Black Mirror Season 6: Did You Miss the Demon 79 Backstory Too?

'Demon 79' certainly stands out among other Black Mirror Season 6 episodes, if only because the story of an Indian-British girl struggling in an intolerant 1979 society has no technological basis.

At the core of the episode is not techno-paranoia, widely explored and exploited in the other Black Mirror episodes, but the fear of ordinary society and what it can do to a person who doesn't abide by unspoken rules.

Anjana Vasan's protagonist Nida summons a demon who tells her that she has to kill three innocent people within three days to save the planet from an apocalypse. This triggers the story and the viewer's inevitable question: is everything happening on screen real, or has Nida just lost her mind? As the story progresses, the audience is left with more and more doubts, until in the finale, the suspicion becomes palpable.

But for the star of the episode, her character's sanity wasn't a question. As it turned out, Anjana Vasan made things clear to herself even before filming.

'I asked [creator Charlie Brooker and co-writer Bisha K] about the question mark over [Nida's] mother immediately. That was the very first question I asked,' the actress said.

Nida's late mother is only briefly mentioned in the episode as a great inspiration in her life. There is nothing about how she died, but the protagonist says people thought her mother was crazy, which is why Nida initially thinks she's losing her mind too.

But what if Nida's mother wasn't really sick? What if she was just an inconvenience to society, like Nida becomes in the second half of the episode? That seems to be Anjana Vasan's working theory.

'Nida is someone who is diminished daily by the world around her,' Vasan explained. 'She really softens the edges of herself and her personality. I wondered what it might be like if her mom was someone who may or may not have had any kind of mental health issues, but was loud and eccentric or didn't quite assimilate in a way that was "acceptable" or the norm and was maybe kind of looked at weirdly by society.'

Inspired by her mother, Nida uses the demon situation as an opportunity to let go and become someone she hasn't allowed herself to be. And while people around her and viewers may think she is crazy, the very real nuclear holocaust proves otherwise.

Source: Den of Geek.