Black Mirror will be making a return to Netflix for its seventh season in 2025, with one episode being a direct sequel to a classic instalment.
The acclaimed dystopian sci-fi series, originally created by British screenwriter Charlie Brooker for Channel 4 in 2011, has long since gripped audiences with its profound views on the future of AI, video games and law-making in a world of autonomous technology. Indeed, the title of the series itself has become a colloquial descriptor for the steady rise in daunting technologies that ask existential questions of its users.
The forthcoming series will consist of six new episodes, with one being a direct sequel to the fan-favourite instalment ‘USS Callister’ from season four of the show. Starring the likes of Jesse Plemons, Michaela Coel and Cristin Milioti, the episode told the story of an influential video game designer, named Robert Daly, who uploads the consciousness of those he dislikes into an artificial Star Trek-esque world which they cannot escape from.
Announcing the news, Netflix revealed: “USS Callister will return…Robert Daly is dead, but for the crew of the USS Callister, their problems are just beginning”.
Highly regarded as one of Black Mirror’s greatest episodes, the instalment prods and questions the world of online gaming and even goes so far as to ask whether consciousness may exist even in man-made digital spaces.
Season six of Black Mirror dropped online in 2023 and focused less on technology than in previous series. The most successful episode came in the form of ‘Beyond the Sea’, a feature-length film about two astronauts taking part in a high-stakes cosmic mission while being able to access body doubles of their own selves back on the safety of Earth. The episode shares a similarity to ‘USS Callister’ in that both feature the actor Aaron Paul, so it shouldn’t be discounted that ‘Beyond the Sea’ may link into the sequel featuring in the forthcoming season.
Also included in season six was ‘Joan is Awful’, a meta-commentary about Netflix itself, featuring the likes of Salma Hayek, Annie Murphy and Michael Cera, which generated plenty of discussion at the time of its release.