Ah Black Mirror, this generation’s Twilight Zone (yes, even more so than the CBS All Access reboot). It doesn’t seem that long ago when fans were scrabbling to find every single ending in Bandersnatch. Well, if you’ve been jonzing for a hit of that sweet, sweet technological-social commentary, do we have good news for you:
This season has a ton of famous names, with the cast including actors Anthony Mackie, Miley Cyrus, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Topher Grace, Damson Idris, Andrew Scott, Nicole Beharie, Pom Klementieff, Angourie Rice, Madison Davenport and Ludi Lin. We see plots dealing with personal assistants, cell phones, those eye-rewinder tools from season 1, virtual reality, and more, as well as themes of fame, death, obsession, and isolation. You know, the typical for Black Mirror.
However, something that may alarm fans is that this season will only have three episodes, rather than the typical six. If you watch the trailer, there seems to be a lot of content in there, way more than for just three episodes. We don’t know the titles or lengths yet, so these separate stories might be connected to each other in some larger way, or maybe they will be shorter stories grouped by theme into one episode, like they did with the “Black Museum” episode back in season 4. The other theory is that maybe these stories are all interconnected in some dark and twisted way which we just don’t see yet, which would be pretty par for the course.
“We knew going into Bandersnatch that it would be difficult and challenging and more complicated than a normal film that we would do. Even then, we underestimated,” Charlie Brooker, the creator of Black Mirror, told The Hollywood Reporter. This could definitely point to them trying something new with the format. Thus far, there are no stirrings of another interactive episode for this season.
Black Mirror Season 5 will premiere on Netflix on June 5, 2019.