We’re deep in the dystopia of Black Mirror season 7, so let’s get right into episode 2. Maria (Siena Kelly) is a rising star in R&D at Ditta, a candy company with delusions of Wonka grandeur.

The episode takes place over a single week of work, beginning on Monday, with Maria focus group testing a miso-jam remix of Ditta’s classic candy bar. She clocks a familiar face in the room, Verity Greene (Rosy McEwen), an old classmate with a third-eye-glazed vibe and unnerving calm. She turns the room of miso candy haters into staunch supporters, and upon seeing Maria in the bathroom, casually drops that she’s applying for a job at Ditta. One Maria didn’t even know existed.

Back home, Maria recounts the encounter to her boyfriend, Kae. She remembers Verity as a loner glued to the computer lab, the subject of a nasty rumor involving their teacher Mr. Kendrick and a truly unfortunate nickname: Milkmaid, coined by school bully Natalie Caine.

Come Tuesday, Verity has landed the job and Maria’s internal alarms are blaring. There’s no smoking gun, just a deep, creeping unease. Even Kae picks up on Maria’s escalating paranoia—though he frames it as an unflattering observation about how she likes being “top dog.”

On Wednesday, Maria gets into a spat with Verity and their colleague Nick about a fast-food chain she swears was called Barnie’s Chicken. Everyone else remembers it as Bernie’s. Even Kae’s hat—a relic from his old job there—suddenly bears the new spelling. Google confirms Maria is wrong. A Mandela effect nightmare realized. She’s having a week.

How does it escalate?

By Thursday, it all breaks open. Mr. Ditta himself stops by to sample Maria’s new candy concept—a marshmallow-forward situation she proudly formulated with carrageenan (a seaweed-based gelatin), mindful of Mr. Ditta’s Hindu dietary restrictions. But plot twist: the mallow now contains beef gelatin. Maria’s email to Verity specifying carrageenan? Magically altered to say “non-pork.” Now everyone’s siding with Verity, and even Kae is wobbling. Maria is being professionally and personally unmade in real time. Then comes the kicker: Natalie Caine, the original Milkmaid bully, has died by suicide after weeks of mental unraveling.

t’s EOW and things are diabolical. Verity delivers a syrupy confession about her bond with Mr. Kendrick (the one from the “Milkmaid” rumor), before chugging a coworker’s almond milk straight from the carton, locking eyes with Maria the whole time like a predator sizing up prey, and dumping the evidence. She pins the whole thing on Maria, and security footage backs her up (despite her nut allergy). Reality has literally been edited, and Maria gets fired.

How does “Bête Noire” end?

From here, Maria breaks into Verity’s home to steal the mysterious pendant that seems to power her reality-hacking. She finds it, but learns that it’s fingerprint-locked, and Verity — fresh out of the shower, natch—finds Maria cowering under her bed. She calmly explains the pendant is just a remote that connects to the “quantum compiler” in the basement, which allows her to rewrite reality like a bored Sims player. One flick of the dial and Maria’s shirt changes color. Another flick, and she can speak fluent Chinese.

Enter: the revenge plot. Verity claims she’s targeting Maria not because she was the ringleader in high school—she wasn’t—but because she made the original Mr. Kendrick joke that Natalie took viral. Verity’s already used the compiler to live as literal empress of the universe, but grapes on the vine don’t taste as sweet as revenge.

The final act turns into a lo-fi superhero showdown: Maria bites, bashes, and wrestles her way through Verity’s illusions. At one point, Verity shifts to a reality where Maria is a knife-wielding intruder—cops arrive, guns are drawn. In a last-ditch move, Maria grabs an officer’s weapon and shoots Verity in the head, mid-reality alteration. It’s brutal. It’s bonkers. But it buys her just enough time to use Verity’s finger to activate the pendant and claim the quantum compiler for herself. Her first act? Rebrand herself as empress. Of the universe. Naturally.

She could’ve opted for last week’s universe, putting her life back in place and forgetting about Verity’s existence. Alas, she opted for power. If we’re meant to read her final turn toward power as cynical, Kae did call her out for craving adoration. A very Black Mirror ending, for a very Black Mirror revenge tale.

Stream “Bête Noire” Now