All Black Mirror Episodes Ranked
One of the most exciting TV series in recent years, Black Mirror has questioned our digital world and the possible dystopian futures (or presents, maybe?) that we might experiment when technology goes terribly wrong. With a different storyline for each episode, and ranging from diverse genres and styles, each one of the stories presented is a different analysis of a hyperconnected society that every day is more and more immersed in life 2.0, and even 3,0. But of, course, not all 19 episodes are as good, so that's why we've decided to rank them from the most mediocres (probably there's not a single episode that could be called entirely a bad one) to the most glorious one. This article contains SPOILERS, so only give it a go if you've seen all the episodes. Let us know if you agree with this ranking:
19. Metalhead (Season 4, Episode 5)
The only great things about Metalhead are the beautiful B&W cinematography and the very well directed action sequences. But no matter how much aesthetic work was put on thus episode, nothing can save it from being the weakest Black Mirror story to date. There's no social or technological critic at all, just the premise of being chased by killer robot dogs and try to survive them, and then, by the end, when we reach the long waited plot twist that will tell us what all this is about, they came with the weakest possible explanation on why these people were willing to endanger their own lives.
18. Crocodile (Season 4, Episode 3)
By season 4, it was very clear that David Brooker and company where having a difficult time getting entirely new ideas, so some technological devices and plot structures were getting somehow repetitive. Crocodile's technology, a mind reader that collects memories and is used to solve crimes, reminds us a lot of similar devices used before in the series, most prominently, the recording device in The Entire History of You, which in turns also was the first episode to use a plot device now very common in Black Mirror: one person taking worse and worse decisions until the point of no return. The problem with Crocodile is that here the technology is secondary to the plot (not an integral part of it, thus it is only revealed on the second half of the story), and we're not entirely sure about the character construction (first she is the reasonable sensible one, but suddenly she is the one that lacks all kind of scruples.
17. Arkangel (Season 4, Episode 2)
Just like Crocodile, Arkangel is an unapologetic ripoff of The Entire History of You: a person so obsessed with an idea that, with access to technology, is able to prove (unjustifiably) their own fears, only to end up losing that person that they are so afraid of losing. But, unlike The Entire History, there's not a sense of subtleness here, everything is presented so in your face that you hate the main character from the very beginning, and you know exactly where this is going to end. The only reason that it ranks higher than the very similar Crocodile, is because this one technology could definitely be something that some parents would be willing to use on their offsprings. (Tracking location apps, anyone?).
16. The Waldo Moment
(Season 2, Episode 3)
On the bright side, it's the first episode to don't be entirely black and depressing, showing that humor can also have space in the Black Mirror universe. The problem with the Waldo Moment is that its more political than social, and with all the mess that 2016 left in the world politics, the antics of Waldo are nothing compared with the Twitter tantrums thrown by Donald Trump, and the blind bigotry that he is able to generate in his followers. It is a funny episode to watch, but one that we are very ready to forget as soon as it finishes.
15. Men Against Fire
(Season 3, Episode 5)
The strong part of Men Against Fire is the denounce that it makes on how bigotry and xenophobia don't mix well with technology. But besides of that, it feels like gratuitous war violence for a plot twist that you can see coming before it appears, and that lacks a real character development. Again, the technology presented here, the power to transform somebody else's appearance to us, is quite similar to something that has been presented before in White Christmas. Another one that, if not bad at all, is very forgetful.
14. Fifteen Million Merits
(Season 1, Episode 2)
While an interesting comment and critique on entertainment industry, where immediate gratification and celebrities (or more appropriate on these days, influencers) glorification are ruling our online interactions. The problem with Fifteen Million Merits is that it takes an extreme the attitudes we have nowadays, in a very implausible way (you never really believe for a second that this world could actually happen), rather than showing us where we can actually finish if we don't change our behaviors.
13. Black Museum
(Season 4, Episode 6)
After the success that was White Christmas as a compilation episode, Black Museum tackles the same formula, but not as well. The best part of these episode is the self reflection it makes on voyeurism and our need to watch dark twisted histories to satisfy a morbid side of ourselves (yeah, after 19 episodes of exactly that), also it gets kudos for all the easter eggs referencing past episodes. But its main fault lies in the very basic character construction, where the evil guy is a maniac just for the sake of it. A more serious approach to this trilogy of stories would have benefited them widely.
12. Playtest
(Season 3, Episode 2)
Playtest is extremely successful as an individual horror story. The plot of a guy who faces his worst personal nightmares in a virtual reality videogame manages to creep on us and to use a very effective narrative when even small details that seemed non relevant come to play later in the various plot twists. It is less successful, though, in the general context of the series and as a social commentary on anything.
11. Nosedive
(Season 3, Episode 1)
From all the episodes, this one might be the one that hits closer to a dystopian world that could be a reality due to our need of social validation through social media, and even more now that China is introducing a very similar system to rate their citizens. A delightful Bryce Dallas Howard as the lead actress and a beautiful production design in pastel tones are also big kudos for it. On the other hand, if the premise and the first half are near perfect, once the character embarks on her adventure towards her best friend's wedding, the comedy anecdotes turn more into the naïve side and the actual nosedive of the character seems more like a teen comedy rather than the potential darkest side of human beings that the best episodes of the series actually achieve.
