The following is the current timeline of the tv series, Black Mirror. It will start in the past to the future.
The Beginning[]
1970[]
Somewhere in Britain, a young Stefan Butler is planning with his mom to go to their grandparents' house. The night before, his father took his plush rabbit and hid it in a locked room. The next day, Stefan couldn't find his rabbit and made his mom late and she had to take the 8:45 train which later derailed, killing multiple passengers on board, including Stefan's mom. (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch)
1984[]
A grown-up Stefan Butler gets inspired to make the video game version of Bandersnatch. After a few weeks of coding, he decided to show the demo to the boss of tuckersoft and meets Colin Ritman who says, "We met before?" Stefan says no but then he says, "Yes we have. I told you I would see you around (and here I am)." Which confuses Stefan even more. He then showed Nohzdyve which Stefan surprisingly knew. After showing the demo (with Colin saying he read the book and after saying no to working there) Stefan decides to work at home.
As the weeks pass, Stefan is getting more and more frustrated with the problems on his game. He then went to his doctor's place and decides to follow Colin. Colin then tells Stefan who's jumping and Stefan wants Colin to jump. He agrees and says "See you around" and jumps. After he jumps, Stefan wakes up back in his dad's car and visits the doctor. Stefan then shows the new demo, it fails and says he'll have it done by Monday.
After saying that it would be done by Monday, Stefan continues working and by Monday, he has a breakdown and kills his father and chopping his body. The game gets 5 stars and is a good game. 6 months later, Stefan is arrested for killing his dad and the game is taken off the shelves. (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch)
2011[]
Prime Minister Michael Callow faces a huge and shocking dilemma when Princess Susannah, Duchess of Beaumont, a much-loved member of the Royal Family, is kidnapped. For her safe return, the Prime Minister must have live sexual intercourse with a pig on national television, with a list of technical specifications designed to make it impossible to fake. Callow adamantly opposes fulfilling the demand and does all possible to catch the kidnapper before the deadline. Callow also demands the news not reach the public, but the ransom video has been posted on YouTube and, despite having only been up for nine minutes, has already been viewed and downloaded by many thousand members of the British public. Although the UK's media initially agrees via a D-Notice not to report the story, it soon reaches foreign news networks, which immediately report. After this, the UK media follow suit. The public's response is initially one of sympathy towards Callow, and the majority do not expect him to go through with the demand. Twitter wags christen the incident hashtag #Snoutrage.
When the British government first receives the video, the Home Secretary, Alex Cairns attempts to manufacture fake footage to broadcast (via using highly sophisticated technology to place the PM's head onto a willing surrogate who would perform in his stead). The kidnapper discovers the ploy and sends Princess Susannah's finger to a UK news station as a response. The story is outed and public opinion turns sharply against Callow; a majority now demand he follows through with the kidnapper's ransom although his wife Jane begs him not to go through with it. This drives Callow to order an immediate rescue operation on the building where they believe Susannah is being held, forgoing the recommended observation period. The building is revealed to be a decoy and a reporter is injured during the operation. Callow loses even more support.
Callow is informed that his party, the public and the royal family are demanding he fulfills the ransom demand and neither he nor his family will have protection from repercussions if he refuses. An announcement is made on TV what is about to happen and noise is emitted to induce vomiting is played, to discourage viewing. Callow is given Viagra and advice before entering the room. He sees the pig and asks for forgiveness for what he is about to do. Callow has sex with the pig in front of a live global audience who is quickly disgusted by the sight but still continue watching. The Princess is discovered unharmed in the streets, the finger having belonged to the kidnapper. It is revealed that she was released before the deadline but went unnoticed as everyone was distracted by the broadcast. It emerges that Turner Prize winner Carlton Bloom planned the events, intending to make an artistic point by showing events of significance slipped under the noses of the public and the government as they were "elsewhere, watching screens" and not paying attention to the real world. Bloom commits suicide as the broadcast airs, and it is decided that the early release will not be revealed to anyone including Callow. Cairns tells Callow, who is vomiting after his ordeal, that the princess is safe. (Black Mirror: The National Anthem)
A Year of Subtle Change[]
2012[]
A year after the broadcast, Callow's political image has remained intact and gained greater public approval due to his willingness to sacrifice his dignity. Princess Susannah has recovered from the kidnapping and is expecting a child, while the public at large knows of Bloom's organizing of the affair and have for the most part moved on from the incident. While Callow's reputation has been raised in the eyes of the public, it is implied that his relationship with Jane has not survived the ordeal—a year after the incident, she is shown making a public appearance with him but is entirely cold to him in private. (Black Mirror: The National Anthem)
Jamie Salter is a failed comedian who performs the voice and movements (via performance capture) of a blue cartoon bear named Waldo, who interviews politicians and other authority figures. The interviewees are fooled into thinking the Waldo interviews are for a children's TV program when they're actually for a late-night, topical comedy show. Waldo the bear is extremely popular with the B series is commissioned, but despite the character's success, Jamie is depressed and unsatisfied with his life.
