All the episodes of Black Mirror ordered from worst to best

All the episodes of Black Mirror ordered from worst to best

Black Mirror is one of the series that has caused the most talk of the entire Netflix catalog. It is still just another science fiction series , and sometimes it can be even difficult to appreciate what the point of union of the series is, since all its episodes are independent and self-contained stories. There are mediocre episodes of Black Mirror and others that would give for a doctoral thesis, so we are going to try to order them from worst to best . Obviously, you can have different tastes and preferences, so if you don’t agree with the list, don’t be like the tweeters in the National Hate episode and use the comments section, but try to make a constructive contribution, please. Clarified this —the bees give me yuyu— , let’s get to it.

To what is the success of Black Mirror due?

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As we were saying, it can be hard to see the glue that holds Black Mirror episodes together. Generally speaking, the advancement of technology is at the core of each episode of the series. In each story, we will be introduced to characters living in a dystopia . But, unlike other science fiction series or movies, Black Mirror always shows us a dystopia that is very close to our present reality .

We can then say that Black Mirror portrays how technology is capable of corrupting and destroying human beings . How the tools we create to make our lives easier can turn against us and make our lives impossible. And not only that. It also questions the future of our species in the form of artificial intelligence and how capital would be used in that case to enslave us, not without our permission, but without our being aware of it.

Watching an episode of Black Mirror is about the worst thing you can ever do before you go to sleep. Practically all of them invite reflection, and although there are good chapters and bad chapters, all of them will leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, which is precisely what their creators are looking for.

Origin of Black Mirror and seasons

charlie brooker black mirror Black Mirror is the brainchild of Charlie Brooker . According to the producers of the series, the writer was inspired by works such as The Twilight Zone by Rod Serling and Tales of the Unexpected by Roald Dahl.

The series began broadcasting in 2011 on Channel 4 , the British television network, Netflix taking over from 2016. So far, Black Mirror has a total of 5 seasons and about 22 episodes , as well as a movie: Bandersnatch .

The best rated episode of the entire series is San Junípero , winner of several BAFTA awards and two Emmys, among many other awards.

Black Mirror: Ranking from worst to best

And without further ado, let’s get to it. Not only will we limit ourselves to ordering each episode by way of ranking , but we will also talk a little about each one of them, stopping at those that are most worth commenting on some details. Of course, you are about to see a nice collection of spoilers , so don’t read in too much detail those episodes that you have yet to see.

#23 Smithereens (S05E02)

The fifth season of Black Mirror is not much, but this episode hardly has anything relevant. It is nothing more than a 70-minute sermon that encourages you not to use your cell phone while driving . All spun in an absurd way and quite far from the premise of using science fiction as a claim. The only moral that the episode gives is that the excessive use of social networks can not have consequences for us and our loved ones, but the episode itself is quite bland and could have been spared.

#22 Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too (S05E03)

Known internationally as ‘The True Story of Hannah Montana’, this episode uses actress Miley Cyrus to draw a parallel to her Disney days. However, they don’t tell us anything we don’t already know. The wicked witch of the story is nothing more than her representative, who even drugs her to the point of leaving her in a coma to continue producing songs using her thanks to technology.

However, this is not your typical Black Mirror episode . In fact, technology is in this episode because it was good for the writer, with a Furby-type artist doll that has Rachel’s conscience and that some girls manage to hack to discover her representative’s cake. If you haven’t seen it, you can save it too.

#21 Metalhead (‘Iron Head’ S04E05)

It is the weakest in the fourth and also one of the bottom of the ranking precisely because it is an episode that does not have that Black Mirror touch . Aesthetically it is very good, but it is a more experimental episode, without a moral and that leaves you with a somewhat strange feeling by breaking that structure that the series usually presents.

#20 Striking Vipers (S05E01)

As we said, the fifth season of the series is very weak, and the first of the season is not exactly brilliant either, but it will improve over the years like good wine. It introduces us to two men (Danny and Karl) who have been friends since college and between whom there is some sexual tension. For his birthday, Karl gives Danny a virtual reality remastering—or rather metaverse—of a fighting game that marked his childhood: Striking Vipers . However, the two use the video game to have (heterosexual) sex with their characters.