10. Shut up and dance
(Season 3, Episode 3)
The story of a teenager doing cruel errands through the city just to avoid a sex tape of him leaking to the Internet is emotionally moving and shocking when the plot twist (we've been commiserating a pedophile the entire time) is revealed. The main character plummet (unlike in Nosedive) really shows the extremes an individual can go to wreck its own existence when he believes that there's nothing else to be lost. The only deducted points is that its structure and plot twist are almost identical to the ones in White Bear.
9. USS Callister
(Season 4, Episode 1)
Not only is a great homage to Star Trek, it is also a strong critique to the white male vision in fanfic and sci-fi fanaticism. The way it first establishes the futuristic interplanetary narrative, and then swifts to a cold aesthetic to represent the real world is smart and effective. It is a smart crossed narrative with a good dose of black humor, and above all, a strong analysis of toxic masculinity and entitlement through a genre-bending story.
8. White Christmas
(Season 2, Episode 4)
If you are the kind of person that can't stand Christmas watching Love Actually, The Holiday or even The Grinch, this will definitely become your new Christmas film. All three stories are full of interesting social and technologic analysis, revealing how terribly wrong we can go; above all of them, the creepy live version of a "blocking" function is definitely one of the most shocking devices envisioned by the whole series. The two only details here are first, that we can certainly have wished a single episode for a few of these mini stories, because there's so much left unexplored; and second, the fact that the mini plot twists in the individual stories are way more powerful than the final twist that brings everything together.
7. Hang the DJ
(Season 4, Episode 4)
It speaks volumes about the quality of Season 4 when its best episode only managed to rank at number 7. Hang the DJ also shows that less dense and obscure content doesn't means less provocative. Analyzing online dating culture, this episode is successful not only because the ending leave us with a big smile, but also because it leave us with a thousand questions on our mind about what this could mean for the way we're dealing with human relationships.
6. Be Right Back
(Season 2, Episode 1)
From here on, we have reached the truly amazing episodes, the ones that have both a mix of fantastic storytelling and social study on the relationship between humans and technology. Be Right Back, the story of a woman who gets her death boyfriend back to life through a robot programmed with all the information he had online, is one of the most human moments of the series, it tackles grief, obsession and love in a mature and emotional way, and tries to answer a philosophical issue that has been haunting humanity since the beginning of time: What if we can make people live forever? It only ranks sixth because the first part is not as gripping, and it could have very well started right after the death of the husband.
5. Hated in the Nation
(Season 3, Episode 6)
This episode runs for an hour and a half, the longest of them all, and we really wonder why it wasn't made a feature film, instead. Two female cops investigate the mysterious murder of a very hated journalist after an article she wrote sparked the country's hate in social media. Like the best works of David Fincher (and a very similar aesthetic to his own), Hated in the Nation is a thriller that digs deep inside the worst parts of the human mind to reveal a rotten society. Twist after twist, the story has us glued to the screen, and when it finishes it leave us wondering if we wouldn't have been part of the deathly game proposed by the episode (yes, at least once during the episode, it crossed my mind tweeting #DeathTo Donald Trump).
4. The National Anthem
(Season 1, Episode 1)
The first episode of the series might also very well be the hardest one to watch, as if it was a cruel pledging to join a secret society that only accepts the strong ones that can get past this test. A plot that could have very well belong to a comedy sketch (the Prime Minister of the UK needs to fuck a pig on live TV to save a princess), but treated with such seriousness and dexterity, that it evolves into a dark tragedy with a meta comment on the voyeurist society that transforms human misery into mass spectacle.
3. White Bear
(Season 2, Episode 2)
In the same vein of The National Anthem, White Bear also explores the voyeuristic nature of the digital society while also playing with the notions of good and bad (Is it OK to make suffer a person just to make her pay for her sins?), and taking us by surprise with a final plot twist that nobody saw coming. White Bear was the first time that Black Mirror went straight for full horror, and they totally aced it. We shiver with the persecution that happens there, but the main moral ideas keep haunting us for a good time after we finished watching.
2. The Entire History of You
(Season 1, Episode 3)
The power of this story relies in taking a scenario that is familiar to anybody who haven't received a text back from the person we love, and extrapolate it at how it would be if we had cutting-edge technology at our fingertips. In a time where everything we see gets recorded for further reference, a guy gets obsessed with the idea that his wife is cheating on him, so he goes analyzing every little detail of present and past interactions just to prove his theory. The descent to hell of the main character is so subtle and well traced, that it make us part of his frantic search for "truth", and this only gets scarier when we realize that some devices similars to the one depicted here are already in the market.
1. San Junipero
(Season 3, Episode 4)
San Junipero is, at the same time, the quintessential Black Mirror and also the most different episode to the rest of them. It does bring deep analysis of how technology can shape the future (for better and for worse) on a storytelling full of surprising plot twists that keep us glued to the screen. But at the same time, it was for the first time an uplifting episode, one that show us that beyond all the moral questions, there is actually some space for technology to bring something better to our lives; the storyline that (long story short) follows two women falling in love in a virtual world that allows people to live happily back in their youth when they are old and sick (and even after they die), give us another side of the coin to the philosophical question that they already explored in Be Right Back (but with a totally opposite approach) on what would happen if technology could offer us eternal life. Not only is deep and emotionally moving, it also has the most unique and memorable aesthetics of all the Black Mirror episodes: soft pastel colors with neon lights, an adventurous editing, and an 80s soundtrack that can beat any mixtape compilation ever made. San Junipero is a sci-fi romance that sits very well among Her and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as the best of the genre.
Comments