Beyond the Sea Ending Explained: Black Mirror Season 6 Episode 3 stars Aaron Paul as Cliff Stanfield, Josh Hartnett as David Ross, Kate Mara as Lana, along with Rory Culkin and Auden Thornton. The episode is written by Charlie Brooker and directed by John Crowley. The runtime is of 80 minutes.
Black Mirror Season 6 Recap of Beyond the Sea
Black Mirror Season 6 Episode Beyond the Sea, is set in the year 1969. David Ross and Cliff Stanfield are astronauts in space for a 6 years mission. On Earth, their mechanical beings are living with their families. It has been 2 years since the duo are in space. One night, a cult leader Kappa and his followers enter David’s house and murders his family. They even burn his mechanical body. In space, David is shattered as he loses everything, even his mechanical existence down there.
Cliff feels bad for David and everything he went through. After his wife Lana’s suggestion, Cliff links David’s soul to his body so that he can go to Earth for some time and feel better. When David enters Cliff’s body and goes to Earth, he breaks down before Lana. When David returns, he draws a painting of the house with his sharp memory. He requests Cliff to lend his body again so he can complete it – once a week for an hour.
Initially, David Ross focused only on his paintings and enjoyed his little time on Earth. Eventually, things start to go wrong. He tries to get close to Lana, who is upset as David is inside her husband Cliff’s body. David tells Lana that if they get close, her husband, Cliff, won’t know. Lana calls David out for confusing her and tells him that he’s not her husband.
When Cliff returns to his body, he tells Lana how Henry wrecked David’s painting. Lana tells him that David hit their son. The duo gets into an argument about Henry’s behaviour. He requests Lana to let David finish his painting. When David returns to Cliff’s body again, Cliff is alone in the spaceship. He goes through some of David’s paintings and finds that he made naked paintings of Lana. Cliff gets angry and calls David back and asks for an explanation.
David comes up with some excuses, but Cliff attacks him for painting his wife naked. David says Cliff doesn’t know how it feels as he lost everything. He tells Cliff that Lana is a lonely, untouched and unappreciated woman. It angers Cliff more, so he hits David again. Cliff returns to Earth and asks Lana what’s happening between her and David. Cliff asks how David knows that he doesn’t touch her. Lana has no idea about anything.
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Lana tells Cliff that David didn’t touch her, but she wished he did, as she saw her for real. Cliff cries and hugs Lana after listening to everything. Up in space, David apologises to Cliff for his behaviour. David tells Cliff that nothing happened between him and Lana. David requests Cliff to let him use his link just once so that he can apologise to Lana and say goodbye to her. But Cliff refuses to do so and tells David his wife thinks he is a snake. Cliff says some more hurtful words that trigger David.
Beyond the Sea Ending Explained
One day, when Cliff is with his family, David alerts him to come back. David tells him they had a small impact as a Coolant tubing took a hit, which leaked. Cliff wears his astronaut suit and goes out to look at it. When Cliff is outside the ship, David stops responding to him. Thankfully, he returns and takes Cliff inside. He tells Cliff that he came late as he was in the bathroom. Cliff says that the Coolant tube was fine. He asks David about his body tag and knows that something is wrong.
Cliff goes back to his mechanical body on Earth. He finds out that David has killed his family, using his body. The episode ends with Cliff in tears, looking at David in anger. There’s no dialogue, and David asks Cliff to sit beside him as the song La Mer by Charles Trenet plays in the background.
In the Beyond the Sea episode on Black Mirror 6, Cliff and David lost their families on Earth. They still have 4 more years to be in the space. But what’s the point if everything they had back home no longer exists? They’re lonely everywhere.
The episode is now streaming on Netflix.