During a brain-storming session for the Waldo pilot, producer Jack Napier, who owns the rights to Waldo, jokingly suggests that Waldo should compete against real politicians in an upcoming by-election in the town of Stentonford, so he can stand against one of his past interviewees, Conservative candidate Liam Monroe. Jamie at first opposes the idea, worried about entering the world of politics, but he soon reluctantly agrees to go ahead with the plan. The production company heads off on a campaign trail, projecting Waldo onto a screen on the side of a van and driving to wherever Monroe is campaigning, so Waldo can publicly humiliate him. During the campaign, Jamie meets Gwendolyn Harris, the by-election's Labour candidate who, despite having no chance of winning, is entering the by-election to further her own political career. Jamie and Gwendolyn grow close, and they have a one-night stand, but afterward, Gwendolyn is warned by her campaign manager to keep away from Jamie during the campaign. Jamie can't understand why she is avoiding him and develops a disdain for career politicians.
On a TV panel show with every party candidate as a guest, Monroe mocks both Waldo and Jamie, taunting him by saying Waldo is nothing more than a joke and Jamie himself hasn't achieved anything in his comedy career. This aggravation causes Jamie to angrily rant at every candidate on the panel, accusing them of being more artificial than Waldo is, viciously exposing Gwendolyn as a career politician and stating that the public has lost faith in politicians. Jamie is later embarrassed by his outburst, but the rant becomes a hit on YouTube and Waldo gains more public support while Gwendolyn's campaign quickly falters and the Labour party distances itself from her. Both Jamie and Napier meet with an American (who introduces himself as a member of "the agency") who claims that due to his independent stance, Waldo has the potential to become a global authority figure, much to the disdain of Jamie. After a heated argument with Napier, Jamie opts to leave the campaign. He tries to apologize to Gwendolyn for his actions, but she turns him away, enraged that he has damaged her career. On the final day of the campaign trail, Jamie rejoins but is overwhelmed by guilt and breaks down at a rally, begging the public not to vote for Waldo, leaving the van and trying to smash the screen. Napier takes over Waldo's controls and orders the public to attack Jamie. On the day of the election, Jamie watches the results from a hospital bed; Monroe wins, with Waldo (now voiced by Napier) coming second and Gwendolyn coming third. Napier prompts the audience to riot. (Black Mirror: The Waldo Moment)
Martha and Ash are a young couple who move to a remote house in the countryside. Ash is a social media addict and compulsively checks his phone for updates on his social network pages. The day after moving into the house, Ash is killed returning the hire van. At the funeral, Martha's friend Sara tells her about a new online service that lets people stay in touch with the deceased. By using all of his past online communications and social media profiles, a new "Ash" can be created virtually. Martha rejects the idea outright, but Sara signs Martha up to the service anyway, without telling her. When Martha is sent an e-mail supposedly from Ash, she furiously confronts Sara, who urges her to at least give the service a try before dismissing it.
Over the following days, Martha is overwhelmed by grief and soon discovers that she is pregnant. Becoming emotionally unstable, she responds to artificial Ash's e-mail. She starts to communicate with him through instant messaging and informs him of the pregnancy. She then uploads videos and photos of Ash to the service's database, and the service duplicates Ash's voice to talk to Martha over the phone. Martha allows herself to believe that she is talking to her dead partner, and over the following weeks, she talks to the artificial Ash almost non-stop, keeping him updated regarding the pregnancy. After Martha accidentally damages her phone and has a panic attack when she temporarily loses contact with the service, the artificial Ash tells her about the service's next stage, which is still in its experimental phase: a body made of synthetic flesh that the program can be uploaded onto.
