“Hotel Reverie” Is Black Mirror’s Must See Love Story Of 2025
“Hotel Reverie” is a haunting, sapphic love story, a slow burn that blurs the line between simulated love and real-world longing.
In “Hotel Reverie,” one of the latest Black Mirror episodes to land on Netflix, we are invited into a dreamy, tech-heavy love story between two women. While the episode dives into deeper themes around choice, control, and the influence of technology, it does so through a lens of tenderness and connection. It’s a story that feels both current and deeply personal, with a romance that resonates long after the credits roll.
Set in a near future where digital worlds feel as real as our own, “Hotel Reverie” follows Sam (Issa Rae), an actress filming an updated (sapphic) virtual remake of a classic black-and-white romance opposite Dorothy (Emma Corrin). Awkwafina plays the sharp-tongued director guiding her through the performance, where Sam is placed literally inside the film in order to remake it. Sam falls deeply in love—maybe for the first time—with another woman (Dorothy, played by Emma Corrin) in a seaside hotel. And while it starts as just a role, something about the story sticks.
As Sam steps deeper into the production, the lines between her character’s emotions and her own begin to blur. When she discovers that the real-life Dorothy died by suicide, the love story takes on a heavier, more haunting weight. There’s a slow, sinking feeling that builds—but it’s also what makes this episode so moving. Once Sam realizes she’s truly in love, everything shifts. What started as performance becomes real, and she’s willing to risk everything—her role, her reality, her sense of self—for the chance to hold on to it.
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Like “San Junipero,” a lesbian love story arc in season three, season seven’s “Hotel Reverie” plays with memory, longing, and digital intimacy. But while “San Junipero” offers a kind of eternal peace, “Hotel Reverie” is about action-choosing love even when the cost is high. Sam doesn’t drift away into love; she fights for it, fully awake. It gives us a romance that feels real in both its beauty and its limits, leaving us with a different kind of ache. And that’s what makes it hit so hard.
“Hotel Reverie” shows us a world where queerness is contained, not criminalized. It’s a beautiful, seductive escape—but also a reminder that love in the digital world can be fragile, constructed and watched. What makes this episode so compelling is how it captures that tension without feeling heavy-handed. The result is a love story that feels both freeing and a little delicate, like it only exists because it’s being allowed to.
Early on, Awkwafina’s character sets the tone with a line that echoes throughout that episode: “They think they are real people, living in the real world.” It’s meant as a warning, but also captures the heart of the story, because for Sam, those virtual feelings become real, and she starts making choices like someone who believes in them fully. What started as an acting role becomes something real, something worth giving everything for, even when the world around her is uncertain.
“Hotel Reverie” is a must-watch, not just because it tells a sapphic love story, but because it shows what it means to truly choose love, even when the cost is high. The show doesn’t promise easy answers or perfect endings, but it offers the reminder that love, when we choose it, can be the most powerful thing we do.
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