‘Black Mirror’s 10 Creepiest, Most Unforgettable Episodes So Far
After a hiatus of four years, its longest yet, Black Mirror is back with new worlds, new realities, and new nightmares, as Netflix teased in its trailer for Season 6.
Even with an all-star cast — which includes Aaron Paul, Kate Mara, Josh Hartnett, Salma Hayek Pinault, Zazie Beetz, Himesh Patel, Michael Cera, and Annie Murphy — it’s hard to imagine Season 6, which premieres June 15, will top the episodes described below, our picks for the anthology’s creepiest and most unforgettable.
But Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker is once again writing or co-writing each of Season 6’s five episodes, so we can only imagine the sleepless nights ahead of us. Meanwhile, here are the Black Mirror episodes that have haunted our dreams so far.
Series 1, Episode 1: “The National Anthem”
After a princess is taken, the kidnappers demand a stomach-turning ransom: The British prime minister (Rory Kinnear) must debase himself with a pig on live television. After exhausting all other options, the PM complies, with hundreds of thousands of his constituents watching on. And as Black Mirror viewers learn at the end of the episode, it was all for naught.
Series 2, Episode 1: “Be Right Back”
Martha (Hayley Atwell) mourns the death of her partner, Ash (Domhnall Gleeson), until AI technology reconstructs his personality and offers Martha an android version of Ash. It’s a near carbon copy, so to speak, but Martha becomes increasingly unnerved as she notices ways in which Android Ash is stuck in the uncanny valley.
Series 2, Episode 2: “White Bear”
A woman (Lenora Crichlow) scrambles for answers when she wakes up in an unfamiliar world, where some people are hunting her and others are merely spectating. Only after she gets the upper hand on her attackers does she learn the truth: She aided the murder of a child, and her punishment is to be pursued, tortured, and memory-wiped every day for the public’s entertainment.
Special: “White Christmas”
Matt (Jon Hamm) and Joe (Rafe Spall) open up about their troublesome pasts at a cabin on Christmas morning, but what Joe doesn’t know is that the cabin is a virtual reality and that Matt is getting a reduced sentence for his crimes by getting the virtual Joe to confess to the murder the real Joe committed. Once convicted on the basis of that confession, Joe is relegated to a time-warped purgatory where he’s haunted by his memories.
Series 3, Episode 2: “Playtest”
Cooper (Wyatt Russell) is mourning his father — and ignoring his mother’s calls — when he gets deep into the playtesting of implant-enabled, augmented-reality video games. So deep, in fact, that by the time he wants out, it’s too late. Then comes the real kicker: He only lasted a split-second in the playtest experiment before he was killed by the signal interference from a phone call from his mother.
Series 3, Episode 3: “Shut Up and Dance”
Kenny (Alex Lawther) is recorded in an illicit moment through his webcam and forced by his blackmailers to do criminal acts, including robbing a bank and participating in a fight to the death. Unlike the ransom demand in “The National Anthem,” thoug, this extortion isn’t just an empty threat: Kenny’s blackmailers release the footage even after he wins the deadly duel.
Series 3, Episode 5: “Men Against Fire”
A neural implant called MASS helps a military squad find and kill humanoid monsters called “roaches,” but after the MASS in Stripe’s (Malachi Kirby) head goes haywire, he realizes that the roaches are actually humans. More specifically, they’re an ethic group targeted by the military in a genocide. The ending of this episode, though, suggests that Stripe opted for his MASS to be fixed and his memory to be wiped.
Series 3, Episode 6: “Hated in the Nation”
As London detectives (played by Kelly Macdonald and Faye Marsay) investigate back-to-back deaths, they trace the case to a company producing autonomous drone insects, or ADIs, and to an online game in which ADIs kill the subject of the most #DeathTo posts. The detectives find the tech employee behind the viral phenomenon, but their efforts in deactivating the ADI system results in the drones killing the nearly 400,000 people who used the #DeathTo hashtag.
Series 4, Episode 3: “Crocodile”
After a pedestrian accident, insurance investigator Shazia (Kiran Sonia Sawar) uses a “Recaller” device to delve into bystanders’ memories, inadvertently uncovering one woman’s previous killings: Mia (Andrea Riseborough) murdered her husband after he threatened to expose the time they fatally struck a bicyclist years prior. Mia kills Shazia, Shazia’s husband, and even their baby, but she’s busted when police “recall” the memories of the baby’s pet guinea pig.
Series 4, Episode 6: “Black Museum”
Nish (Letitia Wright) gets a tour of a crime-themed museum by proprietor Rolo (Douglas Hodge), who tells her about some of the items on display: a hairnet that allowed a doctor to feel and become aroused by others’ pain, a toy monkey containing the consciousness of a comatose wife and mother, and a holographic display with which museum visitors can kill a (potentially innocent) death-row inmate via electric chair. But Nish isn’t any old visitor. She’s that inmate’s daughter, and she gets revenge on Rolo by transferring his consciousness to the hologram.