The problem arises when the two see each other in real life and are not able to convey the passion they had in the video game, ending up in fistfights and Theo (Danny’s girlfriend) finding out about the whole story, which ends up opening the relationship. .

Striking Vipers poses a not too distant future in which people are going to be unfaithful to their partners through virtual reality, but also questions whether those same people would be able to consummate their infidelity in the real world , or even maintain a relationship . in person with actual physical contact.

#19 The Waldo Moment (‘The Waldo moment’) (S02E03)

Due to a legal loophole, they present a cartoon mascot to the elections. It is not a brilliant episode, but it has been used to criticize every new political opponent who has stood for election making the comparison, especially with Donald Trump in 2016.

#18 Men Against the Fire (“The Science of Killing”) (S03E05)

It could be a brilliant episode, because it opens the melon of how armies dehumanize the enemy during wars to ensure that reason and empathy take over their troops. And, at its core, Men Against the Fire is an anti-war critique that starts from a good foundation and uses technology to make the protagonists see the enemy as monsters. However, they do not empathize strongly with either side, turning the episode into a ‘I want and I can’t’.

#17 USS Callister (S04E01)

The fourth season premiered with this entertaining episode, but very long. It tells the story of Robert, the creator of a virtual reality space exploration game who is not taken seriously by his co-workers. When he gets home, Robert has his own game of the video game in which he has enslaved his teammates in true Matrix style. He achieves it by cloning the DNA.

USS Callister is very much in the vein of Black Mirror Season 4 episodes , but it wasn’t quite one of the best either.

#16 Playtest (‘Match’) (S03E02)

We all know that volunteering as a drug tester is a risky job, but…what about a video game tester? Playtest tells us the story of a man who comes to test a new virtual reality technology applied to video games. What begins with a lot of emotion ends up turning into a horror episode with multiple layers of reality and a very bad and unexpected ending. If you’re a fan of horror, this episode may be way higher on your list.

#15 Fifteen Million Merits (S02E02)

The second episode of Black Mirror teleported us to a reality in which people worked generating energy on a bicycle . That energy was translated into credits, and with those credits, people could buy food and entertainment, all virtual. During the episode we can see how there is a small elite —the one that appears on television— and the base of society, which is the one that works by pedaling.

The episode tells the life of Abi, who dreams of participating in an X Factor-style show to become one of the elite. Fifteen Million Merits is a criticism of all these types of programs that take advantage of the talent and desire for fame of others. At the time, the episode was criticized for not being very original, but it must be recognized that the consumer society approach that it proposed in 2011 is traced to the one that Zuckerberg wants to sell us with the metaverse .

#14 Bandersnatch

Although not an episode per se, this feature film was an experiment by Brooker and Netflix filled with breaking the fourth wall and the Black Mirror universe itself .

It’s an interactive movie in the style of ‘choose your adventure’, but the truth is that at a narrative level, no ending is epic or up to the best episodes of the series. Also, even if you choose the right steps during decision making, it’s kind of tedious to get to see all the endings. That’s why I leave you a video so you can explore all the endings quickly without having to search for them one by one.

#13 Crocodile (‘Crocodile’) (SE04E03)

This episode takes over to a certain extent from All your history , and shows us a similar society. Just as in some countries it is mandatory to carry a dash cam in the car to report insurance, in Crocodile society , people store memories and can be verified by the authorities in the face of a trial.

In this case, witnessing an accident puts Mia between a rock and a hard place, who has committed a murder minutes before witnessing a hit-and-run, and the fact that they check her memories would be the equivalent of what is known in the United States as a violation of the Fifth Amendment . The episode itself is well-directed, but it may be missing that final twist that we tend to love so much in Black Mirror .

#12 Black Museum (‘Black Museum’) (S04E06)

It is an anecdotal episode , since it uses the common thread of a criminological museum with real evidence to show Easter eggs from each previous episode of the series, making a kind of fruit salad that links all the chapters very well. It is a very entertaining chapter that ended the fourth season, but it does not have as much impact as other more famous episodes of the series.

#11 White Bear (‘ White Bear’ ) (S02E02)

As early as 2013, Oso Blanco anticipated the intensification of cancel culture and public lynching . The episode puts us in the shoes of a person with amnesia who wakes up in a kind of ‘Truman Show’. People chase her and take pictures of her, only to find out that it is a kind of psychological pain that she has to suffer for her actions in the past.

