Man in the Black Mirror

In the episode of Black Mirror, “Be Right Back”, Ash is headed back to return a van but he never returns. It turns out that he can, but not the real Ash. The episode is based in our world but in the near future with a lot of new technologies. The “Be Right Back” episode displays a new technology that can retrieve all of someone’s social media, private emails, text messages, etc. and bring them to act like the person of your choosing. For Martha, the main character, it was her late husband and future father of her unborn child, Ash. Martha was introduced to this technology by a friend who went through the same experience as her. At first, the technology was used for texting then it later became phone calls but later, the robot version of Ash tells Martha there is something more. She only wanted to tell Ash that he would be a father but It turns out that there is a new technology that lets the robot version of Ash, that was on the phone, become a near look alike to Ash in human form by collecting his photos from social media.

After the shipment of Ash the robot comes in, Ash the robot gives Martha the instruction over the phone. She has to put his “artificial” limbs in water and it will create the human like version of Ash. She does what she was told and puts him in her bathtub. Hours later, a spot on look-alike version of Ash comes walking down the stairs only to draw a blank on Martha’s face. She was astonished to see Ash standing there. Or what she thought to be Ash. She wanted to use this for everything that she wanted to do with him again. Everything.

Martha later noticed that the newer version of Ash was not always similar to the true Ash. There are many examples of how the newer Ash would not always act the same as the true Ash. Martha is creeped out by the actions of the newer version of Ash so she kicks him out of the bedroom. New Ash just stands up and continues to leave. Martha yells at him and says that is not what Ash would do, he would resist and tell me no and that he is staying. New Ash starts to resist and say no, but Martha did not want it that way, she wanted him to do it because Ash would really do it, not because she told him to do it.

After all of these examples, she gets tired of the new Ash and keeps him in the attack for years. She only goes to see him on Sundays and special occasions so that her daughter can have time with her father. She is shown at the end to still be in shock with the new technology but she knows it would be good for her daughter to have a father figure even if her real father isn’t really there.