re: San Junipero - is it Elysium or Gehenna? (SPOILERS)

Great episode, great questions. Let's do this.

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Question #1: What was the point of Quagmire, the hellish club outside of San Junipero? Why would dying or dead people choose to go to a danceclub version of Hell? Different strokes, different folks? Did you notice that the deeper Yorkie walked into Quagmire the more sinful and evil it became? It was the danceclub version of Dante's Inferno:

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It's the residents of San Junipero trying to feel something again. They have been so anesthesthitized to the experience that they are seeking out pain to be inflicted because it is at least feeling. Yes, the Quagmire is designed to be spiritual suffering, but I'd argue that makes it Purgatory, not Hell. The demons eat at your sins, causing you pain, but eventually your sin is gone and you can ascend, unburdened into heaven.

These are the people who have not let go of their earthly lives yet. Until they accept that they are dead, and this condition is permanent and there's no going back, then they will continue to suffer. But I'd argue it's a good suffering, as they are unburdening themselves of their past life. Also, it comes down to the old adage: Hell is what you make it. There's no design in the program to inflict pain and suffering, the residents demanded it, and they go to the Quagmire of their own free will. They are CHOOSING suffering. The suffering ends by mere exercise of free will.

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Question #2: Why did Kelly run her jeep into a road block, an action that would certainly kill her in real life, when she only had 1 minute remaining in San Junipero? That scene didn't make sense to me. Her time was about to end. Plus, in San Junipero there's no way to hurt yourself, no way to die, because it's all a simulation...so what was the point of that?

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To feel what it was like to be Yorkie. Yorkie was also in a car crash which left her in a permanent vegitative state, this was creating a parallel between the two. Even if only for a minute, Kelly gets to be Yorkie. Also, as you mentioned later, it was her trying to escape and realizing she couldn't. there is no death in San Junipero.

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Question #3: Is it possible that San Junipero is Hell on Earth disguised as Heaven? People in San Junipero seem lost in sinful repetition. It would be like choosing a "Groundhog Day" version of Vegas as your afterlife. It's a place where people who have zero religious faith choose to go when they die, cowardly shunning the "unknown" (God, Heaven, and potential reunification with deceased family and friends) in favor of immediate sinful gratification: Drinking, meaningless sex, empty relationships, etc.

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No. It is not Hell. Nor is it Heaven, though Yorkie and Kelly do get a happy ending and they, through the exercise of free will, make it so. Kelly is holding on to the grief of her family, and punishing herself for it. She is spiritually doing the same thing as the denizens of the Quagmire: she is not letting go of earthly concerns and preventing it from achieving happiness. It is not until she enters death as new phase of her existence, leaving the concerns of earht behind, that she can be happy. It is Heaven for the two of them because they chose to make it Heaven. But it requires the act of letting go.

It's a beautiful episode.