Hannah's Web log
Black Mirror's Meta Evolution (season 6)
5 Jan, 2025 | 5 minute read
Season 6 of Black Mirror isn't just meta – it's a Russian doll of reality, where characters watch themselves through layers of fiction. And maybe that's exactly where we are too.
"This is just like a Black Mirror episode!" has become the clichéd saying of our time.
It's clearer in season 6 than any previous season, that Black Mirror is a work of metafiction (fiction that draws attention to its fictional nature).
Spoilers for season 6 – I don't go into a lot of plot detail, but I do discuss twists and generally assume you've seen the show.
The opening episode, Joan is Awful, serves most of the conceptual meat for the metafiction theme.
The episode follows Joan (Annie Murphy), who discovers her life has been adapted into a streaming show on Streamberry (a Netflix parody), portrayed by Salma Hayek. As Joan watches her private moments broadcast to the world, the show spawns another adaptation starring Cate Blanchett as Hayek's version of Joan, creating a Russian doll effect of nested narratives.
Each version of Joan is increasingly stylized and removed from the "original". The casting choice of progressively more prestigious actresses (Murphy, Hayek, Blanchett) emphasizes how each layer of adaptation becomes more "premium" yet further removed from authenticity. It's implied that there is no limit to how many nested realities there are – I presume the Cate Blanchett version's adaptation would be played by Helen Mirren, then Meryl Streep. After that, I don't know where you go – maybe just throw Nicolas Cage in there?
Released before the AI-related Hollywood writers' strikes in 2023, the episode's references to generative AI in creative industries is prophetic. The way each iteration of Joan gets more and more "awful" evokes AI model collapse, a scenario where AI-generated content deteriorates when trained on other AI outputs. This recursive degradation mirrors the way each adaptation of "Joan" loses touch with the human source material.
But the inevitable twist in the story is not about the devastating effects of tech, which is usually where a Black Mirror episode takes us. Instead, it's about the nature of the story we just watched. The version of Joan we've been following (Murphy) is herself a dramatization, and we have been watching the "show within a show" the whole time.
This layered approach is reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino's two-tiered cinematic universe. Most of his movies are set in a shared universe, but a couple of the more outlandish ones are actually movies you might see in that universe. Tarantino explains, "There's the ‘realer than real' universe, and all the characters inhabit that one. Then there's this ‘movie' universe. When the characters of Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction go to the movies, Kill Bill or From Dusk Till Dawn is what they see." For most of the runtime of Joan is Awful, we think we're in the ‘realer than real' universe (where most fiction resides) but we're actually one layer removed – the newly minted "Streamberry universe".
The next episode, Loch Henry, features the production of a documentary that is also distributed on Streamberry. The episode itself is a chilling exploration of true crime – a genre that itself cruely blurs the line between fiction and reality. The reduction of lived experience into "content" is the main theme of the episode. It's got its own meta twist as well – it dares you to indulge in the excitement of the serial killer storyline just like a true crime junkie using real people's misery as entertainment.
Mazey Day is one of the weakest episodes of the entire series, but there are some interesting points to make about it, or at least the fact that it exists. Set in the 2000s, about a paparazzi blogger, it continues the theme of how a sensationalist media culture dehumanizes individuals … literally…. as the titular character turns into a werewolf. While many viewers didn't like it, the supernatural twist is not what "ruins" it – it's just not a very engaging episode.
Mazey Day actually bears a similarity to From Dusk Till Dawn, which starts out as a crime thriller then makes a hard and unexpected pivot into a gruesome horror flick full of vampires. Remember, that film is one of those "movies within movies." It also stars Salma Hayek, like this season of Black Mirror. Are these Tarantino connections deliberate?
The supernatural twist prepares the viewer for Demon 79. A great romp, with a great blend of thrills, social commentary and dark comedy, but instead of technology and media we're dealing with demons and curses. The episode begins with title cards, "Black Mirror presents a Red Mirror film." What's Red Mirror? It is to horror what Black Mirror is to sci-fi. But it's not a new spin-off. It's yet another show within the show. The title card and deliberately retro style reminds you that you're looking at something like an artefact. I only wish the title card had said "Streamberry presents…" to hammer the point. Charlie Brooker confirmed he could have classified Mazey Day as a Red Mirror episode too – but didn't as it would be a spoiler. So I count both episodes as show within show.
I broadly reject the popular theory that all episodes of Black Mirror are set in the same fictional universe. The theory comes down to the show's heavy tendency to insert Easter eggs referring to other episodes in places like news tickers on TV screens. But they're clearly just for fun. For example, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it headline on a screen reveals that the Prime Minister who was forced to have sex with a pig in series 1 is now running a zoo. Come on, that's a joke! These Easter eggs don't deepen the lore. If they do anything, it's remind you that this is all just a show and all of its characters and storylines are playthings.
I haven't mentioned Beyond the Sea, excellent as it is, because it's the only episode of the season that doesn't fit the metafiction theme. Set in an alternate 1960 where astronauts have access to technology that doesn't exist even in contemporary times, it is a good example of an episode that stands alone and cannot logically share a timeline with other episodes.
Black Mirror is different to a shared universe or a simple two-tiered system like Tarantino's. The stories aren't meant to be "true" even within their own world. A TV show that tells satirical stories about the media, is inherently self-referencial. Season 6 in particular, with its shows within shows, serves funhouse reflections of our entertainment consumption and our endless appetite for content at the expense of humanity. Even to make a glib observation about living in a Black Mirror episode, augments fiction into our reality, because what's "real", anyway? As Charlie Brooker says, "now if people ask me 'is Black Mirror a shared universe?' I'll say, 'yeah, of Streamberry shows.'"
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