ASH2 - D2

The episode “Be right back” of the series Black Mirror shows us, the viewers, an example of self-conflict. Martha, Ash’s partner, seems to be extremely desperate and depressed after Ash’s death. It is at the moment when she finds out that she is pregnant, she begins to reconsider the option of talking to a cyber version of Ash. Martha was so desperate she was willing to try anything to help ease and cope with her grief of Ash’s death. At the beginning it was a bit strange and seemed absolutely ludicrous to talk to a program that mimicked a dead person. However, Martha was curious to see how the program worked. As she began to experience the program more and more, she began to get more interested. Since she was so vulnerable, she was willing to try anything to help ease the pain of losing Ash. Unconsciously she began to forget that the Ash she was talking to was just a program, which evolved and regurgitated Ash’s personality and voice from Ash 1’s online files.

Many viewers, like myself, questioned why Martha did not just abandon or pushed Ash 2 at the cliff. After digesting and analyzing the episode it seems like it was not that simple. At the moment when she traveled with Ash 2 to the cliff and told him to jump, Martha came back to reality. Martha finally realized that Ash 2 was not Ash and Ash 2 was never going to be the original Ash. She realized that the Ash 2 was no longer a copy of Ash, as it had presented a "mind" of its own. Which is why she probably began to view it as a sentient being separate from Ash and couldn't bring herself to get rid of it. It parallels to the scene when Ash 1 talked about his mother’s custom of removing the pictures of loved ones and placing them in the attic every time a loved one died. It is evident that Martha was still trying to hold onto that thread that connected her to Ash even though she knew that the Ash she had loved and knew would never return. Evidence to support this claim occurs at the end of the episode, when it cuts to sometime in the future when Martha is celebrating her daughter’s birthday. The daughter convinces Martha to let her see Ash 2, which she only sees on the weekends. The daughter goes up to the attic to see him while Martha waits at the bottom of the ladder, and eventually Martha climbs to see Ash 2 once more.