With Season 7, Black Mirror is opening the floodgates. For the primary time, Charlie Brooker’s anthology collection is retreading outdated floor with “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” a sequel to the Season 4 episode “USS Callister.”
That’s apparently simply the beginning. “We’re now taking a look at outdated episodes and pondering, ‘How may you revisit that concept?’” Brooker instructed The Hollywood Reporter forward of the season’s premiere on Netflix. However what may probably be subsequent? Among the season’s stars have a couple of concepts.
Within the first episode of the season, “Frequent Individuals,” Rashida Jones performs Amanda, a younger instructor who suffers a medical emergency however is revived by way of Rivermind, a subscription-only mind implant that may maintain life, so long as you possibly can pay the payments and keep inside the protection zone.
She learns about Rivermind from Gaynor, performed with company chipperness by Tracee Ellis Ross. Whereas, with out spoiling something, Amanda’s story is unquestionably completed by the top of the episode, Ross believes Gaynor could possibly be the topic of her personal story.
Chris O’Dowd and Rashida Jones go up in opposition to a predatory subscription service in “Frequent Individuals.”
Netflix
“Gaynor just isn’t going wherever,” Ross says at a roundtable interview attended by Inverse. “I really feel like there’s going to be a variety of Rivermind subscribers, and I really feel like she’s going to maintain turning into the function mannequin. She’s the illustration of what is potential for Rivermind, and he or she’ll in all probability stay without end due to it.”
Rashida Jones’ expertise with Black Mirror really goes a lot additional than “Frequent Individuals.” Along with Michael Shur, she wrote the Season 3 episode “Nosedive,” the influencer parody episode starring Bryce Dallas Howard. “I actually do love the ‘Nosedive’ ecosystem,” Jones says. “It’s so superior the way in which it is realized, the way in which that Joe Wright created this pastel hellish heaven. So I feel there’s a variety of artistic room there.”
One other standout episode with artistic potential is “Lodge Reverie,” the episode following Issa Rae as Brandy Friday, an actress who makes use of AI expertise to enter right into a basic Previous Hollywood romance. Its story is self-contained, however it brings to thoughts a number of episodes previously. It makes use of the identical button-like VR expertise, colloquially generally known as the “nubbin,” seen in a number of different episodes, however its time-bending queer love story echoes one episode particularly — “San Junipero.” There’s even a direct reference to the episode, because it’s revealed Brandy lives on Junipero Drive.
Issa Rae and Emma Corrin in “Lodge Reverie”
Netflix
However is “Lodge Reverie” secretly a religious sequel? “You’d need to ask Charlie that,” Rae says. “He mentioned that this was the primary episode he wrote for this season. The nubbin performs by way of many episodes, and he is established this type of world the place Black Mirror episodes already discuss to one another, and there are Easter eggs. So I might think about sure, given that there is an Easter egg for San Junipero in ours, he had it in thoughts and it’s large sneakers to fill.”
Even when the episodes don’t share characters, they’re nonetheless related. “I simply hope that folks can take a look at them each individually, but additionally recognize them each as enhances to 1 one other,” she says.
So whereas we could solely have one official sequel to this point, there are many connections to be discovered — and now, there are six seasons of Black Mirror filled with potentialities for future formal continuations.