White Bear is a critique of the media that plays at being judges, warming up the public to desensitize it and replace the justice that has cost us so much to obtain to return to “an eye for an eye.”

#10 Archangel ( S04E02 )

Directed by Jodie Foster and written by Charlie Brooker, this episode looks at what it would be like to educate someone with extreme levels of censorship . A criticism of those parents who consider their children as extensions of themselves and would like to apply parental control directly to their eyes. It is also a criticism of the overinfantilization promoted by society and production companies like Disney.

#9 Heated in the Nation (‘National Hatred’) (S03E06)

The third season of Black Mirror ended with this episode that aired in October 2016, but which seems totally current due to the topics that are touched on.

During this long episode, Charlie Brooker paints us a reality in which the bees have become extinct , and we already know that if the bees fall, we are the next ones. For this reason, we humans have been able to create robotic bees capable of continuing the pollination process while maintaining the stability of the planet.

However, the episode tells us about the murder of an investigative journalist who had been receiving death threats for weeks on social networks after a controversial report.

We see the entire plot from the perspective of Karin Parke, an inspector assigned to the case. Shortly after, more famous people begin to die in strange situations , with a manipulation of the bees’ software being the cause of this phenomenon. Therefore, it is a criticism of the misuse of social networks today and the toxicity that is breathed in environments such as Twitter. The episode isn’t perfect, and the pacing makes it feel more like a movie than an episode of a TV series.

#8 The National Anthem (‘The national anthem’) (S01E01)

The first of all the Black Mirror episodes is also the only one that goes off the rails quite a bit. It was very controversial , and hence the success of the series. They tell us how the British princess has been kidnapped, and the captors ask the Prime Minister to record himself live having sex with a pig to free her from her, or they will end the life of the heiress to the throne.

The whole episode is a dilemma about sacrificing dignity or not in order to save a person’s life. The episode gained even more prominence in 2015, when it came to light that this entire episode seemed to refer to David Cameron’s own private life, although Charlie Brooker, the creator of the series and director of the episode, denied that there was any relationship.

#7 The Entire History of You (‘Toda tu historia’) (S01E03)

If this episode was from another season, it might not have hit us as hard. But being the first, gave a lot to talk about. In fact, it’s rare that in 2012 a teacher didn’t play this episode for you in class.

The premise of this episode is easy: all humans in this dystopia have a device that records everything we see and hear. It might seem cool, but the gadget goes against the characters in the episode when Liam begins to suspect that his wife is cheating on him, and asks to see the recordings . The Entire History of You is nothing more than a preview of what would later become a new type of harassment based on the espionage of the couple’s mobile phone, only in a much more macabre scenario and with some examples that leave you very bad body.

#6 Be Right Back (S02E01)

This episode may have seemed over the top to us when it came out in 2013, but watching it again may give you goosebumps. In the episode, we are told the story of Martha, a woman who has been left a very young widow after the death of her partner in a car accident. Later, she manages to bring Ash back to life through a robot that uses artificial intelligence to recover the personality of the deceased.

In this way, Martha receives a bionic version of Ash at home, a replica that has also been built based on obtaining his memories from social networks. As I said, in 2013, this episode might seem exaggerated, but seeing the progress of companies like OpenAI, does anyone doubt that this may not be possible in a few years?

#5 Shut Up and Dance (‘Shut Up and Dance’) (S0303)

What would you be willing to do so that the people who know you do not get to know your most intimate secrets? In an escalation of increasingly crazy acts, the characters in this episode are orchestrated so that their private lives are not published. All so that it finally ends up being confirmed that it was nothing more than a Challenge, an Internet troll .

Shut up and dance is not a spectacular episode, but it went deep into society to appreciate how relatively easy it would be for different individuals to fall into this trap. After all, all the barbarities that occur in this chapter are possible with the technology we already have . Hence, many consider it the best episode of all.

#4 Hang the DJ (S04E04)

The San Junipero of the fourth season. Have you ever had a love dilemma? And… how do you make sure you made the right choice? How can you show that you wouldn’t be happier with that other person? What makes you think that there is no other person in the world more compatible with you than the person you married? Well, in the Black Mirror universe there is a program capable of showing you that you are going to be united for life with the perfect person. With 100% compatibility, go.

