Netflix has posted a trailer for Black Mirror season 6, so set a reminder on the smartphone app that’s secretly harvesting your personal data and selling it to an evil corporation: the Twilight Zone-style anthology series will once again attempt to scare us with the dark side of technology in June.
To which I say… good luck? We’re already pretty scared.
Look, I’ve enjoyed a lot of Black Mirror episodes since the series began airing in 2011, but a lot has changed since then. Frankly, a lot has changed since season 5 came out in 2019. These days, the idea of a bunch of satirical stories warning us about the horrors of technology just feels a bit… quaint. We’re already experiencing plenty of fear when it comes to new tech, especially with the recent and sudden advancements in AI which is already threatening to replace humans at their jobs and making us doubt every image, video, and soundbyte we see on the internet.
Not to mention the heartbreak caused when sexy AI chatbots abruptly get lobotomized. The tech-fuelled dystopia? We’re already soaking in it!
That said, I’m still definitely gonna watch the new Black Mirror. The series has produced plenty of good techno-yarns during its run, showing the perils of devices that record every moment of your life, the complexities of having VR sex with your gamer buddies, and the nightmarish thought of John Hamm digitally imprisoning you in a toaster for eternity. The series has made a few solid predictions over the years, like militarized robotic dogs, dead family members being replicated with AI, and of course a prime minister sticking his dick in a pig—though at least on the show, he did it unwillingly.
Season 6, says creator Charlie Brooker, will feature “some crazy swings and more variety than ever before.” And the cast sounds like a good one, featuring actors like Aaron Paul, Kate Mara, Salma Hayek, Michael Cera, Rob Delaney, and Zazie Beetz.
As for the specific types of technology that are set to ruin people’s lives in season 6, that’s a little harder to glean from the trailer. Aaron Paul appears to be on a space station, Zazie Beetz is looking at a laptop, and we also see a text message, a smartwatch, an old-timey dialup modem, and some sort of futuristic glowing computer server, but none of that gives an indication why, for example, a woman repeatedly smashes another woman’s face into a display counter at a shoe store.
We’ll only have to wait a month or so until we find out. Season 6 of Black Mirror will air on Netflix in June, though a specific day for you to binge all the episodes at once hasn’t been announced yet.