San Junipero or the dark eternal abyss?
The episode endings of near-future dystopian anthology series Black Mirror have always been rattling – that prime-minister-pig-fucking twist from season one, the completely disturbing White Bear of season two. Then, later seasons came through with the surprisingly positive wrap-ups – the women of San Junipero got to live in the dreamy 80s digital mind library together forever to the tune of Belinda Carlisle, and USS Callister saw the clone crew jet off to explore the world, free of their evil nerd commander.
To amp things up, Black Mirror fans will reportedly be able to engage in one interactive episode with the new series and pick an ending as they watch. As reported by Bloomberg, Netflix is working on the ‘choose your own adventure’ style episode for season five, which will debut at the end of 2018. Given that the show is about leaps in technology, it’s pretty fitting.
Until now, Netflix has used this ‘choose your own adventure’ style solely on children’s animated TV shows. It’s thought that Netflix’s upcoming animated series Minecraft, based on the video game, will also use this interactive format. The streaming service has committed to one other live-action project too.
Doing an interactive TV show like this can prove quite complicated – as the entire episode would be filmed with multiple scenarios, it would require longer scripts, production and filming time. HBO released its first interactive TV series earlier this year, Mosaic, directed by Steven Soderbergh.
Who knows whether this could be the big break for interactive, plot-engaging television – I didn’t have much patience for R.L Stine’s Give Yourself Goosebumps gamebook series.
Season five of Black Mirror is expected to drop at the end of 2018 – read back on our expansive oral history of the sci-fi anthology show, as told by its stars, here.