Charlie Brooker

The beloved “San Junipero” outing of Black Mirror is one of the few granted a happy ending, though not for lack of some heavy subject matter. One scene in particular might have dragged down the entire episode, as creator Charlie Brooker describes cut footage that would “just be too sad.”

The third season of Charlie Brooker’s mind-bending dystopian series Black Mirror arrived on Netflix last week. If you’ve binged all six episodes and your mental health is still intact, first of all, congratulations! You must be an emotionally bulletproof person (but maybe go watch something light and comedic to cool down). But most importantly, did you catch all the easter eggs?

The brilliance of Black Mirror is how it feels relatable to our present, yet just far enough into the future. Creator Charlie Brooker described that distance best when he said the dark satire is about “the way we might be living in 10 minutes’ time if we’re clumsy.” There’s an emphasis is on the “we” in Black Mirror, a show that isn’t about the evils of technology, but the ways it can fuel the vile and detestable parts of human behavior to harrowing degrees.