A fan-favourite Black Mirror episode is getting a sequel
Season 7 of the anthology series will arrive on Netflix in 2025
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Your support makes all the difference.The next season of Black Mirror will include a sequel to fan-favourite episode “USS Callister”.
Charlie Brooker’s satirical anthology series is set to return to Netflix with a seventh season in 2025.
At the Next on Netflix event in London on Thursday (14 March), the streaming giant teased the upcoming sequel, saying: “Robert Daly is dead, but for the crew of the USS Callister, their problems are just beginning.”
The original episode, which debuted along with the rest of the fourth season on 29 December 2017, has a 95 per cent fresh rating on reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, placing it fourth among all Black Mirror episodes.
It starred Jesse Plemons as Robert Daly, a programmer who co-founded a massively multiplayer online game. He simulates a Star Trek-inspired interstellar adventure, using his co-workers’ DNA to create digital clones of them.
The rest of the crew includes Cristin Milioti as Nanette Cole, Jimmi Simpson as Walton and Michaela Coel as Shania. Billy Magnussen plays Valdack.
It has not yet been confirmed how many of the original cast will be returning.
When “USS Callister” first aired, The Independent’s Jacob Stolworthy wrote that the “space romp is worthy of a spinoff if future ideas dry up”.
“‘USS Callister’ may parade as big-scale - it’s certainly the most cinematic episode to date - but, fortunately for fans, it remains a not-too-unfamiliar cautionary tale focused on a technology chillingly in unhinged hands,” he continued.
“The switch-up of genres provides heaps of fun - the scenes which see the simulated versions of Daley’s colleagues switch into character with their captain’s arrival are a demented delight. The ensemble throw themselves into the material, with notable highlights Jimmi Simpson (Westworld) and Michaela Coel (Chewing Gum) standing out as just two of the crew trying to convince Milotti’s new addition to play ball.”
He added that: “Brooker’s succinct world-building inadvertently [earmarks] a story worthy of future exploration”.
In 2018, it was rumoured the episode could get its own TV spinoff series.
Director Toby Haynes told The Hollywood Reporter: “[It] is probably one of the best pilots for a space show ever.”
He added: “I was talking with Louise Sutton, who produced this and ”Metalhead,“ and she cooked up a brilliant idea of spinning it off into a TV series. I’m keen to see it as a TV series. I think Charlie might revisit it as a Black Mirror. Whether I’m the one to do it, I don’t know.”
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