Fantasies are not reality
Season four’s “USS Callister” and season five’s “Striking Vipers” both explore the idea of creating a vivid fantasy world online that clashes with expectations in the real world. But their different approaches illuminate just how creative Black Mirror can get when examining similar themes. In one take, we meet a disgruntled video-game designer (Jesse Plemons) who steals his co-workers’ DNA so he can entrap their digital clones in a version of his Star Trek-inspired game where he’s almighty and powerful. In another, we follow two men (Anthony Mackie and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) whose friendship takes a turn when their avatars begin hooking up in the video game they play together. The episodes find their way to different conclusions—one involves comeuppance, the other compromise—but both explore what happens when life online starts to feel more comfortable than circumstances in the physical world.
