Black Mirror season 7 episode 5 recap: what happens in Eulogy?

Black Mirror season 7 is a thrilling and futuristic anthology series from the brilliant mind of creator, Charlie Brooker.

Each episode of Black Mirror tells a different twisted tale of modern sci-fi dystopias. Over six episodes in season 7, an anthology of captivating realities is built piece by piece. From AI to infinite timelines, different themes, characters and plots unravel over the course of each unique episode. Tackling these futuristic and complex themes can quickly become complicated though, leaving much to be studied and understood.

Here's a recap of everything that happened in Black Mirror season 7 episode 5.

The episode opens on a man trimming roses in his garden. The phone rings inside. He picks up and a male voice asks if he’s speaking to Mr. Phillip Connarthy and he corrects him, Connarty. He says he’s calling on behalf of Miss Kelly Royce, but he doesn’t know her. Then, he says it’s about her mother, Carol, who he says he also doesn’t know. Until, he tells Phillip she was Hartman before and he recalls her.

The voice tells him she passed away and Kelly wanted him to know. He tells him there will be a funeral in London, but he says he can’t come. The man says he’s not calling about that, but that he works for a company called Eulogy that creates immersive memorials to contribute memories. He tells him it’s voluntary and they’ll send a kit and then he can decide if he wants to help.

A delivery drone arrives. A box with a booklet that says ‘full spectrum memory curation.’ He’s given a small white disc that speaks to him. The voice introduces herself as a guide to creating a memorial for Carol Royce. She's there to help him reminisce, relive, and curate memories of her. She asks to be placed onto his temple to calibrate. As she goes to start the intro, he tells her to skip it. She then asks him to think of Carol. He struggles, so she suggests using prompts like photos and mementos. He goes into his loft to search, but only finds three photos. She says that to import the image, he needs to pop the disc on his temple and simply look at it.

Firstly, an image from 1989 at a squat in Brooklyn. He says it's the first day he met Carol, when they were misfits and artists. Unfortunately, her back is to the camera. So, the guide suggests entering the image. To this, she transports Phillip to a full view of the image in front of him. The guide pops up in person. She lets him walk amongst the photo and explains that things will fill out as his memory returns. She says the photo was taken before him and Carol got together, to which he says he never said that they did. Phillip says he made Carol laugh and walks around to see her face, but there’s nothing there. The guide says it will come to him.

He explains Carol was new, practicing the cello, and had a boyfriend back home. The guide corrects him, fiancé, and says she can see a ring on her finger. He says he never knew that. The guide asks whether they should upload it to the memorial and he says it wouldn’t be nice for her family to see her talking to him while engaged, but it was an honest representation of her.

They move to the next photo. It’s a party. He talks about the people in the photo, but the guide notices that Phillip and Carol aren’t there. He explains they aren’t, but they were at the party. They notice a record on the side, The Stone Roses, Fool’s Gold, and the guide suggests playing it to jog his memory. To the music, he starts to recall more details like him and Carol talking properly for the first time. He says talking to her was easy and recalls them going upstairs and having their first night together. Phillip and the guide agree this also won’t work for the memorial.

They move to the third photo. Phillip is stood on his own in a doorway looking into a room. He says he was listening to Carole practicing her cello. He can’t see her though, so the guide offers to play the piece of cello music, but Phillips explains she wrote it herself. He admits then that he has other pictures. He says they won’t help though.

He brings over a collection of photos to his desk, but he’s cut out or scribbled all over her face, deleting her from the images. He says he did it after they broke up and that while they both fell for each other, she broke it off out of nowhere. He says she continued with her life and he did nothing. He says he began drinking and that while they were together for three years, it took him 15 years to get over her.

Now, he can’t picture her face anymore and the guide offers to stop the process. But, he wants to continue. The guide suggests recalling memories around these photos in hopes of restoring the memory of Carol’s face. They try a photo where him and Carol are next to statue of a hot dog on the pier at Cape Cod. The guide says that’s where Phillip lives now and he says he inherited his parent’s house. He explains that that trip was their first getaway, making plans for the future, and falling in love.

They go into another photo, their first place together. The image is in black and white and Carol is painting, but as he recalls details, colours begin to emerge. The paint on the wall turns blue. The guide notes the cello is still there and Phillip explains they were in a band together. They go into a photo of one of their gigs. Carol was on the keyboards, but the guide is confused why she wouldn’t play the cello. He says it wouldn’t go with their music. Their lead singer, Zeke, left. But the guide again is annoyed about the cello and says maybe they could’ve carried on with Carol on the cello since she loved it so much. He wonders why she’s getting defensive about it and they argue briefly.

They move onto a series of photos of a Halloween party in 1991. The guide says they can use the photos to build a proper image of the whole evening. Two faces are burned out with a cigarette, Carol’s and another man. Phillip points to himself wearing a hockey mask, working at the bar. He says the other man was trying it on with Carol and he was angry that Carol sat with him. There’s a woman stood with Phillip though, Emma, also in the first photo they looked at. She’s got her hands on his shoulders and the guide asks if they got on. He says they worked together.