Martha buys a blank, synthetic body from the service, and following the artificial Ash's instructions she allows the body to take on Ash's physical characteristics. The end result is a clone that looks almost exactly like Ash, only missing minor characteristics such as his facial hair and a mole on his neck. From the moment the clone is activated, Martha is uncomfortable and struggles to accept its existence. Despite the clone satisfying her sexually, she quickly becomes frustrated by it constantly doing what she says without question, its lack of emotion (only expressing emotions when she tells it to do so), and the absence of certain habits and personality traits which the real Ash had but the service did not have information on. After an argument, Martha decides she can no longer tolerate the Ash clone, taking it to the edge of a tall cliff and ordering it to jump off. The clone agrees to do so, but Martha grows even angrier, saying that the real Ash would not have willingly jumped. The clone responds by begging for its own life, causing Martha to realize that she can't bring herself to get rid of it. (Black Mirror: Be Right Back)
The Age of Anger[]
2016 - 2018[]
In a bedroom, Victoria Skillane wakes up in a chair to find she can't recall anything about her life. Apparently the result of a failed suicide attempt, Victoria is surrounded by images of a small girl — whom she assumes to be her daughter — as well as photos of her and an unknown man. Victoria sees an unusual symbol on the TV screens in the house and a calendar on the month of October, with all the dates being crossed off up until the 18th. Leaving the house, Victoria sees people constantly recording her on their phones. When asking for help and shouting at the people to stop recording her, a man wearing a balaclava with the symbol on it pulls up in a car, takes out a shotgun, and fires at Victoria. After being chased by the masked man, she meets Jem and Damien, who attempted to save Victoria and Jem, forcing them to go on the run. Jem explains a mysterious signal over television and the internet turned most of the population into dumb voyeurs who do nothing but record everything around them. Victoria and Jem are unaffected but are also a target for the 'hunters', unaffected humans who, with society's collapse, can act wantonly violent and sadistic. Jem plans to reach a nearby transmitter at 'White Bear' to destroy it and stop the signal's effect on the area.
As they travel, a man named Baxter picks up Victoria and Jem. Baxter is also unaffected, but drives them to a forest and holds them at gunpoint. Although Jem escapes, Victoria is tied to a tree and about to be tortured until Jem returns and kills Baxter. They continue traveling to the transmitter, while Victoria has visions of past and future events. When they reach the White Bear transmitter to destroy it, two hunters attack Victoria and Jem. Victoria wrestles a shotgun away from a hunter and fires at her attacker - only for it to spray confetti. The walls open to reveal an audience applauding after observing the escapade; Jem, Damie, and the hunters are revealed to have been part of a charade all along. Victoria is strapped into a chair, while Baxter appears and explains everything: the girl Victoria assumed to be her daughter was actually a six-year-old schoolgirl named Jemima Sykes, whom Victoria and her fiancé, Iain Rannoch (the man from the photographs), abducted a few miles from her home. After taking her to a nearby forest, Iain tortured and killed Jemima while Victoria recorded his actions on her mobile phone. The 'White Bear', originally the victim's teddy, was a symbol of the nationwide search and murder investigation, while the symbol on the screens and on the hunter's mask was identical to the tattoo that identified Victoria's fiancé (who committed suicide in his cell before the trial). Having tearfully pleaded guilty and insisting she was 'under Iain's spell', Victoria was given a sentence the judge described as 'proportionate and considered' – to undergo this mob-recorded, poetic justice every day.
Victoria, who still has no clear memory of these events, is driven back to the compound past a crowd baying for her blood (under encouragement from the staff) and returned to the room where she woke up. She is placed back in the bedroom chair by Baxter. As she watches footage of Jemima, Baxter places electrodes on her head, wiping Victoria's memory of the day's events as she screams in agony. As Baxter leaves the compound to the sound of Victoria's screams, he takes out a black pen and crosses off 18 October from the calendar; ready for Victoria to relive the same events the next day.
