Bandersnatch breaks grip on reality

JORDAN DEL VALLE TONOIAN

Today, Netflix released a stand-alone episode of their original series, Black Mirror, Bandersnatch.

The long awaited release comes after one year of radio silence from the series. Originally, fans anticipated a new season this month, given the last season came out in December of 2017.

I was disappointed when I read that the next season would not be released until some time in 2019, but upon watching, or rather, playing through this episode, I have been thwarted of this disappointment.

Mostly because this select your own fate style episode, or game, if you want to call it that, is mind bogglingly good.

In the episode you follow around a distressed nineteen year old by the name of Stefen as he pitches a game based on the fictional book of the same name, dictating his actions.

And in Black Mirror style, he becomes self aware.

This is a relatively new style of series for Netflix, well they’re no strangers to it as they’ve had different children’s series with this feature, This is one of the first adult-oriented series to get an episode like this.

I have to say it worked well, the choices came up at just the right time, there was enough time to choose, if not too much time, and the choices made sense.

This allows every watchthrough, or playthrough, to be slightly different depending on what choices you make for the character, Stefan.

Of course the second that the episode was released Reddit did what Reddit does best, and went right to work on going through every single ending and finding every single choice you can make.

A Reddit user by the name of alpine- even made a flowchart of the entire episode.

Warning: Spoilers below!

 

Almost 4 hours after release and I think I have mapped Bandersnatch. Throw tea over computer. from r/blackmirror

 

The first time I watched it, I received the ending dubbed “Dies in chair with therapist” I have to say is the ending that I’m probably most contempt with.

It seems as though Netflix tracks how many times you’ve gone through and gave me different choices each time I’ve played through it.

I haven’t been able to recreate my original ending, but I have got another endings which I’ve been less fulfilled by.

So while Bird Box might be getting all of the attention right now I think this episode deserves just as much, if not more.

I can’t wait to see what Netflix does in Season 5 which is supposedly being released next year sometime.

2019 can’t get here any faster.