Stars of Black Mirror’s Common People unpack hidden meaning of *that* ending and I’m in shock

Black Mirror season seven stars Rashida Jones and Tracee Ellis Ross have unpacked the hidden meaning behind Common People’s eerie ending, and I am NOT okay.

Season seven was released on Thursday to pretty rave reviews already. The cast is stacked beyond belief, the themes are as relatable as ever, and once again, we are all questioning why we are so attached to the evils of technology. In episode one’s Common People, we are introduced to the happily married couple Amanda, played by Rashida, and Mike, played by Chris O’Dowd.

After a horrific car accident leaves Amanda in a coma, a doctor poses the following conundrum to Mike: Let his wife die or sign up for an experimental procedure in which a section of her brain will be run by a subscription service named Rivermind. He chooses the latter, and I bet you can see where this is going. As the minutes roll on, it becomes more and more clear that he made the wrong decision, with Amanda forced to sleep up to 15 hours a day at which point her brain power is used to help the server. She then starts reeling off advertisements without realising, something she has to pay extra to get rid of.

Naturally, the constant push to up their subscription – pushed by Tracee Ellis Ross’s rep character Gaynor – lands the couple in financial trouble. Mike is then forced to Black Mirror’s version of OnlyFans, attaching a mouse trap to his winky and drinking a pint of pee in exchange for cash. By the end of the episode, Amanda lets her husband smother her with a pillow, and then Mike goes off to the other room with a scalpel in hand.

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People on Reddit were left with some burning questions the actors have since answered, but Rashida brought up an element I had not even considered.

Rashida Jones delves into the ending of Black Mirror’s Common People

After over a year on the subscription service, which led to both of them losing their jobs, Amanda was ready to jump ship and accept her fate. Mike holds a pillow over her face, killing her, before seemingly going to do the same to himself.

In an interview with TV Insider, Rashida Jones questioned whether Amanda killing herself was her choice or whether the Rivermind programme influenced her decision. I had not considered that, and it’s a very Black Mirror thing to do.

“She makes this decision under the influence of Rivermind Luxe. So I bet it’ll be debated whether or not she actually had the agency to make that decision and how much of it was her,” she said, adding that she believed it was Amanda’s choice.

“I chose that it was the best version of herself because [as the character,] I push up my serenity button at the end, and I think it’s still me, [just] a clearer mindset where I wasn’t distraught with pain and fatigue, and I could actually see the forest of the trees — literally, I’m looking out, and I can see myself as part of nature and be okay with the idea that I’ve taken it as far as I can, and actually it’s time to let go of this version of our relationship…. It’s extremely sad, but I think, for me performing that, I had to kind of accept that it wasn’t sad, it was actually a relief and actually the right thing to do.”

Rashida also believed that Mike then went to kill himself, explaining: “That is what he did. He says, ‘I’m doing a specialty thing later,’ which is pretty dark.”

In the same interview, Tracee Ellis Ross spoke to the overarching theme of the episode and how all roads lead back to capitalistic greed.

“That is sort of the trajectory of capitalism,” she said.

“Things are out of reach, and then they’re made accessible… You can imagine a sort of future of Rivermind where there is this massive accessibility, and they still have tiers, and there’s all of these things that are possible, like living forever and being young forever, at the very end of one thing, and then the kind of base things like just keeping people alive in any kind of coverage zone. That’s probably where they’re headed.”

Black Mirror season seven is now available on Netflix. For all the latest Netflix news, drops and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

Featured image credit: Netflix