We see the staff (including Baxter, Jem, and Damien) of the 'White Bear Justice Park' prepare for another day as they set up the scenario, and how it plays out. The voyeurs are members of the public who are there to see Victoria suffer while using their phones to record the show. The episode ends as it began, with Victoria waking up in the bedroom chair with no memory. (Black Mirror: White Bear)
A woman drives a car into a parking lot, leaving the keys in one of the wheel arches, before being texted and leaving.
Kenny, a socially awkward teenager arrives home from work to find his sister has stolen his laptop and has downloaded a virus. He goes to his room to install an anti-malware program called "Shrive", he manages to clean up the virus. However, an unseen hacker uses the camera to record Kenny masturbating to an image on his computer, though the image on his computer is not shown. Getting an email from the recorder, Kenny realizes to his horror that he has been hacked and turns off his laptop. The hacker emails Kenny again to give him his phone number or the video of him masturbating will be released to everyone he has in his contacts. Kenny reluctantly does so. The hacker tells him to keep his phone on and charged at all times and to keep his location services on so the hacker knows where he is. The hacker also tells Kenny to wait until he is "activated".
While Kenny is at work, he receives a text from the hacker, who demands him to go to a rooftop car park at12 pm or they will release the video. Feigning sickness to his boss, Kenny manages to get there in time, meeting a motorcyclist with a package. The motorcyclist is also a victim of the hacker, having been told to come there too. The motorcyclist gives Kenny a package with a cake inside, and takes a photo of him, verifying he has given the cake to him. Kenny is told to deliver the cake to a man in a hotel room. Eventually being let in after informing the occupant that "Mindy" sent him, Kenny meets Hector. A panicking Kenny tries to explain his situation to Hector when Hector is texted by the blackmailers. Hector panics and obeys the hacker's demands. Kenny is told to take Hector's photo to confirm the delivery. The pair is then told to go to the hotel car park and use the car that the woman dropped off.
The pair are ordered to drive to a specific location out of the city, just barely managing to reach it. Hector and Kenny talk about why they are being contacted. At a petrol station, they bump into a friend of Hector's wife who wants a lift. They reluctantly agree. When they drop the friend off, Hector reveals that he is married but is bored and decided to order a prostitute. Since he has children, he is afraid of not seeing them again. Kenny breaks down and reveals he was filmed masturbating. They are then told to look inside the cake, where they find a gun, a hat, and sunglasses. They are then told to rob a nearby bank, one to actually commit the robbery, one to be the drivers. Deciding that Kenny should go, Hector waits in the car. Kenny manages to rob the bank, who wets himself in sheer internalized terror and the pair escape; told by the hacker to go to a field.
Hector is told to destroy the car alone, whilst Kenny is told to go into a nearby woodland park to deliver the cash alone. The pair part ways. Kenny makes his way into the park, meeting a man with a large box containing a drone. Revealing himself as another victim of the hacker, he tells Kenny that they must fight to the death and the winner takes the money, as the drone that the hacker controls watches them from above. The man asks Kenny what he did, and when Kenny says that all he did was look at pictures. The man says that he did the same then asks "How young were they?" revealing himself and Kenny to be pedophiles (Kenny had been masturbating to pornographic images of children). Kenny, still having the gun, points it at the man, then turns it on himself, but finds that it was empty all along. The two engage in a brutal fight, as the drone looks on.
