The Darkest Black Mirror Fates

About this gallery:

Black Mirror is probably one of the most versatile shows out there, alone for the fact that every episode tells a different story. With its dystopian takes on technology and mind-bending plot twists, this show has both fascinated and terrified viewers.

With season 7 on its way, we want to recap and talk about some of the darkest fates that have been shown in the show so far, in chronological order.

There's, of course, a spoiler warning for this gallery. And if there are any cruel fates that you think should be on this list, tell us in the comments! | © Netflix

Bing and Abi in "Fifteen Million Merits"

Bing lives in a screen-filled world where cycling earns "merits" for survival. He spends nearly all his savings to enter Abi, a talented singer, into a reality show. She's pressured by the judges into joining a porn channel instead. To have a chance at better living standards, she accepts.

Traumatized, Bing obsesses over exposing the system. He buys another audition, rants onstage with a hidden glass shard, and eventually uses it to threaten suicide. All this effort results in him being offered his own show.

He accepts, now living in luxury while threatening suicide every week on his show, half-heartedly criticizing the very system he's become part of.

Both Bing and Abi have terrible fates in this episode. They can't escape the system they're trapped in; Abi is forced to sell her body to survive, while any hope of rebellion is crushed in Bing. | © Netflix

Victoria Skillane in "White Bear"

Victoria is a criminal who helped murder a child. As punishment, she was placed in a theme park-like setting called White Bear Justice Park, where she's subjected to this psychological torment daily. This involves waking up with no memory and being hunted by masked strangers while bystanders film everything without helping.

Each night, her memory is wiped, and the whole scenario repeats – with visitors watching her suffer as part of her sentence.

Before you protest: Yes, we're aware that this character did awful things. Yes, we do think she deserves to be punished for what she did. However, the way she is punished is pure sadism.

The fact that her memory is erased after every show makes the punishment kind of useless in a way – after all, she doesn't know what she did for the majority of the time, and whenever it's revealed to her, she's appalled by it.

It could be that her memory-wiped version is barely even the same person that committed these deeds – the version that she is now doesn't remember the events that made her turn into such a monster. Having this happen every day for presumably the rest of her life is definitely one of the darkest Black Mirror fates. | © Netflix

Both main characters in "White Christmas"

This episode features two main characters who both end up with very dystopian fates.

Shady businessman Matt is placed on a sex offender registry and is tagged with augmented reality tech that makes everyone see him as a red blur and blocks him from seeing or interacting with others. He’s socially cut off completely, basically living in permanent isolation.

Accidental murderer Joe is split into two versions: A real one and a digital one. While his real self is presumably placed into a normal prison, his digital consciousness is left running in a cabin simulation where every minute feels like 1,000 years to him – stuck in isolation for what amounts to millions of years, with Christmas music playing on a loop.

Once again, both characters kind of brought this fate on themselves, but even then, it's terrible to imagine being stuck in their situations.

Another character who could be mentioned in this episode is the digital version of Greta, who only exists to fulfill the real Greta's desires and is, as Joe states, basically enslaved. | © Netflix

Cooper in "Playtest"

Cooper signs up to test a cutting-edge augmented reality horror game that's implanted into the users' neural systems.

Initially, the game seems to be working: it scans his mind to generate personalized fears, and he starts hallucinating more and more disturbing things. However, the line between reality and simulation blurs until he’s trapped in a nightmare loop.

Later, it turns out that Cooper died almost instantly after the test began – his phone had interfered with the equipment, causing a fatal error. What we see in the episode is just a microsecond of simulated horror inside his brain as it shuts down. His whole traumatic experience happened in less than a second.

Still, to him, it felt like much more time passed, and he saw his deepest fears in his final moments – no one wants to go like this. | © Netflix

All of the victims in "Hated in the Nation"

In this episode, tiny autonomous drone bees (ADIs, used to replace extinct bees) are hacked and used to kill the top-voted "winner" of the hashtag #DeathTo each day. They do this by flying into their heads and attacking their brains – the pain center, to be exact – which leads to the victims violently killing themselves to make the agonizing pain stop.

Later, the man behind the bee attacks turns this into mass punishment, programming the bees to kill everyone who used the #DeathTo hashtag – over 300,000 people.

This includes everyone who didn't believe the hashtag was real and just used it when messing around. Should people be more careful about what they say on the internet? Definitely. Is the most agonizing death imaginable a disproportionally cruel fate? Yes, it is. | © Netflix

Robert Daly in USS Callister

Daly secretly creates digital clones of his coworkers using their DNA. These digital versions are fully conscious and trapped inside the video game that he plays at home, forced to obey his every command in a sci-fi world where he plays god.

