After a four-year hiatus, Black Mirror is finally getting ready to release its sixth season. And like true Black Mirror style, the show released its teaser with a promise of "five new nightmares, revelations, hallucinations, rabbit holes, and mindf*cks."
But if there's that the official trailer revealed that piqued our curiosity it would be this: Black Mirror: what is Red Mirror?
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As Netflix prepares to release the episodes of Black Mirror Season 6, we can't help but wonder what Red Mirror is. Here's what we know so far.
Where to Find Red Mirror?
We first learned of Red Mirror's existence in the official trailer of Black Mirror Season 6. After showcasing the four episodes, we see the words: "and RED MIRROR presents" on our screens just before the last episode is teased.
This makes us wonder if Black Mirror will deviate from its usual theme in the last episode entitled Demon 79. As its episode title explains, it's possible that Demon 79 could be a more sinister episode that may even fall under the horror genre.
One other clue we have that this could be possible is the fact that the four other episodes are set in either the present or the dystopian future, which is similar with the other seasons of the show.
Meanwhile, Demon 79 is set in 1979 and the characters in the episode embody the fashion and hair from that era.
What Is Demon 79?
The episode stars Anjana Vasan as a shy yet murderous store clerk who has conversations with a character clad in a furry disco ensemble portrayed by Paapa Essiedu.
It's important to note that Demon 79 doesn't have any technology references in the trailer. The official episode synopsis reads:
"A meek sales assistant is told she must commit terrible acts to prevent disaster."
Who is controlling her and telling her to do these things? We'll have to wait until the episode gets released.
What Is Red Mirror?
So what is Red Mirror? Right now, we don't know for sure. Series creator, Charlie Brooker, has remained tight-lipped when asked about this.
One report believes Red Mirror could be a fake movie production. Another report believes it coild be a series of episodes that take place in the past.
There is also reason to believe that this is a move indicating that Black Mirror is opening its doors to horror. Ever since it was created, Black Mirror has always been a sci-fi anthology TV show.
In an interview with Tudum, Brooker shared:
"I've always felt that 'Black Mirror' should feature stories that are entirely distinct from one another, and keep surprising people — and myself — or else what's the point?"
He also shared that a show "should be a series that can't be easily defined, and can keep reinventing itself."
Brooker was also quoted to have said this about Black Mirror season 6:
"[There are] a few new elements, including some I've previously sworn blind the show would never do, to stretch the parameters of what 'a Black Mirror episode' even is."
For now, we'll have to wait until the episode gets released. All five episodes will be released on Thursday, June 15, 2023.
In an interview with Vanity Fair on June 19, 2023, Brooker finally explained what Red Mirror is:
I started this season with a Red Mirror story, Demon 79, which was set in the past. The idea [with the Red Mirror label] was to do an alternative horror companion to Black Mirror. But Demon 79 links back to regular Black Mirror episodes near the end. That made me think, yeah, I can do episodes [set] in the past, so why am I locking myself into setting things in a future with lots of chrome and glass and holograms? For the Beyond the Sea episode, I’ll set it in 1969. What would that look like? And incidentally, that’s quite exciting, because it feels like a sort of lost science fiction story of the 60s. And it means that the characters within it are behaving like people of their era, not of our era. Is there a term for that? Retrofuturistic? Psychedelic steampunk?
And then Mazey Day is set in the early noughties. That one, I flip flopped between making it a Red Mirror and a Black Mirror. And then I thought, F--k it, it is Black Mirror—because otherwise we were blowing the slightly outrageous twist that happens there. But again, I was just trying to experiment a bit with what Black Mirror was. I don’t want to sit here feeling like I’m in a box where I have to write an episode about NFTs or whatever’s on the tech pages today. That’s not what the show was ever intended to do. If you look at our first episode, you can tell it was obviously designed to be startling and surprising and weird. So I was trying to sort of reconnect a bit to that.
So... that's that.
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