The Best Black Mirror Episode Getting Follow-Up?
Black Mirror has plenty of high-quality episodes that fans would love to see revisited, though the tightly-knit stories are often perfectly concluded by the time the credits roll on the sci-fi masterpiece.
Of course, one episode that ends on an open-ended note could serve as the perfect launching point for a sequel, at least, according to series star Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
Black Mirror’s San Junipero
The episode in question is season 3’s “San Junipero” featuring a virtual world where elderly people can experience living in an idyllic beach resort as their younger selves, even after they die.
Fans will surely recall the landmark Black Mirror episode as the one where Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Mackenzie Davis portray young versions of a pair of elderly women who meet and fall in love within the hyper-realistic simulation, ultimately choosing to remain in the program together forever, long after death.
Avatars Live On Forever
Though the real-life women have since passed away within the plot of the larger Black Mirror universe, their avatars are poised to live on forever within the world of San Junipero, so long as the servers remain active.
This means that the characters could pack up and head to other locations within the digital world, or perhaps even visit other time periods.
Endless Possibilities?
While speaking to People Magazine about her idea for a potential sequel, Gugu Mbatha-Raw claims that there are endless possibilities for possible continuations.
Those could include placing the characters in a different time period and watching how they react to the external stimuli of historical events.
Series creator Charlie Brooker even agreed, expressing that he had some ideas for the original Black Mirror episode which had to be left on the cutting room floor.
The Only Happy Ending?
One such idea was set in a kindergarten, wherein all of the young children running around the area are younger versions of now-deceased users, providing a chilling and somber punch to the episode’s unusually upbeat tone.
While most Black Mirror episodes are as positive and hopeful as a botched root canal, “San Junipero” stands out as one of the few outings with a happy ending and focusses on technology being used near-unilaterally for good.
Black Mirror Could Make It Unhappy
Of course, a sequel episode also runs the risk of upending this happy conclusion, as another look into the lives of the digital couple could reveal cracks in their happy facade.
Their happily-ever-after conclusion seemed to wrap up nicely in the initial Black Mirror outing, but the relationship could prove to be straining 200 years into a never-ending future together.
While this would no doubt be interesting territory for the show to explore, it could retroactively ruin the award-winning episode for many viewers.
Will Netflix Agree?
An alternative option to this sequel idea could see Brooker returning to the fictional technology utilized in “San Junipero,” but with all new characters we haven’t yet encountered.
The possibilities for the sci-fi concept are truly endless, and could even serve as a basis for an entire spin-off series if the writer so chose.
Netflix would surely agree to a Black Mirror spin-off, as the series remains one of the most beloved and critically praised outings on the platform.
Source: People