To this, he says not you too. He goes on to explain Carol also had a problem with Emma and said that Phillip encouraged her. The guide thinks that in the photo it looks like Carol wanted to get away from the man she was sat with. He says she sat there the whole night and the guide points to another area in the image with Carol dancing in it, away from the man, proving she didn't. He says they had a fight that night over it.

He said Carol then blamed him for not getting an early night for her audition the next day. He says it was with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, but she didn’t get it. He then reveals that Amanda, another woman from the photos, moved back to England and managed to get Carol a six-month job in the orchestra pit for Phantom of the Opera in the West End. He didn’t want her to go, but she sent a postcard every week. They can't use those as he crossed all her words out. He was going to visit her, but he didn’t want to go.

While looking through the postcards, he finds a photo of himself on his birthday. The guide asks who took the picture since Carol was away. He recalls that he was lying on a bed with a beer in his hand and Emma took the photo. He says they’d been out for his birthday and drunk lots, but Emma came back to his apartment. He says it was a one-off thing and it wouldn’t have been a big deal unless… And then the phone rings. It was Carol and Emma answered it. He says they then really argued. To this, the guide asks if he wants to upload the memory for the memorial and he says he wasn’t perfect, but she points out that he spoke a lot about how Carol wasn’t. She asks what Carol could’ve possibly done that was so bad and he says he hasn’t shown her yet.

Black Mirror Eulogy ending explained

Phillip gets an old Converse box wrapped with elastic bands and reminds the guide how he was going to fly out to England to see Carol. He says he had his ticket to fly out there after his birthday and had booked a suite in a hotel for them. He went to watch her in the matinee and met her at the stage door afterwards. Then, they went for dinner at a fancy restaurant he’d read about on the plane and he was going to propose.

They enter the restaurant from an image he kept from the in-flight magazine. He explains she looked a little different and he ordered champagne that she wouldn’t drink. He was irritated by it. He says he took out the ring and she went quiet. He says he asked her to say something and banged the table with his fist in frustration. To this, she got up and left.

He says he then drank the whole bottle of champagne and while the restaurant said he could have it for free, he didn’t want their pity. To which the guide says because he could provide his own. He looks at her. She says Phillip keeps talking about how sad he was, but not about her or how she felt. The guide asks him why he thinks Carol left and he says maybe she was cheating on him, sick of him, cruel.

The guide says it was Autumn 1992 and that Carol wasn’t drinking and looked different because she was pregnant with her. She introduces herself as Kelly Royce, Carol’s daughter. But she assures Phillip he’s not her dad. Her dad was a one-night stand from a man who played xylophone in the orchestra. She explains she’s an avatar though and she’s not really there with him so that she can act on Kelly’s behalf and the real Kelly doesn’t have to go through it herself.

Phillip asks her why Kelly never said who she was and she explains because he told her to skip the intro. He says then that she would know everything that happened between him and her mum anyway, but she says Carol never really spoke of this time in her life. To which he scoffs.

He wants to know more about her dad because she cheated on him. But, the guide says only because he cheated first. She says she doesn’t know much about him over than he was called Brian, she saw him maybe five or six times and then he died of Covid. Phillip is annoyed and says that Carol made a great choice, sarcastically. The guide says Carol wrote to Phillip but he never replied. He insists that he never received a letter. He says he would’ve listened if she had sent one. He asks to leave.

Back at his house, he tells the guide he just wants to see her and she suggests maybe using something else to jog his memory. She asks about the disposable camera in the box from London. He remembers they took one photo on it and rushes off to get them processed. When he comes home with the print, he shows the guide it's just the floor of his hotel room in London, but she still suggests going inside. The hotel room is trashed and Carol has gone. The guide looks around and notices in the photo there was a note on the floor to ‘Philly.’ He tries desperately to pick it up, but he can’t. Again, he asks to leave.

The guide asks if he kept the note somewhere. To help, they walk through what happened after the photo was taken. He recalls smashing the room up, drinking a lot, coming back to the room that the maid had cleaned and packing up everything she'd piled up on the side before leaving. To this, he looks through the rest of the box, shakes the Phantom of the Opera brochure and the note falls out.

In Carol's note, she explains what happened. That she was mad about Emma and had a one-night stand that meant nothing and she was sorry. She'd missed her period, but says she loves him and wants to work it out, though she’s not sure how he’ll feel now. She wants to keep the baby. She asks him to meet her after the matinee the next day if he wants to talk. She hopes he wants to see her again, but she understands if he doesn’t.

Shocked, he places it back in the box and starts collecting all the photos together. The guide says she’s sorry and he takes the disc off his temple. He goes inside a drawer and pulls out a cassette tape, places it in a player, and it’s Carol’s voice saying she’s going to record the cello music for him.

He puts the disc back on his temple, plays the music, and steps back into the photo of him watching Carol from the doorway as she plays the cello. The camera pans as he stands in the doorway next to his younger self and Carol is sitting there, her hair covering her face.

It cuts to the funeral in London. Phillip arrives and everyone there is locked into the discs on their temples. Carol’s daughter sits at the front playing the cello music her mother wrote. She looks at him. It cuts back to Carol in the photograph and finally, she looks up and smiles and laughs at Phillip watching her. He smiles back.

All episodes of Black Mirror are available to stream on Netflix now.