Hector returns home, getting another text from the hacker: a picture of a troll face. Hector then finds that his wife knows the name of the prostitute he hired. The other victims of the hacker who complied with their demands have also had their sensitive information released, getting text messages of the picture. Kenny walks away from the forest, bloodied and with the bag containing the stolen money. After being sent the troll face picture, he receives a call from his mother demanding to know what he has done, having been told he had been looking at kids. The video of him masturbating has been sent to everyone he know.. Kenny hangs up the phone as the police arrive, and offers little resistance as they arrest him. (Black Mirror: Shut up and Dance)
A news report shows the 1984 rating of Bandersnatch and about the murder of Stefan's father. The — now grown up — Pearl Ritman announces that she is going to remake Bandersnatch on tv platforms. While coding, the "game" has an error and Pearl has to try to fix it. She then decides to (destroy the computer or throw tea onto the computer's keyboard) and the scene goes to a black screen. (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch)
The Future[]
The George Orwell Era[]
2020 - 2022[]
A satire on entertainment shows and our insatiable thirst for distraction set in a sarcastic version of a future reality. In this world, a society of people lives in an enormous, enclosed space with a video screen covering nearly every surface offering personalized entertainment. They earn their living by riding on exercise bikes in order to power their surroundings and generate currency known as Merits, which can be used to buy food, goods, virtual accessories for theirDoppele, and to skip advertising that frequently interrupts everyday activities. Overweight people are considered second-class citizens, and either work as cleaners around the bikes (where they are verbally abused) or are humiliated on game shows.
Bingham "Bing" Madsen has inherited 15,000,000 merits from his dead brother and has the luxury of skipping advertisements as often as he wants. He notices Abi Khan while exercising one day, and develops feelings for her. On another occasion, he overhears Abi singing in the toilet and encourages her to enter an X-Factor style game show called Hot Shots, where winners get to move into more lavish spaces and out of the slave-like world around them. Bing manages to persuade Abi and, feeling there is nothing "real" worth buying, purchases the ticket for her which costs him almost all of his merits. He accompanies a nervous Abi to the audition, where the latter is required to drink a beverage called Appliances" that is claimed to help settle her nerves.
Although Abi's rendition of "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is" impresses the three judges, Hope, Charity, and Wraith and the crowd, they state they have no more room for an "Above Average Singer" and Wraith offers her the chance to be an actress on his pornography show WraithBabes. After goading from the judges and crowd, Abi reluctantly agrees despite Bing protesting offstage.
Bing returns to his cell without Abi and very few merits and continues his daily routine listlessly. One day, while playing a game in his cell, an advert for a new episode of WraithBabes featuring Abi appears. Bing does not have enough merits to skip the ad, and he also is not allowed to look away as the automated systems wait for him to continue watching it while also making a high pitched beeping noise that gets progressively louder the longer he covers his eyes. Bing finally loses his temper when he finds he cannot leave his cell until the ad finishes and proceeds to bash one of the screens until the glass shatters. Bing eyes one of the larger pieces and the emptyAppliancee container Abi drank earlier and gets an idea; he hides the two items under his bed and spends the next several months aggressively earning merits on his bike, as well as being frugal with what he purchases in order to re-earn 15 million more merits and buy another Hot Shots ticket.
Prior to his audition, Bing hides the shard of glass in his pants and stands patiently in the waiting room every day without expression, until he is called in due to the judges wanting a contestant with different ethnicity. He also feigns to the stagehands that he already drank hisAppliancee by showing them the empty container and walks onto the stage.
Bing starts with a dance number that impresses the judges and crowd, but stops his performance suddenly and draws the shard of glass, threatening to kill himself live on the show if he does not get a chance to speak. Wraith encourages him to do it, but the other judges decide to hear him out. Bing begins to tearfully rant about unfair the system is and how heartless people have become, and express his hatred for how the judges took away, corrupted, and sold the only thing he thought was real. Instead of taking his words into consideration, all three judges praise Bing for his "performance" and Hope offers him his own show, where he can rant about the system all he wants.
Bing accepts the offer and, sometime later, he is shown finishing one of his rants via live stream while holding the shard of glass to his neck. He now lives in a penthouse-like cell that is much bigger than his original, and the episode ends as Bing pours himself a glass of orange juice and stands to start out of the side of his room onto a green forest stretching into the distance. The forest appears to be real and not on a screen, as a parallax effect can clearly be seen as the camera zooms out. (Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits)
Jamie is shown to have become homeless and is living on the street. He sees Waldo on a nearby monitor displaying what are assumed to be political ads on a global scale and angrily throws a bottle at the screen, which leads to him being assaulted by two police officers. (Black Mirror: The Waldo Moment)
Joe Potter and Matthew Trent work at a small, remote outpost in the middle of a snowy wilderness. Joe wakes up on Christmas Day and finds Matt preparing Christmas dinner, with "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" playing on the radio. Matt tries to get Joe to talk about why he accepted the job at the outpost, a topic they have never discussed in the five years they have worked together. Joe is reluctant to say anything and instead asks why Matt took the job. Happy with the conversation, Matt begins his own story.
