Black Mirror is an artfully crafted, well written show that usually makes me feel hopeless. The only exception I’ve found (although I have not watched them all) was the Emmy award-winning episode from 2016, San Junipero. I watched the new interactive Black Mirror episode, Bandersnatch, for about 40 minutes. It was just as depressing as Black Mirror typically is, and I wasn’t motivated to find more of the alternate endings. I don’t even know if we reached an ending, although my boyfriend said that we would have to go back and make another choice as the show was a maze with dead ends, like a typical chose your own adventure book. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Bandersnatch is Netflix’s first ever interactive program. It allows you to make choices for a 19 year-old programmer in 1984, Stefan, who is designing a video game based on a choose your own adventure book. The filmmakers spoke to THR and explained their process, which was very meta in that they faced similar setbacks to Stefan. (Of course this contains spoilers, at least the spoiler for the main ending which I did not reach, but it may not be relevant to the story you choose.)

Officially, Netflix says there are five “main” endings. But there is a caveat: There are variants on all of them. Given that there are millions of unique story permutations created by [Black Mirror creator Charlie] Brooker’s game-changing script, not every viewer can unlock all of the endings. Also, the way any one person will arrive at those endings will vary, since the interactive experience evolves as viewers make choices.

There is one ending, however, that Netflix determined would be the most commonly reached: the Pearl Ritman ending. That is why the final scene is intercut with a credits sequence — even though the official end to everyone’s Bandersnatch experience will be signified by rolling closing credits. Pearl, as it turns out, is the daughter of Colin Ritman (played by Will Poulter), the famed game developer who mentors the protagonist, Stefan (Fionn Whitehead), throughout the film. “It’s not the ‘real’ ending,” Carla Engelbrecht, Netflix’s director of product innovation, confirms to THR of the Pearl flash-forward coexisting among the others. Engelbrecht, who led the tech development of Bandersnatch, says the Pearl ending treatment (which also contains Black Mirror Easter eggs for discerning viewers) was a creative choice made by Brooker. “The original version didn’t have that intercutting, and then it emerged as they started getting into the episode and refining it. We really liked the feel of it.”

When Bandersnatch flashes forward to introduce Pearl, the ending that viewers get reflects several of the different story branches they will have already reached, or will reach, when Stefan becomes overwhelmed by the creation of the game. Despite her best intentions, Pearl also begins to lose control when she tries to pick up where her father left off and finish his “Bandersnatch” for Netflix. In real life, “Bandersnatch” is also the name of a highly anticipated 1984 game that never materialized. But for Brooker, the ending is even more personal.

“The Pearl ending is quite meta, where it sort of pulls out to reveal someone who has been writing all of this to appear on Netflix,” says Brooker of the wink. “To be honest, the whole thing was extremely meta. Throughout the whole process, we’ve often commented on how life has been imitating art, or the other way around.”

Brooker was experiencing many of the tech problems that Stefan faces when he was outlining the complex “branching narrative” story of Bandersnatch. “There were lots of times where we found ourselves pretty much staring at complicated flowcharts and bits of code, much like Pearl does, and as you see, Stefan does,” Brooker says of the writing process. “We had lots of conversations where we would have to simplify it. All of that stuff that you see in Bandersnatch, we ended up saying in real life. It’s a very odd, meta, fourth-wall-, fifth-wall-, sixth-wall-breaking film. I don’t know really how to classify it: as a film or as an experience? Our ambitions were to make it as cinematic as we possibly can.”

[From The Hollywood Reporter]

Here’s a link to a Slate article which outlines all the alternate endings and scenes, the most meta being the Pearl (Colin’s daughter) ending mentioned above. My favorite scene in the version I watched, which involved having Stefan work at home, was a visit he made to Colin’s apartment where they both did drugs. Colin delivered a speech about Pac-Man which was just incredible. After that it took a turn. I was blown away by the meta references in the show, but I had the same problem I always have with Black Mirror, which is that I didn’t care about the characters. Even when you’re making choices for Stefan you know that it’s going to end badly so you try not to get too invested. The styling and the settings are amazing though. They got the early 80s European feel dead on without going overboard (see: Atomic Blonde). The stylists and set designers on Black Mirror need more recognition.

This was the first of what will likely be many interactive projects at Netflix. They developed their own in-house tool to manage all the alternate endings, which were way too complicated for a typical flowchart.