Dissecting the best Easter eggs from Black Mirror season 6
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Warning: This article contains spoilers for all episodes of Black Mirror season 6.
Since Black Mirror is an anthology show, its episodes are usually only connected by theme and mood rather than shared characters or plot elements. But season 6 of the dystopian series, which landed on Netflix this week after a four-year hiatus, is full of Easter eggs and callbacks to prior installments.
The season 6 premiere, "Joan Is Awful," is particularly laden with references thanks to Streamberry, the streaming service clearly modeled after Netflix itself. Before Joan (Annie Murphy) and her boyfriend Krish (Avi Nash) stumble upon the titular show, they scroll through the menu…and almost every title that appears is a reference to another Black Mirror episode. Some of these are foreshadowing future chapters, like Loch Henry — the documentary that is being made in the second episode of season 6. But the rest are callbacks to past installments.
Nick Wall/Netflix Annie Murphy in 'Black Mirror' season 6.
The Callow Years is a documentary about Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear), the British prime minister who had sex with a pig on TV in the show's very first episode, "The National Anthem." Finding Ritman refers to the main character of the 2018 special episode Bandersnatch — and even features a likeness of that story's star, Will Poulter. Junipero Dreaming is obviously a reference to the beloved episode "San Junipero," while Hot Shot is the competition show that Daniel Kaluuya's character watches and appears on in "Fifteen Million Merits." Another item in the Streamberry menu displays the image of Ashley O, Miley Cyrus' fictional pop star from season 5.
Sea of Tranquility, which Joan derides, is the name of a show mentioned in the season 3 premiere "Nosedive" after previously being mentioned off-hand in "The National Anthem." But the Streamberry interface describes it as "HBO's seminal sci-fi Western," which feels like a joke about Westworld. Sea of Tranquility is also the name of a real-life novel by author Emily St. John Mandel, whose book Station Eleven was adapted by HBO in 2021.
Outside of Black Mirror proper, the Streamberry title Rowdy and Peanut is a reference to Cat Burglar, a short film that Charlie Brooker made for Netflix during Black Mirror's hiatus. When Joan suggests Loch Henry as a possible watch, Krish says "I can't do another true crime. Not after Gacy," which seems to allege that in the world of Black Mirror, Streamberry produced a flashy, prestigious true-crime documentary about John Wayne Gacy the way real-world Netflix did Dahmer.
Netflix Myhala Herrold and Samuel Blenkin in the 'Black Mirror' episode 'Loch Henry.'
The Callow Years and Junipero Dreaming are both mentioned again in the episode "Loch Henry," in which they are fellow competitors in the documentary category at the BAFTAs. The references to "the Junipero project" seem to indicate that the consciousness-preservation program is still in early stages of development, and hasn't yet reached the full fruition seen in "San Junipero."
The last Easter egg of the season is quite ominous. In "Demon 79," when Nida (Anjan Vasan) asks the demon Gaap (Paapa Essiedu) about what the rise of right-wing politician Michael Smart (David Shields) could lead to in the future, Gaap gives her a vision. The montage involves a lot of worrying things (like rising xenophobia and police attacks on minorities), but the scariest of all is the brief shot of the robot dog from season 4's "Metalhead."
No wonder Nida wants to kill Smart! Unfortunately she fails, and the world is consumed by nuclear apocalypse…which might, in turn, lead to the post-apocalyptic black-and-white landscape of "Metalhead." Leave it to Black Mirror to even make Easter eggs feel dark and foreboding!
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