5 details you might have missed in the Black Mirror season 5 trailer

Black Mirror released the trailer for its fifth season, featuring three new episodes. These tiny details may be able to tell us more about this season.

It’s been a long wait for us Black Mirror fans, but Netflix finally released its fifth season trailer on Wednesday. The series had been delayed a bit longer than usual after it was announced, but that was only because working on the interactive episode Black Mirror: Bandersnatch took more time than expected.

With the new season, coming June 5, we’re getting just three episodes. But those episodes look like they’ll be full of lots of twists and turns. According to IMDb, the first episode is called “Striking Vipers,” starring Anthony Mackie and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Next is “Smithereens,” starring Andrew Scott. The final episode, starring Miley Cyrus, doesn’t seem to have a public title just yet.

With so much filled in a trailer that’s less than 2 minutes long, you may want to watch it again. Then read on to see what details you might have missed, and what that means for each episode.

Smithereens app

The episode title “Smithereens” gets its name from the app everyone seems to be using in the trailer (at least in that episode). As BrainPilot on YouTube points out, while Andrew Scott’s character is in the car, he opens up the Smithereens app that’s located in his “Emergency Only” folder. This could be the app that he despises, especially as it seems he hates phones and social media so much that he’s willing to kidnap someone because of it. As ironic as Black Mirror likes to be, in the end, the app may be the only way to get himself out of his situation.

Two robots?

The scary thing about Black Mirror is that the technology they feature is never too far out of reach. We always think we couldn’t verge on the dystopian futures we’ve read about or watched in films, but Black Mirror makes it seem very much so. Take, for instance, the robotic friend that seems to cheer a young girl up in the untitled episode. Personal robots aren’t just a concept from The Jetsons. With robots like MiP and Pepper on the market, the future has become our present.

All that being said, there’s something more sinister about the “friendly” robot in the trailer, and it looks like there are two of them: one placed on a dresser/nightstand as a companion to the girl with blonde hair, and one on a bookshelf as a possible companion to the girl with black hair. These two may just correspond to the shot of Miley Cyrus (who is blonde) at the piano with the woman with black hair. These could be their virtual alter egos, and these poisonous robots (as they’re once called in the trailer) may or may not have something to do with the girls wanting to escape reality.

The VR performer in white

We see at least two instances of VR in the trailer. One appears when two opponents are fighting each other Mortal Kombat style, and the other is where a woman in all white is dancing with a VR headset. Given Miley Cyrus will be a pop star in her episode, and everything is not what it seems, this could further confirm that the blonde high school girl is actually the pop star in the VR world. For someone who’s so lonely in the real world, it’s quite sad that probably none of her thousands of VR followers know who she is.

The forehead device

Without a solid name for this piece of technology, I’m just going to go ahead and call it the “forehead device.” Now, you may have noticed Anthony Mackie putting on this piece of technology, but we don’t necessarily know what happens after he goes full Bran Stark from Game of Thrones. In “The Entire History of You” and “White Christmas,” devices like this have been used before — specifically allowing you to play back memories and block anyone in your sight.

The device in the trailer may be similar, but it may also be linked to the VR video game or a virtual meet-up space. For example, the trailer shows Mackie dancing with someone who looks like the woman in the pictures he was staring at. They could meet in real life, but do we really trust people to meet up in real life? Not after “San Junipero” and “Hang the DJ,” we don’t.

The “afterlife”

The title cards in the trailer let us know that Black Mirror has changed how we see love, the world, privacy, and even the afterlife, so it’s a sure bet that these themes will come up again in season 5. The afterlife is a big one, as we’ve seen in “San Junipero” that the concept of having a consciousness long after your physical self has died is possible.

For some reason, Topher Grace’s character seems like he’s alone in his own afterlife — seeing as his clip is one that follows the “Afterlife” title card. Then, there’s a shot of a lone home on a mountaintop in the desert (possibly his). If these two shots are related, there’s no telling which episode it could be for. But if we’re dealing with VR afterlife concepts like “San Junipero,” then it may fit in Miley Cyrus’ episode.

What are you looking forward to seeing in season 5 of Black Mirror? Share your thoughts in the comments.