Are you ready to get creeped out by technology again? Because, in case you haven’t seen or heard, Black Mirror recently dropped its season 5 trailer. Aside from the stellar cast (Miley Cyrus! Anthony Mackie! Pom Klementieff!), the snippets also generated buzz as always.
I mean, with four seasons and a movie under its belt, what else do they have in store for the next season? Especially now that it will only have three episodes (instead of the rumored 12—dang it.). But that’s the beauty of Black Mirror: you never know what to expect. I mean, did you expect that pig scene in the pilot episode? Yeah, exactly.
While we’re waiting for S5 to premiere on June 5th, we have a few theories of our own based on the trailer and the Easter eggs in it. Feel free to also tweet us yours @preenph.
An Alexa-like robot gone wrong
You may have noticed the small white robot with pink hair that talks like Alexa. (It also looks like a Jibo.) But instead of it interacting only when it’s needed, it actually converses with the young woman. It’s adorable and gives words of encouragement, but towards the end of the trailer, you’ll see it with glowing red lights at the back of its head. There’s also someone saying, “It’s not a doll. That thing was poison.”
So… Is this Alexa-like robot trying to control its owner’s minds? Is this another Black Mirror commentary on our reliance to home AI? It’s quite apparent considering the young woman seems like a loner in school too.
Miley Cyrus is an avatar
Okay, hear us out: Miley Cyrus’ role here is reminiscent of Hannah Montana and Ronnie in The Last Song. The line before she gets on stage was “You’ve got 20,000 fans out there. Knock ’em dead.” The voice kinda sounds like the Alexa robot, so this makes us believe that Miley is merely an avatar who is popular, confident, and talented—completely different from the young woman.
Also, Miley wore a pink wig similar to the robot’s. That’s got to be a telling sign, right? Plus, it’s not impossible to have life-like avatars in Black Mirror. (Watch “San Junipero” if you haven’t.)
Anthony Mackie’s failing marriage
It’s not a Black Mirror episode without a marriage falling apart. Anthony Mackie’s character is a husband who’s checking another woman’s photo, while his wife is saying their family life is “boring.” You just know this episode is going to be an emotional mess.
Our guess is this is going to be another avatar episode because there’s a scene where Anthony wearing a device attached to his temples. So he’s probably cheating with an avatar version of the woman in a simulator or something like that.
What the heck is Smithereen?
If you blinked, you might have missed a shot of a phone with an app named “Smithereen” on it. It isn’t clear what it is, only that it was categorized as “For Emergency Use Only,” and has a login page for a person named “Chris” (who, we’re guessing, is played by Andrew Scott). But fans already predicted the appearance of Smithereen in S5 thanks to Bandersnatch.
In the Pearl Ritman ending, the broadcast crawler had a headline that read: “Committee Grills Smithereen CEO Billy Bauer Over Russian Bots.” Shortly after that, the Kent County Council tweeted last year, “The #BlackMirror Season 5 episode Smithereens was filmed in Harrietsham in Maidstone and production also filmed on Church Road and a [sic] filed in Gravesand.” The post has since been deleted, but screenshots don’t lie.
Based on the clues we have about “Smithereens” (if that is the real episode name), we’re guessing it’s about Russia’s alleged involvement in the recent US presidential elections where Donald Trump won. Media coverage on this isn’t just limited to the results, it also reported on how the Russian government used Facebook to sway the elections.
Basically, Russian president Vladimir Putin and his people were working hard.
Technology phobia
Still hinging on “Smithereens,” Andrew Scott appears to be terrified of phones—or perhaps just paranoid with the sound of people texting. He did appear to kidnap someone and was stopped by police. It later flashed the phone we mentioned above where the Smithereen app was installed.
What is he going to do with this app? Perhaps it’s meant to kill cellphone signals or worse, blow up everyone’s phones. We will also understand his paranoia if this has the same plot as “Shut Up and Dance,” which is about a mysterious group spying on people through laptop webcams.
That fight game scene at the end
We honestly still don’t know where this scene fits into the three episodes. It’s most likely a VR/AR scene which looks like every gaming YouTuber’s content. But we do agree that Pom Klementieff looks awesome as a Tekken character lookalike.
Photos courtesy of Netflix
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