The story is set in a world where people can access the Internet through an augmented reality device implanted in their eyes called the "Z-Eye". Matt was once a dating coach who taught seduction techniques to single men who struggle to attract women. He directs one of his clients, the shy and socially awkward Harry, into gatecrashing an office Christmas party, and communicates with him through the Z-Eye. They are then joined by a group call of other single men, voicing their opinions and suggestions. Using information Matt gathers from social media, Harry convinces the party guests that they know him, and he decides to try bonding with Jennifer, a quiet "attractive outsider" who does not join in group conversations. With Matt's help, Harry manages to start a conversation with Jennifer, who admits she used to take drugs to fit in at parties, but not anymore, and that she is thinking of leaving the company after Christmas. She's nervous about which voice to listen to, the ones saying "do it" or the other half telling her not to. Gaining confidence, Harry encourages her to be bold and go for it, to which she responds warmly. When she leaves to get a drink, Harry voices his doubts to the group about going through with the deceit. He argues with Matt out loud, and when Jennifer sees Harry seemingly arguing with himself she asks him back to her home.
Thinking he is about to have sex, Harry agrees to go with her. Once they enter the bedroom she offers him a strong drink, and as he tries to hold his liquor, she talks about how this drink will liberate them from the "voices" that watch them and try to get in their head. Harry and all the men watching gradually deduce that Jennifer has schizophrenia, has gone off of her medication and has just poisoned him. She mistakenly believes that Harry suffers from the same problem, and decides they will escape the voices together through suicide. A weakened Harry desperately struggles to explain about the Z-Eye and the watcher's club, but Jennifer assumes he is speaking metaphorically and forces a poisoned drink down his throat after drinking it herself. Matt's wife learns what he has been doing and becomes angry and fights with him. She then "blocks" him through the Z-Eye, meaning that they can no longer see or hear each other--audio is muffled and unintelligible, and where the person stands, there is only white static in the person's shape, similar to the appearance of a TV tuned to a dead channel. Matt's wife breaks up with him and takes custody of their daughter, and Matt reveals that the reason he took the job at the outpost was to get away from his old life, stating that he "didn't want to be surrounded by reminders". He reveals to Joe that coaching people into sexual encounters were merely his hobby, and goes on to explain what he did in his real job.
Greta is a wealthy and demanding woman. For example, while she waits in a clinic for an operation, she rejects the breakfast in bed that they serve her because the toast is browned slightly more than she considers acceptable. The anesthetist tells Greta to count backward from ten as she is sedated. As she counts, she appears to have an out-of-body experience and is shown to be a bean-sized chip that is placed in a portable electronic device. The device is returned to Greta's home, where her confused and terrified consciousness is greeted by Matt. He explains that she is not actually Greta, but a digital copy of her consciousness called a Cookie, designed to control the smart house and ensure everything is perfect for the real Greta so that she will never again face the dilemma of having something not quite to her liking or having to instruct others about her exact desires. Matt then creates a virtual body for the digital copy and puts her in a simulated white room with nothing in it but a control panel. The copy refuses to accept that it is not a real person and rejects being forced into being solely a slave to all of Greta's petty desires. Matt's job is to break the willpower of digital copies through torture, so they will submit to a life of servitude to their real counterparts. He accelerates the copy's perception of time so three weeks pass in a matter of seconds, and she is traumatized by her solitude in the room with nothing to do. Despite this, the copy still refuses to work, so Matt repeats the process and increases the time to six months. This drives her mad with emptiness, so when Matt reappears to her she immediately submits to her new role.
The next morning, the real Greta is awakened to her favorite music, and her copy, whose spirit is completely broken, prepares Greta's breakfast exactly as she knows Greta likes it and shows her a list of her upcoming appointments. In the present day, Joe is disgusted by Matt making a career from torturing into submission computer programs that were self-aware and conscious, even if they were merely artificial. Matt determines that Joe is an empathetic person, and asks again why he came to the outpost. Having loosened up with a drink, Joe says that his girlfriend's dad never liked him, and explains his situation.
