So I've been watching Black Mirror even though it's supremely depressing and got to San Junipero.
That ending. Jesus Christ. Black Mirror hits hard but that was just a sledgehammer.
For those who don't know: Black Mirror is The Twilight Zone for misanthropes. It takes current or near-future "wat if's" and turns them into twisted explorations of how far humanity has fallen down the bullshit ladder. What if the PM of Great Britain is blackmailed into fucking a pig on live TV? What if your entire life is judged by an Uber-style five-star system? What if all that's left after the Apocalypse is talent shows and in-app purchases?
So San Junipero starts out with a shy girl (Yorkie) going into a disco sometime during the Eighties in a beach town in the US. She meets a party girl she likes (Kylie), drama ensues.
Except it's all fake, Yorkie is a paraplegic ever since she crashed her car after her parents kicked her out for being gay, Kylie is an elderly bisexual widow looking for casual sex and San Junipero only exists as a full-immersion VR system where the dead go to retire and the living can go on holiday.
By the end of the episode,
Yorkie and Kylie marry so Yorkie can have herself euthanized to live in San Junipero permanently and Kylie intends to die permanently to join her husband and daughter, since her daughter died before San Junipero came online and the husband didn't want to leave their daughter alone in the afterlife.
Roll credits. And then during those credits,
Belinda Carlisle's Heaven Is A Place On Earth starts playing as Yorkie drives down the beach, Kylie has herself euthanized and then the two meet at their beach house - she changed her mind and now the two of them can spend the afterlife together as happy USB sticks in a data center.
