- Black Mirror will return for season 6 on June 15.
- The new cast features Salma Hayek and more.
- The season 6 episode titles have been revealed.
Fan-favorite series Black Mirror hasn’t released new episodes since season 5 dropped on Netflix on June 5, 2019. The long-running anthology series, which was created by Charlie Brooker and first aired on the British network Channel 4, is beloved by its fans. After an extended wait, we finally have news about Black Mirror season 6.
Black Mirror will return for its sixth season on June 15, 2023. The series will feature a new cast, and we got a glimpse at the first teaser on April 26, 2023. “You’ve been wondering. You’ve been waiting. You’ve been warned,” the tagline says. The official season 6 trailer dropped on May 31.
The logline for the show reads: “Expect the unexpected. The long-awaited return of Charlie Brooker’s dark, satirical anthology series which reinvents itself with each new episode. The sixth season of Black Mirror is the most unpredictable, unclassifiable, and unexpected yet.”
HollywoodLife is rounding up everything we know about Black Mirror season 6 since it’s right around the corner!
Black Mirror Season 6 Cast
Black Mirror has gathered an incredible cast for the upcoming sixth season. The ensemble includes Aaron Paul, Anjana Vasan, Annie Murphy, Auden Thornton, Ben Barnes, Clara Rugaard, Daniel Portman, Danny Ramirez, Himesh Patel, John Hannah, Josh Hartnett, Kate Mara, Michael Cera, Monica Dolan, Myha’la Herrold, Paapa Essiedu, Rob Delaney, Rory Culkin, Salma Hayek Pinault, Samuel Blenkin, and Zazie Beetz.
The official teaser revealed the first glimpses of the cast in action. From a spaceship to a diner to a house fire, the cast will be exploring a wide variety of stories in season 6. The episode titles are: “Joan is Awful,” “Loch Henry,” “Beyond the Sea,” “Mazey Day,” and “Demon ’79.”
The official trailer revealed new footage of the upcoming season. It seems like Salma’s episode will be getting a little meta, with someone watching the actress on a Netflix-type app. Aaron and Josh are in space, and Aaron becomes increasingly worried about Josh.
What Will Black Mirror Season 6 Be About?
Expected the unexpected. The show’s creator is determined to keep audiences on their toes. “I’ve always felt that Black Mirror should feature stories that are entirely distinct from one another, and keep surprising people — and myself — or else what’s the point? It should be a series that can’t be easily defined, and can keep reinventing itself,” Charlie told Tudum.
He continued, “Partly as a challenge, and partly to keep things fresh for both me and the viewer, I began this season by deliberately upending some of my own core assumptions about what to expect. Consequently, this time, alongside some of the more familiar Black Mirror tropes we’ve also got a few new elements, including some I’ve previously sworn blind the show would never do, to stretch the parameters of what ‘a Black Mirror episode’ even is. The stories are all still tonally Black Mirror through-and-through — but with some crazy swings and more variety than ever before.”
Netflix has revealed the episode descriptions for the 5 new episodes. Get all the details below:
“Joan Is Awful”
An average woman is stunned to discover a global streaming platform has launched a prestige TV drama adaptation of her life — in which she is portrayed by Hollywood A-lister Salma Hayek.
Cast: Annie Murphy, Ben Barnes, Himesh Patel, Michael Cera, Rob Delaney, Salma Hayek Pinault
Director: Ally Pankiw
Written by: Charlie Brooker
Filmed in: UK
“Loch Henry”
A young couple travels to a sleepy Scottish town to start work on a genteel nature documentary – but find themselves drawn to a juicy local story involving shocking events of the past.
Cast: Daniel Portman, John Hannah, Monica Dolan, Myha’la Herrold, Samuel Blenkin
Director: Sam Miller
Written by: Charlie Brooker
Filmed in: UK (Scotland)
“Beyond The Sea”
In an alternative 1969, two men on a perilous high-tech mission wrestle with the consequences of an unimaginable tragedy.
Cast: Aaron Paul, Auden Thornton, Josh Hartnett, Kate Mara, Rory Culkin
Director: John Crowley
Written by: Charlie Brooker
Filmed in: UK and Spain
“Mazey Day”
A troubled starlet is dogged by invasive paparazzi while dealing with the consequences of a hit-and-run incident.
Cast: Clara Rugaard, Danny Ramirez, Zazie Beetz
Director: Uta Briesewitz
Written by: Charlie Brooker
Filmed in: Spain
“Demon 79”
Northern England, 1979. A meek sales assistant is told she must commit terrible acts to prevent disaster.
Cast: Anjana Vasan, Paapa Essiedu
Director: Toby Haynes
Written by: Charlie Brooker & Bisha K Ali
Filmed in: UK
The Show So Far
For those who may be unfamiliar with the series, Black Mirror is a show that features sci-fi stories in a Twilight Zone-style format. Black Mirror shows how modern technologies can backfire and be used against their makers, and every episode is set in a slightly different reality with different characters using different types of technologies.
Charlie first created the series, which often features notable celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Anthony Mackie, Andrew Scott, Jesse Plemons, and Topher Grace, for the British network Channel 4 before it made its way to Netflix for seasons 3-5. Over the years, since its 2011 premiere, the series has been met with critical acclaim and massive popularity, which is why it’s been difficult for fans to go without a new episode of Black Mirror since 2019.
Currently, there are 22 episodes and one interactive film, titled Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. The episodes all vary in length between 41 and 89 minutes, and they can be watched in any order since they’re all delivered as standalone stories. The actors also rarely appear in more than one episode. However, quite a few episodes make small references to previous episodes through the form of an in-universe news channel or briefly-seen text. All installments of Black Mirror have spanned a variety of genres including drama, political satire, romantic comedy, and psychological horror.
Will Black Mirror Season 6 Be The Final Season?
That remains to be seen. In an interview with the Radio Times in May 2020, series creator Charlie Brooker admitted that he had put writing new episodes of Black Mirror on pause amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “At the moment, I don’t know what stomach there would be for stories about societies falling apart, so I’m not working away on one of those. I’m sort of keen to revisit my comic skill set, so I’ve been writing scripts aimed at making myself laugh,” he revealed.
Furthermore, there’s been a potential issue with the rights to the show. In January 2020, Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones — the showrunners of Black Mirror — revealed that they were departing the show’s production company, Endemol Shine Group. The rights to the show currently remain with that production company. And since then, Charlie and Annabel created a new production company called Broke & Bones, which has a deal with Netflix for other projects. Broke & Bones is the official production company for season 6.
On a positive note, however, Banijay Group purchased Endemol in 2019, and Cathy Payne, who is the head of Banijay’s distribution department, told Variety that season 6 of Black Mirror could still happen — and now that has come to fruition. Banijay Rights is licensing the show.
Bandersnatch is actually the reason why season 5 was so short. According to an interview with Digital Spy, Charlie said, “Originally, Bandersnatch was part of season 5. So ‘Striking Vipers,’ we actually shot before we started shooting Bandersnatch. ‘Smithereens,’ a little bit of that overlapped with Bandersnatch. … But then as we worked on it more, it became apparent that Bandersnatch was the equivalent of doing a whole season in itself.”
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This story originally appeared on Hollywoodlife
