Black Mirror’s latest season has no shortage of downer moments. In its second episode, “Playtest,” the show veers away from its typically cynical view of technology, however, and falls straight into a horror rabbit hole. It turns out it could have been much worse.
“Playtest” provides a look at what virtual reality could become — a force so powerful it redefines what a horror game could be. During a recent Reddit AMA, showrunners Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones revealed that they toyed with the idea of changing specific scenes in that episode after it aired.
“Have thought about that with ‘Playtest’ (wanted to do a 'Nightmare mode' for people watching it a second time — with different fourth-wall breaking scenes),” the pair said. “But it was just too logistically complicated. We may revisit the idea tho.”
Brooker and Jones also talked briefly about working on season 4, which sounds like it will include another six-episode run.
“We're about to start shooting one so as soon as we've finished that bit and shot another five, and then given them all a good polish,” they wrote. “2017 almost certainly, in other words.”
An exact date for when that season will premiere is still unclear. Ignore the show’s IMDB page, which one Reddit user pointed out promises January 1st, 2017. “That's impossible, fuck,” the showrunners wrote.