Black Mirror: Bandersnatch – What the Heck Is Going On?

It's been nearly a full year since the last batch of Black Mirror episodes — season 4 released December 29, 2017 — and Netflix lent some official confirmation Thursday to the rumours that have been floating around the interwebs about a new upcoming episode. If you look up “Black Mirror” on Netflix, you will find a title named “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” alongside the other seasons. It displays the loading logo associated with the series, but one lucky — and fairly dedicated — Twitter user spotted a preview thumbnail before it was seemingly pulled down by Netflix.

If you haven't been closely following every titbit of Black Mirror news, here's what we have in all:

April
Leaked set photos posted on social media revealed that Black Mirror was reportedly filming a new episode possibly titled “Bandersnatch” in Croydon, England. Much of the town's centre had been converted into the 1980s, and people figured out that the exact year was 1984 by looking at music charts visible in the set photos.

October
Bloomberg claimed it had learnt from its sources that Netflix was developing choose-your-own-adventure stories for adults, which would include an upcoming episode of Black Mirror. It had no further details, though. Could that be Bandersnatch? Who knows.

November
One of the several Netflix Twitter accounts mistakenly posted an image detailing the sci-fi and fantasy release highlights of December. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was listed with the release date of December 28. Netflix pulled down the tweet swiftly but not before many had already saved it or screen-grabbed it.

That brings us to now, with Netflix featuring Black Mirror: Bandersnatch on its catalogue. It's being termed as a ‘Netflix film' which some have taken as an indication that it will be feature-length. For what it's worth, Black Mirror episodes have always been submitted as “TV movies” at the Emmys — where Black Mirror has won two consecutive awards, for season 3's “San Junipero” and season 4's “USS Callister” — and it's possible that Netflix is merely adopting that wording for the new episode.

The new listing for Bandersnatch also briefly carried a run time of 5 hours and 12 minutes, which was spotted by news site NewonNetflix.info. It has since been edited and now reads 2 minutes, which is a more appropriate length for a trailer.

Ever since the April leak, Black Mirror fans have been trying to figure out what Bandersnatch refers to. It's the name of a fictional creature in Lewis Carroll's 1872 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and Bandersnatch was also the name of an abandoned video game being developed in the UK in the 1980s.

We'll just have to wait for December 28 to find out what Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is. Hopefully.