Joe once had a long-term relationship with both, and while they were mostly happy, their main problem was Joe's tendency to act foolishly while drunk. One evening, while having dinner with their friends Tim and Gita, Joe notices Beth is withdrawn and seems to be in a bad mood. Later, while emptying the trash, Joe finds a positive pregnancy test and is overjoyed about becoming a father. Beth reveals she does not want the baby and is getting an abortion. Joe, who is still drunk, is heartbroken, and remembering she drank throughout dinner he calls her selfish and guilty of trying to kill their child. Too upset to talk, Beth blocks him through her Z-Eye, causing Joe to throw a vase across the room in anger before leaving the room. Beth leaves him the next morning without removing the block, preventing Joe from apologizing. He tries following her to work and meets Tim, who explains that she has left her job.
A few months later, Joe spots Beth's silhouette (she is still blocking him with the Z-Eye) and sees she is heavily pregnant, having not gone through with the abortion. He confronts her and begs for a chance to talk, but Beth instead has him arrested, and Joe is given a restraining order and is legally "blocked" from seeing her or the child, or any photos they appear in. He writes many letters of apology to Beth, but she never replies. Determined to see his child, Joe waits for Beth at her father Gordon's cottage, where she spends every Christmas. Hiding in the woods outside, he sees Beth with the baby, but because the block extends to a person's offspring, it appears as a static-filled silhouette as well. For the next four years, Joe goes to Gordon's cottage every Christmas to watch his child from the woods and leave anonymous presence on the doorstep, and despite the block, he eventually discerns the child is a girl.
One day while watching the news, Joe learns that Beth has died in a train crash. This causes the legal block to expire, so Joe can finally see his daughter. Heading to the cottage with a snow globe as a present, Joe spots the girl in the garden and cautiously approaches. However, the child has East Asian features, and Joe realizes Beth was cheating on him with Tim, which is why she wanted an abortion and refused to let Joe be part of her daughter's life. Devastated, Joe follows the girl into the cottage and confronts Gordon, who admits he destroyed the letters Joe wrote before Beth could read them. Losing his temper, Joe hits Gordon in the head with the snow globe, unintentionally killing him. He then flees the cottage and lives on the streets for a few months, until he is eventually apprehended by police.
Matt asks what happened to Beth's daughter, and although Joe initially claims he does not know, he remembers a police officer telling him she found her grandfather died in the kitchen and went outside into the heavy snow to get help, but froze to death next to a tree in the garden. Joe breaks down, admitting he was responsible for the deaths of two innocent people. Matt seems relieved that he has succeeded in getting a "confession" out of Joe, who cannot remember coming to the outpost or what he and Matt do there. Joe suddenly realizes the outpost's interior is a replica of Gordon's kitchen, and Matt disappears. "Joe" is actually a digital copy similar to Greta's, as the real Joe refused to confess to his role in the deaths, so the police brought in Matt to draw a confession from his copy. The outpost was a five-year-long simulated environment within a Cookie that lasted only 70 minutes in real time.
As the real Joe is charged with the deaths, Matt asks the police if he will be freed, having been arrested himself for his illegal seduction coaching, involvement in Harry's death and concealment of his role. Officer Holder reveals that he will be released, but he has been registered as a sex offender, which means he will be blocked by everyone. Matt leaves the police station and walks out into a Christmas market, seeing everyone as white static silhouettes, while they see him as a red silhouette. He will be unable to interact with anyone for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, Joe's digital copy is left on, and an officer increases the Cookie's rate of time perception to one thousand years per minute and sets "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" (which was playing on the radio when Joe killed Beth's father) on a continuous loop. When Joe's copy tries to destroy the radio, another one appears in its place, playing the song increasingly louder each time. Holder allows this, intending to switch the Cookie off after Christmas. The story ends with the song playing endlessly, and with the body of Beth's daughter visible from the cottage window as the Cookie of Joe loses his mind. (Black Mirror: White Christmas)
A Return to (Relative) Normalcy[]
2023 - 2028[]
TBA