Confusing Black Mirror Episodes Explained

Starring Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) as Bingham "Bing" Madsen, Fifteen Million Merits takes place in a world that combines concepts like "the rat race," the corruption of modern entertainment values, and the future of advertising. From riding bikes all day for work to environments that are literally covered with screens, to the chump-change rewards and forced entertainment of both the mind-numbing and sexual variety, this episode feels like it was designed to feel like a grown-up version of WALL-E.

Of course, things are thrown for a loop when Abi Khan (Jessica Brown Findlay) shows up at work and an infatuated Madsen works to get Khan out of the "rat race" and onto the pre-defined route to "stardom." But when this only serves to inadvertently push Khan into a career as an adult film star, it leads Madsen to hatch his plan for justice.

The episode is haunting throughout, but really it's in those closing minutes that the point of all of the insanity comes crashing down like a ton of bricks. As Madsen threatens suicide on live television and the judges, seemingly unruffled by the scenario, offer him a huge buyout for "his act," the man breaks down and sells out. From success through sexuality, violence, and self-loathing to selling out and being inundated with perpetual advertising, this episode is dripping with deeper messages.

This one brings home the confusion factor in a unique way, as we are all dropped into an unknown location where Victoria Skillane (Lenora Crichlow) suddenly wakes up with no memory. Seen through the eyes of the terrorized Skillane, the episode follows the character as she is hunted through what appears to be a post-apocalyptic world while a group of "onlookers" watch her and stoically take pictures. Seriously, this one is bonkers.

But, of course, as is always the case with Black Mirror, it's all for a purpose. Ultimately Skillane is surprised to find out that she's actually part of an elaborate "torture program" in which she isn't the victim, but rather the offender... and the entertainment. Skillane was an accomplice in the murder of a child, and her punishment is to endlessly have her brain wiped and then be put through a series of terrors for the entertainment of the masses.

It really hits home because as the credits roll, it slowly becomes clearer that the point of the episode isn't really just about whether Skillane is a victim. Nor is it even simply about the "appropriate" way to punish a felon. One of the darkest points at the root of this episode is to highlight how quickly groupthink will lead us to accept the appalling treatment of another human being.

Playtest remains possibly one of the most confusing of all the Black Mirror episodes thus far. Taking place in layers upon layers of alternate reality, this one takes a bit of unraveling just to make sense of it. The episode focuses on Cooper Redfield (Wyatt Russell), a wandering world traveler who playtests a new virtual reality system that is literally inserted into the back of Redfield's neck. He is then left in a giant mansion to stay and test a horror game for as long as he can before giving up.

However, the one little detail that quickly gets swallowed up in the events of the episode is the fact that Redfield takes out his phone before the playtest starts in spite of strict orders to keep it off, and, of course, as soon as the test starts, he receives a call. The episode then follows Redfield through the game, which begins glitching, until Redfield wakes up back in the playtest room where he received the computer chip in his neck. But we aren't back in reality yet, Toto. Redfield heads home, only for the episode to end with yet another jump back to the playtest room, where we find Redfield dead after a game malfunction due to interference from his phone. While not one of the more thought-provoking episodes, Playtest certainly had some great twists, and introduced the concept of advanced VR into the show as well.

A straightforward yet just plain confusing episode, Crocodile follows the unpleasant story of Mia Nolan (Andrea Riseborough), who helps her friend Rob (Andrew Gower) dispose of a body after he accidentally kills a cyclist while they're driving down the road. Fifteen years later, Nolan has supposedly moved on from the murder, but Rob hasn't. When he threatens to confess, a truly terrifying version of Nolan emerges as she shows how numbed she has become through the whole affair by murdering her friend to keep things quiet.

From there, the episode spins out of control as Nolan continues to go on a string of merciless, cold-blooded murders, all in an fruitless attempt to keep things "in the dark." Of course, once you've murdered five people in random places, it gets hard to keep everything covered up, and the episode ends with Nolan being placed under arrest as giant crocodile tears flow down her cheeks. While this is a tougher one to straight up "explain" — no one even seems to agree on the meaning of the title, let alone the message — it seems that, apart from straight up disturbing his audience, director John Hillcoat was attempting to demonstrate the idea that sometimes the removal of an initial inhibition releases a person from their moral underpinnings. In other words, once you're guilty anyway, what's stopping you from doing something again?

In a rather stark deviation from the lengthy, brain-warping deeper concepts of many of the other episodes, Metalhead veers off into a short and simple — yet stressful — romp through a black-and-white, post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with killer mechanical dogs. The storyline focuses squarely on the survival of Bella (Maxine Peake) as she winds her way through a wilderness, trying to avoid death by the hunting metallic canines, before finally committing suicide when all hope is lost.

While it's been praised for its acting, directing, and cinematography, the storyline of Metalhead is painfully straightforward in its delivery, allowing little room for embellishment, and revealing virtually nothing to go on beyond what we're shown along with a few dim hints at other human survivors and the one haunting reveal at the end that all that they were searching for was a box of teddy bears for a dying child. It's an odd one, because in many ways this episode can't be unpacked much further than what it gives us. But the black-and-white effect and the tragic ending help to drive home the one, poignant message of hopelessness that was clearly front and center on director David Slade's mind.