Charlie Brooker drops big hints about what to expect from ‘Black Mirror’ Season 4

Part of the beauty of Black Mirror is its unpredictability, with so many moments in the third season of the show taking viewers by surprise.

The episode ‘San Junipero’ was one of the surprise TV hits of the last 12 months, earning two Primetime Emmys and sparking suggestions of a sequel.

Season 4 of the dystopian show is due to air on Netflix before the end of the year, and we have been given the episode titles and little else so far.

We do also have a basic cast list, with the presence of stars like Birdman’s Andrea Riseborough and Breaking Bad’s Jesse Plemons, among others, suggesting we’re in for a treat. And that’s before we get onto the fact that Sopranos and Game of Thrones director Tim van Patten and Jodie actual Foster will each be directing one of the six episodes.

But now Brooker has opened up a little more about Season 4, although he’s been cagey enough to keep us guessing.

Brooker spoke to Entertainment Weekly about Black Mirror’s upcoming episodes, and admitted he’s still finalising the order of the six instalments.

“We’re pretty sure what opens and closes the season, but we’re still working out the order of what’s in between,” he said, while suggesting the show’s creators would “open with a bit of an epic” rather than a more accessible episode like Season 3’s ‘Nosedive’.

He also revealed that one episode in the new season, entitled ‘Black Museum’, features references to a number of previous episodes, so that’s something to look out for.

While the order is yet to be finalised, Brooker answered specific questions on each of the six episodes which may give us a bit of a clue about what to expect:

‘Arkangel’ – “It’s about a mother and a daughter and a technological opportunity that comes along that’s seized upon…”

‘Black Museum’ – “That’s a ‘Treehouse of Horror’ [the Halloween anthology series from The Simpsons]. We did ‘White Christmas’ before. The show itself is an anthology and that was an anthology within an anthology.”

‘Crocodile’ – “No one has guessed what that one’s about yet, probably because it’s got the most opaque title of all of them… It’s a fairly taut story; it’s kind of a thriller…”

‘Hang the DJ’ – “There’s some [episodes] that are not nihilistically horrible from beginning to end and there are others that are. This is one that’s more enjoyable…”

‘Metalhead’ – “Weirdly, the inspiration for this episode was I was trying to set myself a challenge of how paired back can I get. What’s a literally black-and-white story we can tell?”

‘U.S.S. Callister’ – “If you look at ‘Callister’ there are some stuff that leaked in from the outside world. There is stuff that has to do with regimes, you could say, that’s not there and also very much there.”

Any closer to knowing what’s going on?

You’ll find out if your suspicions are right sooner rather than later, with the new season due to land on Netflix in the coming days or weeks.

(Images: Netflix/Rex Features)