- Bandersnatch was an interactive episode of the black comedy
- Trailer for season 7 shows a character from that episode
- Season 7 of Black Mirror comes to screens later this year
The trailer for season 7 of Charlie Brooker’s anthology series Black Mirror showed a character from iconic episode Bandersnatch – but what was it about?
Black Mirror’s highly anticipated seventh season is on the way, with its trailer showing that fans can expect episodes with a star-studded cast, including Awkwafina, Peter Capaldi, Emma Corrin and more. You can read more on this and view the trailer here.
The trailer also dropped a hint that one of its best-remembered episodes, Bandersnatch, is being revisited. Will Poulter was seen, who played game designer Colin Ritman in the feature-length episode that was unlike anything seen before.
What was Bandersnatch all about
Bandersnatch was a period episode, set in 1984, and focused on Stefan Butler (played by Fionn Whitehead), a young programmer who is trying to adapt a ‘choose your own adventure’ book called – you guessed it – Bandersnatch. Butler is trying to programme a new type of adventure game based on it.
What follows is a series of options that Butler must take. This includes whether to pitch the game to Tuckersoft or it develop on his own, whether to take medication or not, and whether to take hallucinogenic drugs – among many other choices.
Along the way, Butler meets Ritman, who can have a significant impact on events.
As Butler’s choices take a toll, things start to spiral out of control for him with potentially devastating consequences.
What made it different
While television is generally consumed passively – you watch it – this was interactive as the viewer could make choices as to what happened next. When a choice point came, viewers had 10 seconds to make their choice. If they didn’t a default choice was made for them.
Viewers could ‘complete’ the story in just 40 minutes, but on average it took 90 minutes to go through the story. In all, there were 150 minutes of footage, divided into 250 segments, giving 1 trillion possible avenues for the viewer to take.
Netflix said there were five ‘main’ endings, but producer Russell McLean said there were up to 12 endings, while the director said there were also some hard-to-reach endings.
Bandersnatch had been intended to be part of season five of Black Mirror but due to its complexity – and the volume of recording needed for it – Netflix released it as a stand-alone.
Quite how the character of Ritman returns remains to be seen – and nothing has been said by the creative team behind it – as you would expect. We will have to wait until the episode airs. New episodes of Black Mirror will be released Netflix from 10 April.
