Warning: spoilers abound!
Black Mirror has always been messed up. The ethos of the anthology series is that, if given the right tools and a healthy dose of Wi-Fi, mankind will undoubtedly get weird and freaky. From placing a dead mother’s consciousness into a six-inch toy monkey to trapping people in a never-ending simulation of a Star Trek knock-off (no working genitalia included), showrunner Charlie Brooker has consistently driven home the same point with each episode of Black Mirror: Technology will be our downfall.
With each season, however, comes a different type of messed up. Some storylines delve deep into the mental breaking points of their victims (excuse me, protagonists), while others look at the physical horror of man going too far with technology (looking at you, Doctor Pain).
But how messed up is too messed up? That is the question viewers must answer, and with the latest season of Black Mirror now on Netflix, fans of the series are eagerly sizing up how this season compares to its horrifying predecessors.
To welcome Black Mirror Season 7, we take a trip down memory lane and revisit each season’s messiest episodes.
“The Entire History of You” (Season 1)
Black Mirror’s first season ended with a big, gut-wrenching bang with its finale, The Entire History of You. Set in a near future where people willingly have a seed-shaped microchip (called a “grain”) implanted into their minds, couple Liam and Ffion seem to have the perfect life and family with four-year-old daughter Jodie. Their grains allow them to replay past memories, or “re-do” as they call it, and stream these memories onto any screen.
Like any marriage, Liam’s and Ffion’s isn’t perfect. When they have sex, they replay memories of intimate experiences with past lovers (how romantic). Liam suspects Ffion has been unfaithful with his friend Jonas, but stays silent. It isn’t until Liam confronts Jonas that he realizes that Ffion had slept with Jonas around the same time their daughter was conceived (uh-oh!).
While Ffion claims that Jodie is his daughter, Liam is unable to come to terms with his wife’s infidelity. The marriage falls apart, and the episode ends with Liam wandering around his now-empty house, re-doing memories of when he still had a family. Torn apart by his never-ending loop of re-dos, Liam takes a razor and violently cuts his grain out, and viewers see the bloody implant torn out of Liam’s neck before the screen fades to black.
“White Christmas” (Season 2)
This Christmas special features an endless rendition of the song “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday,” a trapped human consciousness turned into a helpless AI assistant, and Jon Hamm as a terrifying dating coach.
“White Christmas” is Black Mirror at its bleakest and most brilliant, wrapping three twisted tales in one snowy psychological thriller. It kicks off with Matt, a slick tech bro turned creepy dating coach, who guides lonely men via eye-cam until one hookup ends in a fatal double-suicide.
Then we dive into his side hustle: torturing sentient digital clones (called “cookies”) into becoming obedient virtual assistants by cranking up their sense of time until days feel like years. Finally, Joe, his bunkmate, spills his own heartbreak saga — his girlfriend blocks him using real-life “mute” tech, hiding their kid from him, only for him to discover (too late) the child was never his.
The episode ends with a delicious twist, but perhaps it’s best worth a real watch.
“Nosedive” (Season 3)
A recent Doctor Who episode played with this idea, but Black Mirror did it better. In “Nosedive,” society’s obsession with social media ratings reaches dystopian extremes, dictating every facet of life. Lacie Pound, a 4.2-rated everywoman, fixates on elevating her score to 4.5 to secure a luxury apartment. Lacie’s doing her best, but she just isn’t in her influencer era. Despite her best efforts, her attempts at rising through the ranks get her 4.2 rating increasingly lowered. Her quest leads to a series of misadventures — airport tantrums, car troubles, and a disastrous wedding speech — that plummet her rating and social standing.
The episode ends with Lacie completely out of the rating system and imprisoned for not following the system (a little on the nose there, but oh well). Lacie finds a sense of freedom in being off the grid, and the only thing she can do is laugh as her world falls around her and the screen fades to black.
“Black Museum” (Season 4)
Every time I think of “Black Museum,” I can only think of Doctor Pain and the extreme body horror that this episode played with. This is Black Mirror’s ultimate house of horrors, where tech and trauma collide under neon lights. It follows Nish, a seemingly curious traveler who visits a roadside museum run by sleazy ex-tech rep Rolo Haynes, who gleefully recounts three twisted tales surrounding three of his most prized artifacts: A doctor who becomes addicted to feeling patients’ pain, a woman trapped in a toy monkey via consciousness-transfer, and a death-row inmate turned into a digital hologram tortured for public amusement.
I’ll spoil this twist: Nish is the inmate’s daughter, and she is on a revenge journey to kill Rolo for keeping her father in the museum. She poisons Rolo, uploads his mind into the same eternal-torture tech he peddled, and walks away while the museum burns to the ground. Classic Black Mirror: Come for the gadgets, stay for the existential dread.
“Striking Vipers” (Season 5)
Fellas, is it gay if we only have sex in a video game? Childhood friends Danny and Karl reconnect through a virtual reality fighting game (ala Street Fighter), leading to unexpected intimacy that challenges their perceptions of identity and fidelity. Set eleven years later, Danny, now married to Theo with a young son, is drawn back into gaming with Karl, who introduces him to the immersive VR experience of Striking Vipers X. As they embody their chosen characters, Lance and Roxette, their virtual encounters blur the lines between friendship and romantic attraction, causing tension in Danny’s marriage.
The two friends eventually settle on an arrangement: they keep their respective lives separate but agree to meet once a year in the world of the game and take a whole day to get a little freaky. The end.
“Beyond the Sea” (Season 6)
“Beyond the Sea” is Black Mirror’s slow-burn space tragedy that blends 1960s sci-fi with emotional devastation. Two astronauts, Cliff and David, spend years aboard a remote space station, each able to “link” their consciousness back to identical robot replicas on Earth to live normal family lives. But when David’s Earth body is murdered by a cult, he’s trapped in orbit, spiraling into grief.
In an attempt to help, Cliff lets David use his robot body to visit Earth — only for David to grow disturbingly attached to Cliff’s wife and domestic life. The episode ends with betrayal, violence, and two broken men floating through space, trapped with each other and their irreversible choices. It’s a haunting meditation of loneliness, identity, and the dangers of borrowed lives (also never lend your body to your bestie, Cliff: Rookie mistake).
