Entertainment
The 8 Darkest ‘Black Mirror’ Episodes, Ranked
Bad things happen in Black Mirror pretty often, and even like clockwork early on in the show’s run. It’s an anthology series that mostly operates within the realm of science fiction, but some episodes lean more into thriller, drama, or horror territory, and then there are a few episodes that are honestly quite funny, or at least satirical/darkly comedic.
Not so much with any of the following episodes, though. It’s a show with a reputation for being bleak a good deal of the time, and these are perhaps the bleakest/darkest episodes of Black Mirror to date. Most of them come from earlier in the show’s run, with seasons 1 and 2 feeling especially cynical, but if you progress further into the show and its seasons, you’re still likely to run into some distressing stuff every now and then.
8
“Fifteen Million Merits” (2011)
What “Fifteen Million Merits” does with its commentary on having to sell yourself for very little while being pushed further and further mentally feels ahead of its time, because yes, this was a problem in the 2010s, but it feels like more of a concern online in the 2020s. Things in real life feel like they’ve tipped toward what happens in “Fifteen Million Merits,” making it feel a bit less sci-fi as the years have gone on.
Some of the satire here is pointed toward reality TV, though, and that does feel like more of a 2000s or early 2010s thing, at least regarding what sort of reality TV is explored. But if online exploitation has replaced reality TV exploitation, then hey, that’s not that much better. It might also be the sort of thing that’s more confronting to watch after the world went into lockdown for a while, making the confinement in this episode feel regrettably more relatable.
7
“Common People” (2025)
It’s not a particularly great episode of Black Mirror, because it belongs to season 7, and season 7 felt tired, but “Common People” is still notably dark, so here it is. It centers on a married couple going to further extremes to keep paying for a subscription service that one of them needs to stay alive, with things getting increasingly expensive as time passes, and fewer features being available on the “cheaper” versions.
The commentary is not subtle, because this happens to all sorts of services people pay for in real life, but while that clunky commentary keeps “Common People” from being great quality-wise, the premise does allow things to get very bleak. Black Mirror seemed to lose some of its edge from about season 4 onward, though “Common People” and at least one other soon-to-be-mentioned episode certainly keep that era of the show from being completely smooth sailing.
6
“White Christmas” (2014)
Definitely not to be mixed up with the 1954 Christmas film of the same name, Black Mirror’s “White Christmas” is an anthology episode within an anthology show. There are three stories here, mirroring how the first two seasons of the show also had three episodes each, with “White Christmas” being independent of any seasons, at least officially, since it was a Christmas special that aired between seasons 2 and 3.
The stories here are all typically upsetting in their own ways, and the existential horror also stands out, particularly when it comes to the second story and the way the framing device is ultimately concluded. It’s a feel-bad Christmas special for sure, or like an anti-Christmas episode and all that, but also one of the better Black Mirror episodes overall, too.
5
“The Entire History of You” (2011)
The creator of Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker, was not credited with writing or co-writing “The Entire History of You,” which is surprising because he’s done one or the other with every other episode, and also, “The Entire History of You” was written by someone best known for their comedies: Jesse Armstrong. Of his other works, admittedly, Succession is more of a dramedy, but Peep Show and The Thick of It are certainly comedies.
It’s worth singling that fact out because there’s nothing funny about “The Entire History of You,” not even in a darkly comedic way. The premise here involves one man spiraling out of control emotionally because of a technology that allows a user to revisit memories, which he does obsessively and, eventually, self-destructively. Certainly compelling, and a striking episode visually and in terms of its writing, but it is also very grim.
4
“Beyond the Sea” (2023)
Returning to late-era Black Mirror one more time, “Beyond the Sea” is a little better than “Common People,” and was probably the best of the bunch when it came to season 6, for whatever that might be worth. The story here stands out for taking place in an alternate past, and it involves two astronauts who are able to continue their lives back on Earth, while in space, to some extent, thanks to inhabiting replicas who’ve remained on the planet.
Bad things happen, to put it mildly, and then that leads to an altered situation which prompts more bad things to happen. “Beyond the Sea” is very miserable on a couple of different fronts, and while it lacks the punchiness of some of the best hard-hitting episodes of Black Mirror, it does still hit pretty hard, faults and all.
3
“White Bear” (2013)
“White Bear” is hard to talk about without going into spoiler territory, but that can be said about a bunch of Black Mirror episodes. Still, with this one, it’s fairly stressful for most of the episode’s runtime, and then the reveal near the episode’s end makes the whole thing more mortifying in hindsight, so any rewatch will undoubtedly prove particularly grim.
You can also think about what’ll keep happening without watching it again, and that’s horrifying enough. “White Bear” also ends up being more mundane than you might expect, with its sci-fi elements, but this is to the episode’s benefit, in terms of making it bleaker and not too far removed from real life and things that happen in reality that are reminiscent of what is eventually shown going down here.
2
“Shut Up and Dance” (2016)
Another episode heavier on thriller elements than science fiction ones, “Shut Up and Dance” feels a little in line with “White Bear,” but without being a retread. Also, the one episode that ranks higher than it, for present purposes, isn’t too sci-fi-heavy, so that’s a bit of a pattern, maybe. Anyway, “Shut Up and Dance” is about two people being blackmailed into doing strange and dangerous things, seemingly as punishment for wrongs they’ve done.
It definitely scratches the itch the way those infamous and particularly intense earlier episodes of Black Mirror seemed to quite reliably do.
Again, it’s disturbing for the whole episode, and then it ends in a way that intensifies what was already quite upsetting and highly suspenseful. It definitely scratches the itch the way those infamous and particularly intense earlier episodes of Black Mirror seemed to quite reliably do, and it stands out quality-wise to much of what came post-season 3 (it’s never really reached those heights – or crushing lows, depending on your definition – since).
1
“The National Anthem” (2011)
It’s easy to talk about finales that were controversial, mostly because there seem to be a good many of them out there, but first episodes that are jarring or difficult in some way are less common. They’re not unheard of, however, as the existence of “The National Anthem” shows, which isn’t the first episode of Black Mirror you have to watch, given it’s an anthology show and all, but it is technically the first.
It aired first, and this was before Netflix and the model of dumping a whole season at once was taken on, so “The National Anthem” really did come first. It’s got very little that’s even close to science fiction, and is instead a very confronting psychological drama/thriller episode about a prime minister coming to terms with having to do something unspeakably disturbing on live television to save the life of a kidnapped royal family member. There’s more that can be said, but maybe you don’t want to read about it right now. If you know, you unfortunately know.
Black Mirror
- Release Date
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December 4, 2011
- Network
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Channel 4, Netflix
- Directors
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Owen Harris, Toby Haynes, James Hawes, David Slade, Carl Tibbetts, Ally Pankiw, Bryn Higgins, Dan Trachtenberg, Euros Lyn, Jodie Foster, Joe Wright, John Hillcoat, Sam Miller, Tim Van Patten, Uta Briesewitz, Colm McCarthy, Jakob Verbruggen, James Watkins, John Crowley, Otto Bathurst, Anne Sewitsky, Brian Welsh
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