Hang the DJ shows us a scenario in which everyone has a Tutor, who is an artificial intelligence that acts as a coach for couple relationships. In the purest Tinder style , Tutora assigns each person a partner, and they have to live together for a specific time. Subsequently, the Tutor evaluates the relationship in numerical terms, regardless of whether the union has been a few hours or even a few years. It is a funny episode, very tender, but also hard, because it transmits us ipso factothe separation anxiety of the protagonists when their date barely lasts 12 hours. However, it has a happy ending, it is not as pessimistic as most of the episodes of the series and it gives us a very interesting vision of both love and the positive applications of technologies that we have seen in other episodes of the series. The only downside to that universe is that people could never hang out with a show as outrageous, vulgar, and funny as Temptation Island.

#3 White Christmas (‘White Christmas’) (S02 Special)

Also known as ‘the Don Draper episode’, White Christmas is an episode that raises many elements for the third season and makes us question many things in its three acts as a chat between two characters inside a cabin in the that we see stories as flashbacks.

In the first, Matt (Jon Hamm) runs an augmented reality company that uses a gadget to put himself in the shoes of other men and flirt for them, while also having other clients watch the streaming broadcast. Everything goes well until one of his clients is poisoned and killed by a girl, being the cause of her death and leaving several witnesses.

In the second act, Matt shows us his true profession. We will learn that he is the CEO of the company that created the ‘cookie ‘, which is nothing more than extracting the consciousness of a person and transforming it into an AI. Greta is a client of Matt’s, and he pays her company to extract a cookie from her head that will work for her. What Greta does not know is that the replica of her will be a slave to herself and Matt, making it clear what the slavery of the future could be . This cookie theme is also a critical part of the plot of the video game CyberPunk 2077 , although it is a recurring phenomenon in works of science fiction.

In the third part, the characters in the cabin open up to each other, and we discover the reason why the two are there. The cabin is nothing more than a simulation in which time passes much slower than in reality. Joe is in the cabin serving his sentence, and explains to his partner that it all started with a strong argument with his wife. She ends up ‘blocking’ him, that is, preventing him from seeing her with her own eyes, which prompts him to commit an irrational act. The hard part of the episode is when we know the sentence that falls to Matt for the murder of the first act, because it is to be blocked by all humanity. That is when we understand why Socrates preferred to drink the hemlock rather than be ostracized.

Without a doubt, a round episode that is not long and that makes a turning point for the future of the series.

#2 Saint Juniper (S03E04)

Along with Hang the DJ , it forms the series’ upbeat episode duo , though it’s not without its dark brushstrokes. Does Heaven exist? You can believe in God and cross your fingers that everything you’ve been told is true, or you can guarantee yourself the shot at San Junipero . That is the message that the episode conveys to you at all times along with the song Heaven Is a Place on Earth that is heard both at the beginning and at the end of the chapter.

San Junipero tells us how some companies could come to commercialize eternal life , leaving cemeteries behind and turning us into artificial intelligences living in retirement on a server where you will always be young and meet your loved ones or have adventures with people that you did not get to know in life. Without a doubt, an episode that invites you to watch it more than once and in which the fictional company TCKR Systems practically sells you its services.

San Junipero uses some resources previously explained in the series such as the ‘cookie’, and it is surely the spark that inspired the Upload series . However, the dilemma posed by the episode is quite hard, and will leave you thinking for a few days.

#1 Nosedive (‘Dive Down’) (S03E01)

What if we valued each person the same way we give a review on TripAdvisor? What if life was Instagram? Wait a minute… isn’t life already Instagram? This episode anticipated too many things. So much so that we could say that it is one of the few Black Mirror episodes that has already come true .

The model that Nosedive sold us in 2016 is already a reality in China , which tracks its citizens face-to-face and in which fines are being replaced by restrictions on each individual . And it is not to be pessimistic, but seeing the decline of our society, I could not put my hand in the fire that the future of Europe is not going to go through one of these systems that defined this episode so well.

Nosedive may not be the most spectacular episode of the entire series, but it is the one that raises the most immediate future and the one that has been fulfilled the fastest.