A Highly Subjective List of the Ten Most Traumatic ‘Black Mirror’ Episodes
To honour Black Mirror likely being renewed for a seventh season (as reported by Variety), what could be more fun than revisiting the darkest, most traumatic episodes of one of television’s most morbid offerings?
The National Anthem
There really is no better way to kick off a show like Black Mirror than an episode where the prime minister must commit bestiality to ensure the return of a kidnapped Royal Princess. (If anything, it’s certainly one of the stranger, more oblique ways of criticising the monarchy.)
It’s also deeply disturbing, because instead of approaching its stomach-churning premise in a tongue-in-cheek way, The National Anthem makes a genuine attempt to explore how such an event would play out in real life.
Hence the shots of hospitals and pubs crowded with patients, punters and workers alike, all suspended in silence, mouths agape, unable to tear their eyes away from their nearby tv screen. At the end of the day, as absurd as it may seem, couldn’t you imagine people watching?
White Bear
What makes White Bear so compelling is how it refuses to tone down its tension throughout the episode. Its protagonist, with no awareness of her surroundings or even her own name, wanders past filming onlookers while masked killers pursue her. Of course, all is not as it seems.
This woman, Victoria Skillane, was complicit in the gruesome murder of a 12-year-old girl. Now she’s part of a theme park for torture, essentially, where her memories are erased each night so she can be terrorised again the following day.
What makes the episode so difficult to stomach is how, just as the viewer is most apt to feel pity for this woman’s fate, her horrific backstory is revealed. It’s morally messy, it’s designed to provoke anger and outrage, and it’s horrifying to imagine its protagonist’s fate… in other words, a typical Black Mirror episode.
Fifteen Million Merits
Before he was launched to international stardom in films like Get Out and Black Panther, Daniel Kaluuya had a leading role in Fifteen Million Merits as Bing, a grunt worker who spends his dreary days on an exercise bike amongst the other residents / prisoners in their complex.
He finally experiences hope when he overhears a young woman singing and convinces her to perform on Hot Shot, this show’s version of The X Factor. Bing is determined for Abi to move on to better things, giving up his entire savings to pay for her audition ticket.
In this episode, everyone’s a slave to consumerism and the chance of a better life. It appears Bing and Abi are destined for better things than those around them, but in the end, both succumb to outside pressure, accepting the roles offered to them by Hot Shot in exchange for their dignity. It’s bleak, certainly, and it’s telling that even this is mild compared to some of the show’s more extreme episodes.
Shut Up and Dance
Structured around the victims of anonymous online hackers, Shut Up and Dance ranks highly amongst the series’ most soul-crushing endings. After receiving threatening emails on his laptop, protagonist Kenny must embark on a journey fraught with dangerous instructions by his blackmailers.
Similarly to White Bear, the episode explores the extent to which people who have committed horrific acts should be punished. Much of the discussion around Shut up and Dance relates to its twist ending, but it’s worth noting how the hackers’ presence mirrors the omnipresent role the internet increasingly plays in daily life.
Challenging the viewers’ preconceptions, the episode, like much of the series, never gives a clear answer to these issues in its haunting portrayal of people wielding power to devastating effect.
The Entire History of You
In one of the most straightforward dramatic episodes in the show’s six season run, The Entire History of You examines Liam’s mounting suspicions about his wife’s infidelity, in a world where most people have an implant that allows them to replay their memories.
It starts off innocently enough, with an awkward dinner party for the couple and their acquaintances, and soon ratchets up the tension as Liam is unable to manage his paranoia.
Liam’s suspicions being confirmed is devastating, especially as he’s left questioning whether he’s his daughter’s biological father. It’s haunting to watch the flurry of memories that plays as Liam extracts the device, permanently deleting them from his mind.
Men Against Fire
The plot twist of this episode alone is worth an inclusion in this list, where a soldier, Stripe, realises that his implant makes his enemies appear as hideous creatures, when really him and his fellow soldiers have been slaughtering innocent people this entire time.
But it’s the dilemma that Stripe is presented during the episode’s climax that hammers home how wayward morality has become with technological aids, as he must choose between having his memories wiped and the implant’s functions restored, or watch the footage of him murdering civilians on an endless loop.
It’s an interesting companion piece to The Entire History of You, as Stripe and Liam are technically offered similar choices between relinquishing their memories or having perfect recall of them. Except for Stripe, he’s at the mercy of his military superiors, who will gladly employ this unique form of psychological torture until his willpower breaks.
Arkangel
In Arkangel, after Marie installs an implant in her daughter Sara to monitor the girl’s behaviour and censor explicit imagery, their relationship becomes increasingly fraught. It’s rare for parent-child relationships to be given so much emphasis in Black Mirror, but that doesn’t stop the episode from revelling in the show’s trademark bleakness.
A critique of helicopter parenting, it’s another troubling tale of how the power of technology, mixed with ill-fated but well-intentioned acts, can cause humanity’s downfall, this time by tearing apart close-knit families.
Black Museum
One of the show’s few anthology episodes, Black Museum features a string of disturbing tales happily narrated by the owner of a museum of artefacts with disturbing backstories. He details the twisted backstories of various items before settling on the main exhibit, where a man’s uploaded hologram was made available for electrocution by paying customers, until he became a soulless husk as a perpetual torture instrument.
It’s a horrifying situation, especially given the way racial issues are weaved into its story, as the accused was an African American sentenced to death with contested evidence, whose torture was often performed by racists seeking an outlet for their bigotry.
The series often enters extremely dark and disturbing territory, but there’s an added sense of horror when present-day injustices are inserted into the story.
White Christmas
There are many TV shows and films that feature bleak outcomes for their characters, but few works of art are as effective as Black Mirror at conveying the horror of eternal punishment. In White Christmas, the show once more looks at the hypothetical effects of implants, as two men, Matt and Joe, discuss their wrongdoings in a remote cabin.
But the true horror of the episode is Joe’s storyline as he remembers more about his past. What follows is a tragic fall from grace, where he is permanently blocked by his fiancé (meaning they effectively can’t see or hear each other) and realises the daughter she hid from him was never his to begin with.
For their crimes, both men are ultimately subjected to a hellish, never-ending nightmare, which could only work as a tagline for a series as disturbing as Black Mirror.
Crocodile
And finally, we come to the end of the list. What makes Crocodile so disturbing is the way that its murders are slowly weaved into the plot, as Mia desperately tries to cover up a hit-and-run death she caused years ago.
In most shows when someone is evading the law, unless they’re depicted as a remorseless killer, there’s still a part of you that roots for them to get away with it.
Black Mirror is a rare series in that it isn’t afraid to take its viewers through a journey of humanity’s depths. As Mia crimes escalate in a disturbing snowball effect, it’s tragic moments are hard to sit through, but it’s impossible to look away from them.
In some ways, that serves as a summary for the entire show. Though I haven’t included any episodes from the show’s most recent season, it still hasn’t lost the disturbing elements that made the show so iconic.
Do you agree with the list, or is there a Black Mirror episode that you think is sorely missing from these selections? Give your opinion in the comments.
