‘Black Mirror’ Season 5 Date and Episode Title Leak, Prompting Fan Theories
The wait for new “Black Mirror” is almost over, maybe. As reported by Entertainment Weekly, Netflix’s science-fiction Twitter account @NXonNetflix accidentally leaked the Season 5 premiere date and first episode title. If the tweet is to be believed, then “Black Mirror” returns December 28 with an episode called “Bandersnatch.” The tweet was deleted off Twitter but not before fans captured it via photo and sent it around the web.
Bloomberg reported in October that new episodes of “Black Mirror” would debut before the start of 2019, so the leaked release date is keeping in line with that original tip. Another sign pointing to the Season 5 December 28 premiere date is that Netflix did the same debut with “Black Mirror” Season 4, which premiered on the last Friday of 2017. Not much is known about the new episodes, but some fans have been skeptical of the show premiering in 2018 since episodes were still in production as of this spring. Netflix has yet to confirm the Season 5 premiere date.
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Now that the release date has leaked (and it should be noted the only leak was for an episode called “Bandersnatch,” so it remains to be see whether or not a full season will debut later this month or just the first episode), the fan theories are starting to rev up. The “Bandersnatch” is a fictional creature in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass” and his 1874 poem “The Hunting of the Snark,” but, as one eagle-eyed Twitter user uncovered, it was the name of a video game listed on the cover of a fictional magazine in the Season 3 episode “Playtest,” directed by Dan Trachtenberg and starring Wyatt Russell.
The “Bandersnatch” game, as it turns out, is real. The UK-based Imagine Software developed the project in 1984 but it was never released to the public, although details of the game are rumored to have led to the 1986 science-fiction video game “Brataccas.” Set photos from the episode leaked back in April and revealed a 1984 setting, the same year as the “Bandersnatch” development. What does all of this mean? Is “Black Mirror” planning a “Playtest” prequel? Fans will have to keep waiting for now.
IndieWire has reached out to Netflix for further comment.
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