Read our recaps of the entire third seasonhere.
CHARLIE BROOKER: Yes, that was exactly the starting point.
I wanted to do a video game episode and a haunted house story.
Credit: Laurie Sparham/Netflix
Its like good fun.
I love that you were ahead of us at every turn.
Its great to hear you say that.
It becomes a weird meta story.
That came form Dan.
The ending also has a double twist.
When I read the first treatment, there was the first twist but not the second.
The second came from conversations with Dan.
We were like, Hold on, what if we add in another thing?
What if we add a phone call at the end?
And I thought: Right, thats what Im going to do.
Theres no real ethical or social lesson in this one, except perhaps dont forget to call your mother.
Its just a nice person that has horrible stuff happen to them and then they die horribly.
In my head its like a classicTwilight Zonepunch line ending, like To Serve Man.
So hopefully people see the humor in that.
That also means you did it right.
Yes, when we did it we were thinking that ending was too jokey.
But when we saw the first cut, you really feel for him and its so harrowing and horrifying.
This could, in theory, happen right now.
Yeah, that was a very conscious thing.
Lets do one that absolutely could happen.
The National Anthem and The Waldo Moment didnt have any sci-fi moments either.
Its good to touch base with the real world now and then.
How does the twist that the protagonist was looking at child porn change the storys impact?
Should we feel better?
Its ambiguous, isnt it?
Your empathy for him drains away.
You look at him fresh.
And its not to condone what the hackers have done.
Theyve been toying with people like a cat toys with its prey.
But it puts a new spin on the logic of what theyre doing.
It complicates things more than a little.
This story went through different iterations and it didnt always have that twist in it.
There was a version where it was all happening for no reason.
And it just came out like, What if we do this?
Because you might watch going, But why are you going along with all of this?
Yes, and thats what happens in military conditioning.
Most people dont actually want to shoot people.
It takes a lot to override that instinct.
In a way its the chilling military utility of that.
It turns the enemy into The Other, a bogeyman, a monster.
The stuff Michael Kelly is saying, how few soldiers want to pull the trigger, is true.
Whereas if you have to slide a bayonet into somebodys ribs that stays with you forever.
What was with the freaky clone foursome sex dream?
Theres quite a lot thats ambiguous in this episode.
The soldiers get rewarded for kills with more explicit dreams.
She says to him, Youre lucky, you killed two, did you get a good nights sleep?
It was something I observed, and its easy to caught up in yourself.
There are times Ive joined in the pile-on, its thrilling in some way.
Thats where that stemmed from.
I thought the brain had no pain receptors.
I suspect there is.
I tend not to research things like that in case I find out its not possible!
Thats what I would call a movie moment.
Whether true or not, I dont know.
You mean you just thought, good riddance?!
I wasnt as upset by it as I think I was supposed to be.
Oh, I see.
That tells us you are an inordinately unempathetic individual.
I feel huge empathy for people being bullied, just much less for those whoarebullies.
I suppose they brought it on themselves, but not in a way they could have reasonably foreseen.
So its an unreasonable punishment.
But I dont know that thats necessarily true.
In the story it works well, its like a cross betweenPleasantvilleandThe Truman Show.
Its a falsely bland world that theyre putting together and projecting this optimism and friendliness.
And in that story, hes bland.
Or somebody whos just constantly angry.
So it probably doesnt reflect the real world in that respect.
Presumably Bryce Dallas Howards character and her new friend are social pariahs though now, right?
But she is free!
There she is in jail, but shes finally free.
Again, this is one with some hope.
We throw you off a bit there.
He wanted it to be comedic, darkly darkly is always a description of anyBlack Mirrorepisode.
The fun part for us was just getting engaged with his brain.
Neither of us had ever done anything like this before.
RASHIDA JONES:Thats the resonance ofBlack Mirrorin general, it pushes you into the near future.
SCHUR:I dont even think of it as near future so much as a parallel reality.
Its not based on a rating system, but its based other ways of society stratifying.
Everything is what happens now its just that the gadget is different.
Now it feels like theres less of a choice.
You have to have some relationship with social media.
In this story, you dont have a choice, its a compulsion as opposed to an option.
I know Hannah John-Kamen, whos in Playtest, is in the movie version ofReady Player One.
Somebody mentioned it to me after [we shot the episode], and I looked very worried.
Oh no, dont be.
The episode is quite original, those are just the a couple loose references that came to mind.
It had stemmed from thinking how to do a period episode.
Also Ive been reading aboutnostalgia therapyfor old people.
So it was those two together.
One was a thought experiment and the other was stuff Id been reading about.
and Ill be very vague.
I havent looked into when that technology might be available.
I daresay it will be sooner than we think.
You could have done this same story with any kind of couple.
What made two women the best choice?
It was a heterosexual couple when I first put the story down.
And then I thought, Well, what if it wasnt?
I never thought of that!
The idea is theres almost different channels for decades you might select to enter in the same environment.
So going to another place would be like inGrand Theft Autogoing from Los Santos inGTA Vto San Andreas.
But I dare say there would be a nostalgic version of Britain and Spain and New York.
I know you were debating last time we spoke over what order to arrange the episodes on Netflix.
I was thinking this episode is the best to end on.
Dont think I havent agonized over the order.
Im convinced we have it wrong at the moment, but its too late to change it.
But theres a logistical reason Hated in the Nation is last and thats because its 90 minutes.
Netflixs research shows that you should put your longest episode last, ideally.
I actually watched this episode twice and liked it more the second time.
I watched the credits sequence maybe four times.
While I wouldnt call this the bestBlack Mirrorepisode, I think this is the best ending youve ever done.
Can you talk about the credits?
The Belinda Carlislesong adds so much, not just to the ending but to everything youve seen before it.
I started writing the script and I put together a Spotify playlist of music from 1987.
And that basically gave me the ending scene.
It feels like an nice way of adding an extra coda.
Hopefully it leaves people with a smile on their face, which is an alien experience after watchingBlack Mirror.