The digital crew members eventually trick Daly into chasing them into a "wormhole" (it's technically just a server update window in his game) and manage to lock him out of his own game permanently. Meanwhile, the digital versions of the crew escape into the live online version of the game, where they're finally free.

Daly's fate? He ends up trapped alone in his private game, with no way out, no control, and no one else there. And since no one knows he’s in a coma-like state in real life, his real body is likely going to die alone in his apartment while his mind might be imprisoned in digital space indefinitely.

One could, of course, argue that the crew trapped by Daly also suffers a dark fate – however, they do get a happy ending eventually. While we don't feel too bad for Daly, his eventual fate is much darker. | © Netflix

The victims in "Black Museum"

Black Museum is an episode that contains a plethora of fates that you wouldn't wish upon anyone. Let's go through them individually:

Dr. Peter Dawson tested an implant that let him physically feel his patients’ sensations, enhancing his diagnostic skills. However, after experiencing death, he became addicted to pain, began self-harming, and ultimately killed a homeless man – leading to him being trapped in a coma after the police found him during the murder. If he ever gets out of it, he probably has prison time coming.

Rolo Haynes, the owner of the museum who was also responsible for the technology that destroyed Dawson, convinced Jack to merge his comatose wife Carrie’s consciousness with his own mind, letting her feel and communicate through him. As Jack started dating again, Carrie was moved into a toy monkey with limited speech. Their son lost interest, and Carrie's consciousness was stuck in the monkey doll presumably for the rest of time.

The museum's main attraction is a hologram of Clayton Leigh, who was on death row when he signed up for Haynes' exhibit, where visitors pull a lever to electrocute his hologram, eventually leaving Clayton in a vegetative state. Also, the museum offers little devices with holographic copies of him going through executions as souvenirs, which means countless versions of him are in an electrocuted state indefinitely.

And this is the same fate that Rolo Haynes eventually faces as his visitor "Nish" is revealed to be Clayton's daughter. Seeking revenge, she poisons Haynes, transfers his consciousness into Clayton’s hologram, and electrocutes it, creating a souvenir of his suffering.

Stefan Butler in "Bandersnatch"

First of all: This character doesn't have one fixed "fate" because he's controlled by the viewers, so your actions technically determine his fate.

However, the longer you watch (or play), the more you realize that no matter what you do, Stefan either ends up miserable, imprisoned or dead. Not only that, but he also mentions multiple times that he can feel himself being controlled by you and can remember some of the timelines he goes through.

This basically means that, from his perspective, he's indefinitely stuck in various timelines with no control over his actions. Why indefinitely? Because even when he dies, the player can just press "Try again", so technically his story never really ends.

David McCardle in "Loch Henry"

At first glance, David's fate might not seem as dark as the other ones on this list. After all, he became a famous movie maker, right? Well, but at what cost?

Imagine finding out that your parents used to torture and kill people. Your girlfriend dies in an accident while trying to flee from your mother, and your mother commits suicide when her deeds are uncovered.

You'd lose your girlfriend, mother, and respect for your late father, and then you'd have to go through every detail of this story again while making a movie about it. David is clearly miserable at the end of this episode, but no one pays attention to this, and they congratulate him for his film prize instead.

Your success would be built on the most depressing time of your life and constantly remind you of it. No matter what you achieve now, you'll never be able to enjoy your success. A truly dark fate. | © Netflix

Cliff in "Beyond the Sea"

The astronauts Cliff and David are in space but can remotely inhabit Earth-based replicas – basically artificial versions of their bodies that continue their life on Earth while their real versions are in a spaceship.

However, after a cult against artificial humans murders David’s family and destroys his replica, he grieves aboard the ship.

Cliff lets David use his own replica for comfort, but David grows obsessed with Cliff’s wife, Lana. After David makes advances and becomes violent toward Cliff's son, Cliff bans him. David then uses Cliff’s replica to kill Cliff’s family. Cliff returns to find them dead, with their blood on his hands.

All he wanted to do was help out a friend, and it resulted in him losing his wife and child and probably being seen as the murderer since other people didn't know that David had access to Cliff's replica.

He's severely traumatized at the end of the episode, and one can only imagine how the story continued after that, being stuck in a spaceship with the murderer of his family, having nothing to come home to. | © Netflix