Watch the mind-bending first trailer for ‘Black Mirror’ season 6
The anthology series returns for its sixth season this June
By Kory Grow
Black Mirror — once a Twilight Zone–like series presenting a twisted, alternate reality — mostly resembles real life in the official teaser for Season Six. And like past seasons, pretty much everyone is stressed out and trying to make sense of the world. “What the fuck is this?” a character asks. “How the fuck is this?” The answers will materialise this June when the show returns to Netflix.
In more typical Black Mirror imagery, there are, of course, spaceships, the sounds of landline modems connecting, and moments of extreme violence — such as a shop clerk smashing a customer’s head through a glass display and somebody’s house going up in flames. There’s also a shot of an eerie mannequin and Rob Delaney saying, “Yowzah,” so maybe the Black Mirror world is still just as otherworldly as it’s always been.
“You’ve been wondering. You’ve been waiting. You’ve been warned,” the trailer promises.
“Partly as a challenge, and partly to keep things fresh for both me and the viewer, I began this season by deliberately upending some of my own core assumptions about what to expect,” showrunner Charlie Booker told Tudum of the upcoming season. “Consequently, this time, alongside some of the more familiar Black Mirror tropes we’ve also got 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. The stories are all still tonally Black Mirror through-and-through — but with some crazy swings and more variety than ever before.”
Since the series is an anthology with a different cast for each episode, the billed actors for the season are quite impressive. Aaron Paul, Annie Murphy, Josh Hartnett, Kate Mara, Michael Cera, Rory Culkin, Salma Hayek Pinault, and Zazie Beetz, among many others, are all slated to appear.