Like most of us, there’s a dark force inside her, waiting to be brought out in the right circumstances. As Gaap points out, she’s the ideal person for this job (and, on a meta-level, the ideal character for this story) because she’s broadly a “good person” while still being corruptible. The tension comes from watching Nida grapple with what she’s doing what’s most at stake is her soul. The Keith murder scene, and the scene of Nida stabbing his “ordinary” brother Chris only minutes later, are suspenseful not because we think Nida might die, or even because the lives of billions are at stake. Like “ Loch Henry,” “Demon 79” often subverts the expected violent confrontations. It’s a fascinating scene, with Keith accepting he’s about to die as a punishment for what he did. And while she’s still too shy to run straight at him with a hammer, she eventually manages to get the job done back at his place. Luckily, she catches the eye of the perfect victim: Keith Holligan, who she already fantasizes about killing anyway. She doesn’t typically drink, but she’ll need a couple of triple scotches to pull this one off. Kill two happens the next day when Nida and Gaap visit the local pub to scope out some candidates. With his ability to see everyone’s future, Gaap is able to reassure her that this is for the best little Laura would’ve grown up to commit suicide at 28 if the abuse continued on, but now she’ll live a full life. Nida is finally swayed to commit her first kill at a nearby canal, where Gaap convinces her to clobber a nearby dog walker with a brick by showing her a vision of the man sexually abusing his 8-year-old daughter every night. He’ll be cast out into infinite nothingness if he doesn’t pull it off. For Gaap, supervising this process and helping avert Armageddon will mean proving himself and “earning his wings” down in hell. He even shows her a glimpse of the fiery apocalypse that awaits them, pointing out that the increasing likelihood of nuclear warfare is a manifestation of this biblical threat. Gaap explains that Nida will need to carry out three human sacrifices by May Day - at least one per day - or the world will end. At first, Gaap appears as a terrifying horned creature, but then he switches to a more appealing human form, inspired by Nida’s fixation on Boney M. Soon after, though, the talisman starts speaking to her apparently, when she cut herself, she anointed it with her blood, summoning a demon named Gaap of Misophaes. Duncan asks Nida to eat her lunch in the basement, she discovers a small stone talisman, taking it home without realizing its significance. After all, just that morning, she found the party’s logo spray-painted on her front door.Īfter Mr. She pictures strangling Keith like he strangled his wife, and she pictures smashing Vicky’s head through a glass case after seeing her pointedly reading a National Front pamphlet. Nida may be a deeply nonconfrontational person, but she regularly fantasizes about a version of herself that could stand up to the bullies she encounters daily - not just the bigots but people like Keith Holligan, a local customer who killed his wife a few years ago. That includes Michael Smart (David Shields), the conservative MP front-runner, whose good looks and focus on civility hide an agenda every bit as nefarious as the more outwardly hateful far-right National Front party. ![]() Everyone in Tipley seems determined to make it clear that Nida doesn’t belong here. She sells shoes at a store called Possetts, where she regularly ignores racist remarks from her manager, Vicky, who complains about the smell of her biryani lunch. Nida (Anjana Vasan) is a quiet young Indian woman living in the predominantly white town of Tipley in 1979. Like the previous episode, it’s more fantasy than science fiction - but unlike that one, the shift in genre somehow doesn’t feel out of place. It’s ironic because this is perhaps the least Black Mirror-y episode ever unlike the unusual “ Mazey Day,” which at least used paparazzi cameras as its technological focus, this one barely involves tech or the media at all. “Demon 79” is perhaps the only episode this season to really strike the perfect tonal balance: funny, but not at the expense of story, and dramatic without taking itself too seriously. Part of the reason this show is so subjective is that everyone is looking for something different when they watch it: To me, “ Joan Is Awful” is too wacky for this show, while “ Beyond the Sea” is too dour, but both of those episodes have their fans. Every time a new season of Black Mirror drops, there’s a discussion of which episodes are the good ones.
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