Black Mirror (Season 6) Episode 5 “Demon 79” Recap & Ending Explained: In the politically charged town of Tipley during the late 1970s, Nida, a woman of Indian origin, struggles to find acceptance. Isolated and marginalized, she faces the disdainful gaze of her colleagues, who embody the prevailing prejudice against immigrants.
Against this backdrop, Nida’s life takes a dark turn when she unwittingly becomes entangled in a supernatural pact. Bound by a talisman and guided by the demon named Raap, she is compelled to carry out three human sacrifices or risk cataclysmic consequences.
As Nida grapples with her inner turmoil and embarks on a deadly path, her actions reveal the ugly truths lurking within the community, mirroring the harsh realities of a society grappling with conservative politics and intolerance.
Black Mirror (Season 6) Episode 5 “Demon 79” Recap:
A woman wakes up, gets ready, and goes to work. She works in the footwear section of the store ‘Posset’ in a town named Tipley. Her name is Nida, and we can clearly see that she is frowned upon by her colleague Vicky who is white. It’s the late 70s, and Nida is forced to serve a customer who is known to have killed his wife. The town is politically charged, and we can hear that Mrs. Thatcher’s conservative government is up on the rise. We can thus assume the year to be 1979, and we see most of the happening around the local leader named Micheal Smart. The conservative government is well known for its stance on queer people, but we often forget how blatant and brutal they were towards immigrants.
Nida is of Indian origin and is a complete outcast in the community. When she goes to work the next day, we notice that someone has vandalized her front door with spray paint. At the store, the manager, who has been tipped Vicky, asks her to eat her lunch (which isn’t the usual sandwich like everyone else) in the basement so that Is doesn’t leave a smell and harm the leather of the shoes. He hands her the keys to the basement, where no one goes, but also tells her that Mr. Posset, the owner, used to work there all alone. In typical 70s Galio style, we often see Nida dreaming about getting extremely violent in a situation that makes her angry.
In the basement, she finds some old newspaper cuttings that hint at something sinister before stumbling on a piece of wood that has a symbol engraved on it. Nida gets a cut, and the symbol on the piece is filled with her blood, supposedly evoking something.
Back at home, she takes the piece of wood in her hand, and she hears a funny voice coming out of the piece, which later introduces itself as a demon and tells her that the piece is actually a talisman. The demon tells her that since she has put her blood on it, she is now bound to carry out three human sacrifices, or the world will end. She then summons the demon, who takes a physical form. Since it is a little scary for her, the demon, who is named Raap, takes the form of one of the singers from the band Boney M – a band that she likes.
In spite of her reluctance, Raap convinces her that the apocalypse will happen by showing her a glimpse of what it would be like, before also showing who people really are. Nida makes her first kill and their first sacrifice of a man who is a sexual abuser who abuses his own daughter, who is 12. Nida kills him with a brick.
The next day the police are alerted, and they investigate, learning that a man named Tim Simmons is missing. Nida is sad about killing someone and wants to alert the police, but the Raap convinces her not to because that would mean no more sacrifices and the world ending, killing billions of people eventually. This is when the police receive the info that Tim Simmons is dead and has been found.
Nida spends the entire day without killing anyone, so Raap shows her that if she doesn’t, the apocalypse will manifest in ways like a nuclear war she can see a hint of in the news. So, in order to find the courage to do it, she first selects a weapon of choice and then heads to the local pub for a drink.
At the bar, the bartender, who earlier visited Nida at the store, smells something fishy about her when she is talking to herself (she’s actually talking to Raap).This is where she sees Keith Hooligan, the guy who killed his wife, and decides that he will be her next kill.
She follows him after the pub, and then he invites her into his house. However, before she can kill him, Keith sort of confesses to the bad he did, but Nida kills him anyway, feeling a bout of guilt later. But before she can leave Kieth’s house, his brother Chris comes in downstairs and sees Nida before she can leave. She gets into a fight with him and kills him, too, because Raap tells her that she cannot leave witnesses around.
This kill really gets to her because Chris was not wrong in any way, and the not-so-premeditated nature doesn’t sit right with her. Later Raap tells her that he is an ordinary man, but what’s done is done, and her job is also over. However, the last line in the talisman is still present, which shows that the apocalypse hasn’t been avoided. Raap makes a call to his superiors to enquire about it, and they tell him that killing Keith did not count because, apparently, he is a murderer.
This makes Nida really angry, and she puts the blame on Raap, but he confesses that we wasn’t aware of this and that not completing the task would make him fail his initiation and be banished to oblivion forever. The two of them connect on it – basically how an outcast; an immigrant who doesn’t feel at home anywhere. It is almost like how Nida feels every day, especially after her mother’s passing.
This is where they try to figure out who their next victim would be as Raap tells Nida that she must have had some dark, violent urges in her that made her summon him. Next, we are in the store again, and Nida and Raap are planning on luring Vicky and killing her, just as the widow and the daughter of the man Nida killed first come to the store.
Raap ensures that her killing the man has allowed the little girl a life that is not full of misery, and that’s a good place to be. While Raap is pushing Nida to choose between killing Vicky and her boss, she is more interested in the local minister Micheal Smart who seems like a blatant racist in disguise.
So, she asks Raap to show her his future, and she is disgusted by whatever she sees. In spite of Raap’s request to choose someone else other than him because his superiors won’t like it, Nida makes a concrete decision and even takes the red leather jacket that she has been eyeing in the store as her costume for the deed.
Meanwhile, the police are on the murder of Keith and Chris and reach the pub where the owner and one the bartender tells them about ‘The Indian Girl’ who had something off about her. Raap and Nida plan Micheal Smart’s death where they decide to get to him when he completes his speech at town hall and follow him to his place.
The policeman pays Nida a visit to enquire about whether she saw Keith at the pub, but she lies, and he goes away. However, when Raap and Nida are going to the town hall for their kill, the cop follows them. Nida somehow manages to get get him off her tail when a railway crossing closes in on him.
A very angry Nida gets pissed off on Raap and asks him to disappear and then goes head into Micheal Smart’s car, leading him to go ashtray from the road and hitting a tree. When he doesn’t die in the crash, Nida takes her weapon and starts hitting him over before the policeman intervenes and asks her to stop.
Black Mirror (Season 6) Episode 5 “Demon 79” Ending Explained:
Is Nida able to avoid the apocalypse?
The police then sit down with Nida to question her about the kills. She tells them everything, including the appearance of the demon, Gaap, and how if she did not kill them, there would be a nuclear war, and the whole world would burn.
Since it is already inching towards midnight, Nida waits there in the interrogation room for the apocalypse to end it all. However, once the clock hits 12, nothing happens. This makes the police believe that Nida is mad and that she should be convicted accordingly.
As Nida waits in the interrogation room, Raap appears again. The two of them discuss how they have both failed. While we assume this is another one of Nida’s imaginations, we see alarms blaring as everyone goes out to see flames all over. Raap offers Nida to accompany him to oblivion – where he is to be banished due to failing his initiation, and Nida agrees.
The world is under nuclear attack, and it burns. Nida was right all along, and since she was not able to complete her kills, she was not able to avoid the apocalypse. Nida and Raap take a look at each other and walk out together in glee as we can see everything burning behind them.
