'Black Mirror' Season 5 Is Coming Much Sooner Than Fans Realize
Fans of Black Mirror have been impatiently waiting until the end of the year for the release of the new season. Since the show moved from Channel 4 to a full in-house Netflix production, the premiere date has firmed up as one of the last releases of the year, with the previous year's Season 4 arriving on Dec. 29, 2017. So when a tweet announced an end of the year date for the Black Mirror Season 5 premiere date, fans were thrilled. Until the tweet was deleted, that is. Turns out someone wasn't supposed to leak this information yet, or perhaps it was wrong. Elite Daily reached out to Netflix for more info but they declined to comment.
The now-deleted tweet was a list of Netflix's coming new and notable releases for December, and read as follows:
- Shaun of the Dead (12/1)
- Neo Yokio: Pink Christmas (12/1)
- Hellboy (12/1)
- District 9 (12/4)
- Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (12/7)
- The Protector (12/14)
- Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 8 (12/14)
- The Fast and the Furious (12/16)
- Bird Box (12/21)
- Watership Down (Limited Series) (12/25)
- Avengers: Infinity War (12/25)
- Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (12/28)
Here's the thing about this list. All the other series listed above have had releases announced already, and those dates all match the list above. Netflix's press release for What's Coming to Netflix in December confirms every date on this list, save one: Black Mirror's.
This suggests the list is actually correct. If so, it was probably an internal memo not to be released to the public yet, and some poor social media person (who is hopefully not being fired right before the holidays) didn't know it wasn't supposed to go out yet.
If so, this also means the season's subtitle, "Bandersnatch," is also correct. That's very interesting because a superfan sleuth who stumbled upon the show filming Season 5 said this was the name of one of the episodes, the one centered around Christmas:
As for what "Bandersnatch" means, it's apparently an '80s reference to a UK game sold at a store like WHSmith back in the day.
Is the entire season a single story? This might sound odd for fans, since it is not the way Black Mirror usually works. But in the case of Season 5, it might actually make sense.
The big rumor about Black Mirror Season 5 is it is supposedly "interactive." According to sources, there's an episode where fans can choose which decisions the characters make, and the ending to the episode changes based on these decisions. But what if the rumor has it slightly wrong, and it's not one installment that is interactive, but the entire season is? If so, making the season one story with multiple middles and endings depending on viewers' choices would make way more sense than doing three stories, one of which has several different conclusions and two which are standard.
But with Netflix keeping mum for now over the Dec. 28 release date, fans can now only sit, wait, and hope the show really is arriving before 2019 rolls in.
