’s “White Bear,” for example).

But when your show is known for being unexpected almost 100% of the time, how do you go about keeping things unexpected? You throw in an episode like the beloved “San Junipero” from Season 3, which suddenly introduced the idea that Black Mirror episodes could have endings that weren’t entirely miserable thanks to the bittersweet ending of said episode, which was probably more sweet than bitter. Even those who might not have liked Black Mirror‘s brief foray out of the darkness and into the light should at least appreciate what an upbeat ending did for the rest of the show: if there’s a chance that episodes can end well, it will continue to make the bleak ones feel bleaker and more emotionally powerful. As such, some of the riskier breaks from the Black Mirror formula can be pointed to as good things. Seasons 4 and 5 proved a little more divisive than 3, but they each had their moments. Season 6 aims to shake the boat some more, particularly with “Mazey Day” and some other episodes that move away from sci-fi elements, and don’t even feature much commentary on technology. At best, this moves the show away from even feeling like Black Mirror, and at worst, viewers get something like “Mazey Day.”

What Happens in “Mazey Day”?

With “Mazey Day,” things don’t get off to a terrible start. Maybe there’s a little time needed to adjust to the fact that this episode is set in 2006 — made clear early on thanks to audio of a radio announcer mentioning the highly-publicized birth of Suri Cruise — but it’s thankfully a digestible creative decision. The Cruise news also helps establish the episode as one that will deal with celebrity culture, and viewers are introduced early on to Bo (Zazie Beetz), a paparazzo struggling with the implications of her profession while also needing to pay the rent. She seems ready to quit the business but then receives word that there’s $30,000 on offer for any photographer who can get images of Mazey Day (Clara Rugaard), an actress who suddenly went missing from her European film set, and is rumored to be back in the U.S. and struggling with substance abuse.

Bo and several other paparazzi track down Mazey and find her staying at what’s purportedly a remote rehab clinic after hearing she apparently rented the entire place out for herself. Then, approximately two-thirds through the episode, the ridiculous twist drops. As an episode, “Mazey Day” goes from being about celebrity and parasitic paparazzi to the inherently supernatural, as it’s revealed that Mazey is not being kept in an isolated location for drug-related reasons: it’s because she was recently bitten by a werewolf, and doesn’t want to harm others. Bo and the other paparazzi realize this too late, and after breaking into the cabin Mazey’s being kept in, they essentially let her free, at which point she transforms into a werewolf and begins terrorizing the characters and those who live in a small town nearby. It’s wild, and not in a good way.

Why Does the Twist in “Mazey Day” Fail?

Charitably, the werewolf reveal could be seen as some kind of metaphor for the way being a celebrity transforms someone, or for the way substance abuse can alter one’s life (linking such a thing to the supernatural certainly isn’t new, with Buffy the Vampire Slayer doing it in a particularly noticeable way during its sixth season). But lines become blurred when trying to link a surprise werewolf to the somewhat Black Mirror-related themes surrounding technology and the destructiveness the media can cause, which the rest of the episode grapples with. Even if the setting’s not futuristic, a look at one aspect of the media in such a way is on-brand for Black Mirror, seeing as the show’s notorious first episode, “The National Anthem,” was set in a non-futuristic Britain, and had a plot revolving around one man kidnapping a princess and then using social media to reveal what he’d done, as well as threaten to execute the princess if the Prime Minister didn’t do what the kidnapper demanded.

All that’s to say: satirizing or critiquing the media makes sense. And maybe there’s some vague cautionary tale here about the dangers of engaging in paparazzi activity, given some of them are graphically killed by the werewolf. That being said, the appearance of a werewolf is also so ludicrous it doesn’t feel like that visceral of a warning. Are the paparazzi the true monsters? Maybe? But their target becomes a literal monster, and the paparazzi themselves the victims. It’s all so muddled, and it’s jarring to take the final scenes of this episode and try to pair them with what it felt like the earlier parts of the episode were trying to say. The reveal in “Mazey Day” clashes too much with the rest of the (not entirely bad) episode, and even though big risks and wild turns have worked for Black Mirror episodes in the past, this one doesn’t ultimately serve the show or make it feel in any way more exciting going forward.

The Twist in “Mazey Day” Ultimately Doesn’t Feel Like ‘Black Mirror’

The sixth season of Black Mirror stands out in a couple of ways, for better or worse. Firstly, its first two episodes engage in some blunt yet somewhat amusing instances of biting the hand that feeds it, especially with “Joan Is Awful” satirizing Netflix and its endless content. Secondly, it moves away from science-fiction more than perhaps any other season, with only one episode that feels like it’s set in the future, one that’s set in the present, two that are set decades ago, and then “Mazey Day,” which is set about 17 years ago. Beyond being less about the future, some episodes themselves also de-emphasize technology and its relationship with humanity, most plainly with the final episode, “Demon 79,” and also quite clearly with “Mazey Day.” “Demon 79” barely feels like Black Mirror, but at least it’s somewhat enjoyable, and establishes its unique tone and supernatural slant early on. “Mazey Day” is regrettably not very fun, being a merely competent episode until it throws a supernatural twist at the audience, and instantly dooms itself to be a nadir for the entire show.

Happy Days went to Hollywood in 1977 and featured an episode so bizarre it coined the term “jumping the shark” (The Fonz literally water-skied over one). If “jumping the shark” wasn’t already such a catchy term used when a show stays too far from what made it great, perhaps once-great shows that haphazardly threw an eye-rolling twist at their viewers could be said to have “turned werewolf.” “Mazey Day” is too jarring, it’s so silly it can’t be considered shocking, and it’s simply too much, even for a twist-heavy show like Black Mirror. Viewers will always have the show’s numerous great episodes to look back on and rewatch, and a potential seventh season could perhaps be a little better than Season 6. But from now until the end of time, the twist in “Mazey Day” will always be part of Black Mirror, hurting the overall credibility and consistency of the show as a reveal that was far too stupid to work in any conceivable way.

All episodes of Black Mirror are now streaming on Netflix.