Seen as a further development of a driving theme from Demon 79, they fit the season more smoothly. Racism is not central to the plot of Loch Henry, making these references seem a bit tokenistic on their own. “Loch Henry” for example, echoes a couple of themes from “Mazey Day” and from “Demon 79.” Davis’s Black American girlfriend Pia is subject to a lot of casual racism when she visits the rural Scottish village where he grew up, and we see even more overt examples of that in the treatment Nida is subjected to in Demon 79, the 1970s setting making the racism even more overt. The themes of the season also develop more naturally if you watch these episodes in the order they were written. Admittedly, trying to watch Black Mirror in order is almost impossible as the timeline of its shared universe is almost incomprehensible and full of contradictions, and the other three episodes will take you from 1979 to 2006 to 1969 and then back to the future, but still, if you are a person who likes to watch things in chronological order, these two need to be reversed. The documentary Loch Henry: Truth Will Out is made and released over the course of the episode Loch Henry, and Joan and Krish decide not to watch it in Joan is Awful (flagging up the core idea of Loch Henry, there are too many true crime shows around, in the process). That also indicates that the two episodes set in a vaguely “current” or near-future time period actually take place in reverse order. Streamberry then becomes a core part of “Joan is Awful.” Although Netflix exists in this world and has been name-checked in both Bandersnatch and “Loch Henry,” the latter also introduces Streamberry as the company that produces Davis’s documentary. Streamberry itself is another new addition to the Black Mirroruniverse. Smart is also the subject of a documentary Joan and Krish scroll past on faux-Netflix site Streamberry in “Joan is Awful.” None of these references have any meaning on a first viewing of the season if the viewer has not yet watched “Demon 79.” For example Micheal Smart, the Nigel Farage-like politician introduced in “Demon 79,” is featured on most of the front pages of the newspapers we see in “Loch Henry,” all of which reflect the future Gaap predicted for Smart back in 1979.
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