TV & Movies

Black Mirror S6: Loch Henry explained

Cameron Frew
A still from Loch Henry, Black Mirror Season 6 Episode 2Netflix

Black Mirror Season 6 Episode 2, titled ‘Loch Henry’, is a chilling deep-dive into the true crime craze – here’s a full breakdown of what happens and its terrifying twist.

It has been four years since the fifth season of Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker’s twisted, dystopian anthology series that shines a dark light on the world’s cliff-edge obsession with technology.

In the second episode of Season 6, we travel to Scotland for the first time in the show’s history; more specifically, the fictional, sleepy town of Loch Henry. It follows Davis (Samuel Blenkin) and Pia (Myha’la Herrold), a young filmmaking couple who take a drip to make a documentary about an egg-protecting vigilante, and they visit Davis’ mother Janet (Monica Dolan) while they’re there.

However, Pia learns about the town’s macabre history while having a pint at the pub with Davis’ old pal Stuart (Daniel Portman), and it puts them on the path to infamy and glory. Spoilers to follow…

Black Mirror: ‘Loch Henry’ twist explained

Here’s the TL;DR version: Davis’ mum Janet and her late husband Kenneth tortured and killed people alongside Iain Adair, and after Pia’s death and discovering his mother’s snuff films, he makes an award-winning documentary that leaves him traumatized.

When they’re in the pub, Stuart and Davis tell Pia about Dawn and Simon Challis, a couple who rented a cottage in Loch Henry for their honeymoon in 1997. On the day they were supposed to have left, the cleaner checked the property and found their car and clothes, but they were nowhere to be seen.

It became a nationwide story as press swarmed the town, but after Princess Diana died, it fizzled away. Later, Iain Adair was wrecked in the pub and started talking about Dawn, and when he was thrown out by Stuart’s dad (John Hannah), he threatened to come back and shoot the place up. Concerned, as he knew Iain had a gun, he asked Davis’ dad (the local policeman) to go check on him.

He knocked on the door, but there was no answer, and then Iain shot him from the upstairs window before turning the gun on his parents and himself. Kenneth died after catching MRSA in the hospital, so Janet has always held Iain responsible. Police eventually found Iain’s “torture room” in his house, and realized how he’d been abducting people and burying them in the fields for years.

After visiting the boarded-up house, Pia becomes obsessed and essentially forces Davis to pivot to making a true-crime film about the murders. Stuart says it’s a brilliant idea as it could revitalize the town’s economy, just like ‘The Waltonville Claw’, a fictional Netflix documentary about a man who ate a woman’s eye in front of her.

Stuart’s dad and Bergerac were the key to Loch Henry’s twist

While the trio get started on the movie, Stuart’s alcoholic father is furious about it. He calls Davis a “parasite” and says he should stop making the film. Meanwhile, Davis tells his mum about the documentary, and she agrees to it – as long as they tell the story of what happened to Kenneth. “We were happy before we broke it all, ruined it all… the waste of it,” she says.

Pia and Davis take it to Historik Productions, and a producer tells them to find a more personal angle in the story; Davis’ dad being shot by the killer and dying from an illness isn’t quite enough. She asks for something “unseen, unheard, unexplored”, so they break into the Adair house and film fresh footage of the murder room with a blacklight.

Pia and Davis in Black Mirror Season 6 Episode 2, 'Loch Henry'Netflix

As they’re driving back, Davis crashes into an oncoming tractor and ends up in hospital. Janet takes Pia home and makes her a shepherd’s pie, while Stuart’s dad confronts Davis. “I don’t have any proof… I think I’ve always known,” he says, but Davis doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Back at the house, Janet is busy in the kitchen as Pia digitizes footage from tapes, and while she’s looking away, the video fizzles back to the recording of Bergerac they’d taped over.

Remember, Janet loves Bergerac. She has hundreds of tapes. But that’s just a front: this is a tape of her, Kenneth, and Iain Adair torturing Dawn and Simon in 1997, and Janet is even wearing the red cabaret mask on her wall. Pia is horrified and barely manages to sit across the dinner table from Janet before fleeing. Janet quickly realizes what happened and pursues her in her car, but Pia manages to evade her sight by hopping over a wall. When she tries to run and cross the river, she slips and smacks her head on a rock, with her limp, dead body drifting along the water.

That night, Janet leaves out all of her evidence; tapes, photos, journals, and anything else from her collection of murderous memorabilia. She leaves a note for Davis: “For your films”, before hanging herself while wearing the same mask.

The episode cuts ahead to the trailer for Loch Henry: Truth Will Out, a Streamberry documentary about the true nature of the town’s murders, directed by Davis (it even opens with a mournful piano note and drone shots). It competes against Euthanasia: Inside Project Junipero and Suffer the Children: The Tipley Paedophile Ring at the BAFTAs, but takes home the prize for Best Documentary Feature.

The whole time, Davis looks shell-shocked by the whole ordeal. He’s barely present, especially when he overhears his producer chatting to an actress about playing Pia in the movie based on the story. The episode ends with him alone in his hotel room. He takes a call from Stuart, who’s buzzing about the win and the booming tourism trade in Loch Henry, but he hangs up. He just sits, sipping at this drink, wondering how it came to this.

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