YMMV / Black Mirror: Beyond the Sea

Black Mirror YMMVJoan is Awful — Loch Henry — Beyond the Sea — Mazey Day — Demon 79

• Alternate Character Interpretation: While it barely changes things, did David kill Lana and her son because of her rejection of him? Was it, in his mind, a way of proving that Cliff was “ungrateful” for his family? Was it just to get back at Cliff for having everything that David lost? Or perhaps some mixture of all three?
• Ass Pull: To some viewers, David murdering Cliff's family in the end seemed uncharacteristically cruel of him considering the episode mostly depicted him as a realistically flawed man consumed by grief rather than a psychopath in the making, not to mention how terrible of a human being he'd have to be deep down to do all of this despite being a family man himself. Those who share this opinion tend to agree the episode only ended the way it did because it's Black Mirror.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • While Cliff isn’t a great person, imagine being in his position. Your friend and coworker ended up losing his family and unable to even go back to Earth, so you give him a chance to go back to Earth, and he starts abusing that gratitude to try and hook up with your wife, and when you start to work on your relationship, your friend murders your family, and you are now stuck with your family's killer, unable to kill him or do anything as vengeance.
  • David himself. He was forced to witness a hippie cult butcher his family and was unable to attend their funeral because he was moored in space and unable to return home for four years. Not only that, but with his replica destroyed, the only way he could be temporarily relieved of boredom and loneliness was by using Cliff's replica... That said, none of this justifies his actions, particularly at the end of the episode.
• Moral Event Horizon: While David was already teetering on the horizon by attempting to seduce his coworker's wife away from him and taking advantage of their kindness in the process, he crosses it when he murders Cliff's family in the end, either out of revenge for Lana rejecting him or to teach Cliff how it feels to be in his position.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: As discussed on the show's subreddit, some viewers believe another arguably more interesting story direction would've been David using Cliff's replica to hunt down the cult that massacred his family, at the cost of Cliff's time with his family and, more than likely, the replica's physical integrity. But instead, the cult is arrested shortly after the murders and David is instead sent on a downward spiral concluding with him murdering Cliff's family.

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