“San Junipero” was the fourth episode in season three of Black Mirror, which is currently streaming on Netflix. The episode won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Television Movie and Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. TV Line also recently named it the best Black Mirror episode.
The episode, which was written by the creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker in four days, was originally going to have an unhappy ending, culminating in a scene that took place in a hospital. However, Brooker told the Daily Beast, “When I sat down to actually write it, I was enjoying it so much that I thought, no, I’m going to keep going.”
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The ending of the episode was inspired by the 1987 song, “Heaven Is a Place on Earth,” which Brooker immediately knew he wanted to license for the episode. The song, sung by Belinda Carlisle, played at the beginning of the episode and over the ending credits.
When speaking about the inclusion of the song, he told Entertainment Weekly, ”I started writing the script, and I put together a Spotify playlist of music from 1987. I go running every so often, and that song came on while I was jogging. I was like, ‘Well, that’s gotta go in.’ And that basically gave me the ending scene. So one of the first things we did is check if we could clear this song [for use in the episode], and I would have been absolutely distraught if we couldn’t have done it.”
He continued, “It’s something we’ve done in previous episodes, where we have a story continuing to unfold throughout the end credits, but it’s the only time we do it in this season. It feels like a nice way of adding an extra coda. It’s also a wry joke in a way that heaven is literally a place on earth, as we reveal the absolute cold reality of what’s going on. Hopefully, it leaves people with a smile on their face, which is an alien experience after watching Black Mirror.”
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When answering questions on Reddit along with executive producer Annabel Jones, he spoke about the fact that the episode resonated so much with the LGBTQ+ community and TV lovers in general. “We’ve been delighted by the response to it,” he replied. “We see it as a universal love story–the fact it’s about two women is both significant and insignificant. Significant in that they [SPOILER ALERT!] get married in 1987, which wasn’t possible at that time in reality, and that kind of chimed in with the whole theme of reliving your life and exploring possibilities afresh. And insignificant in that it’s a love story between two people. So it’s been great to see a positive reaction from across the board.”